Smithsonian Timelines of the Ancient World

This is a beautiful BIG book - so much more than an illustrated history book. It is a Trip through Time.Before starting, you are instructed how to 'travel' through the many colorful pages, researching human origins or choosing to just wander back and forth enjoying human progress around the globe. You will be acquainted at a glance with how people lived, what they ate and their cultures. Their creative art and the advance of the technology of the time.The team of Smithsonians have put together a wonderful collection of interesting material on a number of major civilizations stimulating readers of all ages to want to search for more as our human history unfolds.

My father recently brought me back a trilobite from Russia, which is a trilobite dalmanite which crawled along the sea bed early in the history of the earth. I remember my father reading the story about the trilobites when I was very young and when he saw the fossil in Russia, he remembered the story and brought it home for me. There is a picture on page 21. While I don't believe in evolution (and this book begins with that theory), this book is still extremely valuable for all the information it contains and the pictures are amazing. The fact that someone had to organize all these details is mind boggling in itself. Smithsonian Timelines of the Ancient World offers a new perspective on the past and provides a unique view of our developing world. It spans from the origins of life to the emergence of civilizations up to AD 1500. This book is richly illustrated and shows artifacts of each time period and region. Many of the artifacts come from the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The photos of many items have never been published before. This is a Millennium Classic Limited Edition Collectable. The silver cover makes this a perfect coffee table book. It is not a book you just put away and forget about, yet you will feel spoiled owning it. You can look up any region of the world at any period and discover what people ate or how they used local materials to construct shelters and temple-pyramids. The pivotal developments of technology from the fashioning of stone tools, to the introduction of navigational equipment is shown in detail. If you want to know about the art of classical Greece, or how the Incas lived in the Andes, you can find it all in one concise collection of knowledge. There are more than 50 large-scale visual time charts, 1600 photographs and 100 specially commissioned maps. I present to you a book produced under the expert guidance of eminent archaeologists, anthropologists, prehistorians and paleontologists from around the world. Chris Scarre, PhD, is a specialist in the prehistory of Europe and the Mediterranean. He was also the editor of Past Worlds: The Times Atlas of Archaeology (1988). An invaluable reference book that presents a spectacular tapestry of time and culture. ~The Rebecca Review

I am a student of Washington Middle School, and my teacher gave us an assignment of getting 20 trade timeline entries and 20 agricultural entries, and with this book, I got all but seven of my agriculture entries, and all my trade entries in two periods. This book may cost alot to buy, but if you go to your library and check it out, you can find out tons of stuff about the Americas, Asia, Australia, Europe, and Africa, about weapons, farming, art, etc... like I said, This book is rockin'!!

I use this reference book in the classroom to provide a global perspective for students. The book helps to show students that history and civilization are global not only continental and western.