Atlas of Ancient History, the Penguin

I bought it to support our 6th grade World History class, but have not used it yet, as it is not very appealing to kids

As an avid devourer of both history and maps I can say that this book fills a certain niche within my appetite that has not been addressed by either thick historical reference materials or other historical atlases. Specifically, the strength of this book (whatever its other failings are) is that it does the best job I've yet seen of presenting a TRULY DYNAMIC VIEW of the area in question. [For caveats as to its limitations, skip to the bottom of the review.] This means that, after the early stuff is gotten out of the way (your neolithic revolution and other early times for which our information is sketchy, which involves leaving out a lot of time), we are treated to a map of the same area at regular ~50 year intervals. [The actual intervals between maps actually ranges from 15 to 100 in some cases, but ~50 is probably the mean.] Now I own a few other historical atlases, many of which come highly recommended (The 2005 Oxford Atlas of World History, for example, as well as a few other comparable atlases), and while they are valuable purchases in their own right, they do not present a detailed DYNAMIC view of any part of the world, let alone sticking with one piece of it. The Oxford Atlas presents 'The Roman Empire' in two (admittedly large) pages that are supposed to take us from 500BC to 400AD, accompanied by three maps. While the simple narrative tells us what happens within that time period, we do not get to SEE what happens. Another atlas presents one very large and well detailed world map for every 250 year interval - empires pop up from nowhere like dandelions and are gone by the next map as if they never were! In contrast, McEvedy's work sacrifices global scope and global time to present a limited frame of reference (Europe, North Africa, the Near East/Iran and half of the Eurasian steppe) and gives us a blow-by-blow account of what exactly was going on. We can actually see Rome growing over the course of 20 or so maps covering a thousand years, not to mention the ebb and flow of the various other historical peoples that shared the stage with Rome. [This doesn't take into account the pre-Rome maps that make up the other half of the book.] I have yet to encounter any other series of maps, in proper historical reference materials or in other historical atlases, that provide this glimpse into a dynamic world that changed with each human generation (as all human communities do, whether we know it or not). [If anyone else knows of such a series of maps, by all means post a review listing the title.] As an amateur scholar who prefers to get proper historical information from thick, specifically targeted thousand page works, I can definitely say that there is no substitute for the visual information that maps can provide. I've lost count of how many pages have been wasted attempting to explain in (many, many) words what could have been presented instantly and without confusion by a simple well drawn and well-excised map - in fact

I defy any other historian to compress so much raw material into such a concise but precise volume. The language is a pure joy: Caesar's son being "tidied away into a small box"; Nero "dying by his own shaky hand"; the "proud and prickly" Great Kings of Persia. The book (and others by the same author) is also refreshingly politically incorrect: unashamedly European in outlook, rightly contemptuous of less civilized polities, unafraid to defend the Indo-European conquest of Iran and Northern India. Best of all, the maps are a succulent treat: I remember tracing them out by pencil when a student (that was the first edition) and being caught out by my history master - leading to a heated debate on the origin of the Etruscans. I have now gone through no less than seven copies of this book (first or second edition): three given away to enlightened friends, four disintegrated through long re-readings in the bath. A Gibbon for the IT age.

This is a very nice piece of work but not exactly an atlas of ancient history. It is a cultural geography of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. It has far fewer place names than I wanted from an atlas and much of it is pre-history beginning some 40,000 years ago. It starts with a brisk and entertaining account of the author's methods for interpreting scanty archaeological and linguistic evidence. This is at once accessible, learned, detailed, acerbic, and engaging. There is a funny bit about how archaeologists will say "a major new civilization" when they mean "a particularly disappointing dig", or will say "earliest known" when they mean "undated", and more. There is a terrific account of what it took to re-settle humans in Europe as the last ice age retreated. The effects were strong on Northern Europe into historical times (indeed Scandinavia and some of Russia is still rising and drying out today). The author estimates the human population of all of Europe and the Middle East was only about 100,000 in 9,000 BC. The book describes movements of peoples, languages, technologies, and writing systems. It maps out the earliest known trade relations. It includes many maps but with few place names. Rather they indicate where various ethnic groups lived and what technologies were used where. As it enters historical times the book describes the campaigns of rulers and empires. It is a beautiful piece of work and beautifully concise. On the other hand, if you are reading Euripides and you want to know where Lemnos was, you won't find it here. You will find the most famous places: In Greece, besides Athens and Sparta, are Mycenea, Lesbos, Argos. That is like finding Chicago and San Francisco in an atlas of the US. But you will not find general Meno's birthplace of Larissa--which you would read about in either Plato or Xenophon. It is like not finding St. Louis in a US atlas. Those places are found in the Atlas of the Greek World (Cultural Atlas of) by Peter Levi. And they are found in another book you should read anyway, namely the Landmark Thucydides. It is a terrific edition available in paperback and it shows these places in detailed maps.

I have taught History for over 15 years. In all of my years of study and teaching I have never seen a series that was so succinctly, and logically protrayed. I have been asked to help college students who were failing Western Civiliazation. I gave them this series, and none ever came back with less than a B+. I have taught teachers with multiple Masters Degrees who couldn't understand why none of their college classes ever put history in such a simple and straight forward way as this series does. This series gives you one page of narrative with a facing page displaying the information pictorially. How delightfully simple can it get. I recommend this series to any student of History, particularly to those in Biblical studies.

A broad-ranging map-based narrative history written by an historian with a wonderful turn of phrase and a quirky sense of humor. The vision of stone age hunters chasing "the inglorious snail and the frankly sessile nut" has remained with me for many years.