I would also like to draw attention to the sponsors and editors of the various university presses around the world. Many of the most interesting and important books discussed in the following pages were never going to be commercial propositions; but university presses exist, at least in part, to see that new ideas get into print: we are all in their debt. Nor should we forget the translators (some anonymous, some long-departed) of so many of the works described in this book. As Leo Rosten acknowledged, linguistic skills ought not to be taken for granted.
In the chapters on China I have used the Pinyin system of transliteration as opposed to Wade-Giles, except for certain words where the Wade-Giles format is well known even to non-specialists (Pinyin dispenses with all apostrophes and hyphens in Chinese words). In transcribing other scripts (for example, Arabic, Greek, Sanskrit) I have omitted virtually all diacritical marks, on the grounds that most readers will not know how, for example, å or ẹ modifies the sound. Marks are included only where essential – for example, to distinguish the Russian prehistoric site of Mal’ta from the Mediterranean island of Malta. For the most part I have referred to the books of the Hebrew Bible as scriptures. Occasionally, for the sake of variety, I have used Old Testament.
My greatest debt, as always, is to Kathrine.
A Chronology of Ideas
60,000–40,000 years ago: ‘Creative explosion’: cave art and carvings in abundance
14,000–6,000 years ago: domestication of plants and animals
11,000 BC: first use of clay
5500 BC: first writing, in India
after 2900 BC: Gilgamesh – first imaginative epic
2100 BC: first legal code
2000 BC: invention of the wheel
before 1200 BC: first alphabet
640 BC: invention of money
600 BC: first evidence for written Latin
585 BC: Thales of Miletus predicts solar eclipse: for Aristotle this was the moment when science and philosophy began
538 BC: Buddha begins his travels
507 BC: democracy introduced in Athens by Cleisthenes
after 336 BC: Aristotle classifies the world
mid-third century BC: Aristarchus proposes that the earth goes around the sun
second century BC: paper in use in China
160 BC: concepts of Resurrection and the Messiah gain wide currency in Israel
120 BC: the term ‘Judaism’ first used in Second Book of Maccabees
First century AD: wheelbarrow invented in China
33 AD: Paul converted
80 AD: compass in use in China
170s AD: four Christian Gospels emerge
before 242 AD: Neoplatonism flourishes in Alexandria
431 AD: Mary beatified as the Mother of God
570 AD: birth of Muhammad
633 AD: Qu’ran collated
eighth century AD: crop rotation system introduced
751 AD: paper reaches the West from China
904–906 AD: gunpowder first used in anger in China
after 1001 AD: Leif Eriksson explores Vinland
1087 AD: Irnerius teaches law at Bologna University
1094/1117 AD: first named teachers at Oxford
late thirteenth/early fourteenth century AD: origins of capitalism and banking in Italy
early fourteenth century AD: explosion of universities in Europe, first hints of perspective in Western art
late fourteenth century AD: double entry bookkeeping in use
1403 AD: movable type in use in Korea
1440 AD: invention of printing
after 1450 AD: rediscovery of Plato in Europe
1506 AD: first printed map to show America
1517 AD: Martin Luther nails his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg church: the Reformation
1519 AD: Magellan discovers southern route to Pacific and his assistant Sebastián del Cano circumnavigates the earth
1525 AD: Peasants’ Revolt in Germany, led by Anabaptists
1543 AD: Copernicus,
1605 AD: Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning; William Shakespeare,
1619 AD: René Descartes conceives the significance of doubt, and the mind-body dualism
after 1625 AD: rise of the novel
1669 AD: fossils first recognised as residue of living creatures
1670 AD: Spinoza,
1675–1683 AD: Van Leeuwenhoek discovers protozoa, spermatoza, bacteria
