This enormous project is based on the premise that civilizations are the product of their environment.
With that, Fernandez-Arnesto looks at cultures of the desert, the tundra and ice, then to the more obvious civilizations of alluvial flood plains, the highlands, maritime civilizations and finally civilizations of travel, migration and expansion. This is a work of massive cross referencing juxtaposing the maritime civilizations of Japan and Northern Africa or the mountain civilizations of New Guinea and Tibet. The effect is to suggest that civilization can happen anywhere - that no one environment is uniquely conducive, or that no one race or people are more productive than another.
- ISBN10 0333901711
- ISBN13 9780333901717
- Publish Date 6 October 2000
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 14 June 2005
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Pan Macmillan
- Imprint Macmillan
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 784
- Language English