The History of the Ancient World - A Review
George Santayana is most famous for quipping, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This has become a cliché, often misquoted, but there is certainly some truth to it.
Since we can’t remember the past being our own limited experience, we resort to studying history. The problem with studying history is that it is hard to know where to begin. Returning to the textbookish surveys I was exposed to as a child doesn’t seem helpful. My college history books have long been disposed of and I don’t remember them being all that interesting, now that I think of it.
Since we homeschool, I decided to give Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the Ancient World a try for putting the pieces of this world together. The bet was a good one.
Given the range of material Bauer covers in this tome, it is amazing how well she weaves the timelines and stories together. The first section of the book begins with the civilizations with only fragmentary records. None of her work is original, but she assembles stories of Sumer, what would become Egypt, the Indus Valley, and China into a coherent narrative.
She then moves through the various twists and turns of various civilizations as the records improve, new technological and civic inventions grow, and cities become more prominent. What emerges is something that is more complex than the pictures of clay tables with cuneiform writing and fragments of pottery that I remember from my studies of history. Thankfully, she also expands the scope of her interest beyond a flyby of Mesopotamia leading to the Greeks and Romans and landing in a Euro-centric focus. What we get is a fairly balanced record of known civilizations, including those in the East, the Mid-East, and toward the West.
Bauer is surveying four or five thousand years of history of multiple, integrated civilizations. It is amazing that she was able to sort through so much material. This, of course, means that there is a great deal detail left out and many places where Bauer was forced to pick a reading of history and run with it. It is clear from some of her footnotes that she is aware of alternate interpretations, but it’s a survey, not a monograph on a particular subject.
The book is written in a manner that will displease some Christians and also anger vocal secularists. Bauer assumes an ancient earth and treats the Hebrew Bible in the same manner she treats other historical sources. This, of course, means that she is much less derogatory toward the value of those ancient documents than many secular scholars would be, which leads to accusations of religious bias. At the same time, she also does not hold to a young earth and sometimes floats assertions that the biblical record was sanitized to make certain kings look good. This perspective will tend to annoy some Christians, particularly homeschoolers seeking to rigorously shield their children from opposing views. (A quick scan of the Amazon reviews shows that both of these positions exist in decent numbers.)
Frankly, as a conservative Christian, I think this book is an excellent way to introduce a child later in her schooling to critical sources. There will be a point at which our kids are going to have to engage with other voices to grow and learn, Bauer’s approach is good historically and at least fair toward the Judeo-Christian tradition. I can’t give advice to secularist parents, other than to note that her assumptions are pretty mild and certainly not satisfying in any religious way. This isn’t a book seeking to promote the Judeo-Christian tradition as the one, true religion. It also doesn’t go out of the way to bash Judaism and Christianity, either. As a religious text, it fails; as a history book, it’s pretty good.
Aside from debates about Bauer’s biases, this is, above all, an extremely readable book. It certainly isn’t a novel, graphic or otherwise, but it was a pleasure to pick this book up and read a couple of chapters every day. I wouldn’t recommend the volume for elementary readers, but for a thoughtful high schooler this would make an excellent text for homeschool or as summer reading. I picked up an electronic copy of the study guide that goes with the book and it is well structured with enough questions and answers to help this integrate easily into the homeschooling parent’s life, without having to become an expert.
This is the sort of book that I wish I had had access to when I was younger. I would have read the volume just for edification, beyond my regular school work. I am looking forward to the next two volumes in the series and very hopeful that Bauer writes the fourth and final volume in the very near future.
The way we talk about humans also has moral implications, which are more significant than how we treat our pets. In his 2011 book, Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, David Livingstone Smith explores how language changes culture and leads to the justification of extreme violence against others, especially when they become perceived as less than human.