From that same series of Yale lectures on ancient cities, the opening video is a presentation of the big picture, so to speak, of the “ancient world”, which I put in quotes because I find the concept not quite right:

Kenneth Harl - Orientation and Introduction to the Ancient World

The presenter is the always amusing to watch Kenneth Hari, with whom some may be familiar from this TTC courses.

What I notice most, though, is how narrow the scope of the lecture. Nothing about east Asia, which is typical of Americans. It’s as if that part of the world just doesn’t exist. Nothing on the America, too, which is understandable given the absence of written records, but the Mayans did have a writing system and some of it is deciphered.

As enjoyable as Hari’s presentation is I come away from it with the feeling that once again we are seeing the biases of “the West”, in so far as the scope of humanity. For sure the development of towns, writing, and then kingdoms of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean directly influence our society today (we are in some significant part an extension of Roman civilization), yet the world is still bigger than that.