Vanished Civilizations (Readers Digest) [Hardcover]

Editors of Reader's Digest (Author)

Book Description

Series: Readers Digest | Publication Date: October 24, 2002

Embark on an extraordinary journey of wonder and awe with Vanished Civilizations. Immerse yourself in the cultures and lands which have now faded into legend, from Ur to Olympia and from Angkor to Tarquinia. Wander through Babylon's hanging gardens, or visit Chang'an, the heart of the Celestial Empire of Ancient China, or experience the excitement of the World's first Olympic Games. Share the stories of those long-gone eras and receive intriguing insights into the day-to-day realities of people's lives, from working, worshipping and waging war to eating, drinking, celebrating and mourning. You'll also discover how archaeologists piece together the past and unearth the secrets of their ancient civilizations. This is an essential reference guide for the entire family, whether you're working on a homework assignment, or reading for pleasure.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

A sampling of ancient ruins, this pictorial depiction of about 35 sites presents each vanished civilization in introductory fashion. As a gateway to the wider vistas of archaeology, it touches on the field's basic concepts and timelines but serves mainly to visually excite interest in the societies that built ziggurats, aqueducts, pyramids, and temples. All continents are represented, and although some sites are typical for an album of wonders-that-were (Angkor Wat, Mycenae, Pompeii), many are off the beaten path. Instead of picking Athens to represent ancient Greece, the editors selected the island of Delos; instead of choosing Machu Picchu to stand in for the Incan empire, they decided to include two cultures the Incas either succeeded (the Mocha) or outright conquered (the Chimu). Several pages are devoted to each site, including descriptions of setting, initial excavations, significant artifacts, and the once-powerful Ozymandias who built it. Within each visual framework is basic information about a site and its parent society, and this design definitely, and economically, fills the enduring collection-development niche for a basic browser about lost civilizations. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Reader's Digest; 1 edition (October 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0276426584
• ISBN-13: 978-0276426582
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 9.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,808,958 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brings 40 ancient civilization to life, May 1, 2008

By 

Gary Selikow (Great Kush) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vanished Civilizations (Readers Digest) (Hardcover)

This fascinating coffee table book, is an exciting time capsule, filled with beautiful photographs, artworks and maps and is a tribute to the efforts to uncover ancient civilizations and to recreate the lives lived by the people in these fascinating societies of antiquity.

What has survived by chance through the millennia such as pottery, shards, ruined buildings, fragments of mosaic and some writing on clay tablets etc reveals something to archaeologists and historians of the day to day life of people in ancient civilizations.
This book covers 40 civilizations in Anatolia, Persia, Mesopotamia, Greece, China, India, Israel, Transjordan, Italy, Germany, Gaul, North Africa, Siberia and the Americas.
As the introduction states : "This book looks at people in their daily lives at work, eating and drinking, at prayer and at public entertainment.

Thus we can learn what homes in Catal Hoyuk, in Antatolia (modern day Turkey), looked like, in the city-state that flourished thousands of years before civilization is thought to have been born; how accounts were kept in Susa in Elam (Persia); sports and entertainment in Knossos in Crete; the life of the royal Egyptian family of Akhenaton, Nefertiti and their little princesses in Armana, Ancient Egypt and the cult of the Sun god introduced by Akhenaton; the Ishtar Gate in Babylon; the equality of women in Tarquinia, the Etruscan City-State; the Borobudur monument of faith at Java; and the early Christian community at Ani in Armenia.
A vast panorama comes alive in this book of much beauty, building and learning as well as the more turbulent events of the time.