It’s time for a new history of the world.
Every age has a new history, for our story of the past is always seen through the prism of today. It’s time to take a new look through a new prism.
Today we have new ideas and new ideals about how society works, and about how economics function.
For societies, we have new ideas about the Open Society, and about Freedom.
In economics we have new ideas about market economies and how they work.
It’s time to put these together and take a new look at the history of the world.
We start by looking at pre-market economies, both in the anthropological findings of premarket economies in the modern and pre-modern world, and then we look at Egypt and Minoan Crete and the other great pre-money societies
And then we look at the world’s first market economies, Greece and Rome how they rose, and how they fell.
And then briefly we look at the Dark Ages that followed, and the Middle Ages after that, and then the gradual rise of our own civilisation
As editor-in-chief of the two magazines Current Archaeology and Current World Archaeology, I believe I am in a good position to survey the history of the world, both from my viewpoint as an archaeologist and a historian — and originally a classicist – and from my viewpoint of being an editor, of being a businessman and publisher — and originally a Chartered Accountant
I have been writing this account for several years now, and putting the results on the web. The site has become a little chaotic, so it is time to transfer it to the new format of a content management system and I have chosen to use WordPress. This is the new WordPress version, to which the old articles are being transferred. This is www. civilization.org.uk, spelt with a zed. My original account is at www.civilisation.org.uk spelt with an S. Click here for the older, fuller version.
9th November 2011: Most of the aticles have now been transferred, and polished up, so this is now the latest version.
Good reading!
Andrew Selkirk
Editor-in-chief, Current Archaeology and Current World Archaeology