Author’s Prologue
cessible and intelligible. It is so, as is obvious, not only because of the de-
pendenceof‘‘Western’’civilisationonthatoftheGraeco-Romanworld,but
becauseitisallsoclosetousintime.Toputitingraphicterms,ifwelook
backfromtheendofoursecond,Christian,millennium,thelifetimesofa
meretwenty-fivepeopleagedeighty,imaginedasfollowinginsequenceon
each other,would take us back to the reign of Augustus and the birth of
Jesus.EventhelegendarydateoftheTrojanWaris,intheseterms,onlysome
fortylifetimesaway,whiletheIslamicconquestofSyriaandtheNearEast
intheseventhcenturyisamereseventeen.
The Graeco-Roman ‘‘ancient historian’’ therefore needs a dose of mod-
estyandanawarenessof justhowmuchmoreisinvolvedinthegenuinely
‘‘ancient’’ historyof humans, and of how much had already happened be-
forehisorhersubjectmattercomesintoview,eveninthatlimitedpartof
theworld in which Graeco-Roman history took place,or with which the
classicalworldhadconnections.
Many readers will have begun to suspect, rightly, that these very gen-
eralthoughtsoweeverythingtotheseminalworkbyJaredDiamond,Guns,
Germs and Steel.^1 Thisreadingindeedhasgivenmeasenseofhowparochial
ouractivitiesas‘‘ancienthistorians’’are,andinthatsenseitiscertainlydis-
concerting.Inothersenses,however,itisnot.For,firstly,oneofthecen-
tralmessagesofthebookistheoverwhelmingimportanceofthepossession,
orabsence,of inheritedcapacities,andinheritedphysicalandtechnicalre-
sources,forthecontactsandconflictsbetweendifferentsocieties.But,forthe
moment,Iwanttoleavethatthemeaside,tolookattwootherthemeswhich
emergefromDiamond’sstudyofearlyhumanevolution,bothofthemfun-
damentaltoseeingGraeco-Roman‘‘ancienthistory’’inperspective.Oneis
the very restricted and limited nature of the domestication of plants and
animals, and the other is the immense importance of lateral communica-
tionsfromeasttowestacrosstheEurasianlandmass.Inawaywhichisquite
striking, and indeed encouraging, to the conventional ‘‘ancient historian,’’
the studyof the earliest domestication of food plants (wheat, peas,olives)
andofanimals(sheepandgoats)givesacrucialpredominancetotheFertile
Crescent,wherethesedevelopmentsmayhaveoccurredaround..,
orsome,yearsormoreago.Theadoptionofthesedomesticatedcrops
and animals in the Mediterranean zone and Europe seems to have been a
functionoftheirdisseminationfromtheFertileCrescent,andtohavetaken
place between and ..In an extraordinary way, therefore, we
. J. Diamond,Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last ,
Years().