The Far Edges of the Known World: A New History of the Ancient Past

"I have 13 chapters, and I picked 13 sites. I could easily have picked 13 other sites to replace them. It’s not so much that these particular sites are neglected; it’s that so much is neglected. What I was trying to find were 13 examples from different core sections of ancient history that highlighted, firstly, that all humans are dealing with the same stuff. That’s a common theme that comes through all of this—whether it’s cultural exchange, coexistence, cohabitation, the friction that comes with that, conflict, religious reform, political reform, or even climate change. All humans are dealing with these issues, and it’s fascinating to see how different cultures deal with them in different ways and how human ingenuity produces different results. I also wanted to shine a light on examples that challenged our assumptions about the ancient world, in particular the classical cultures. For instance, the section on the Greek world looks at various examples in Crimea, Egypt, and France. In Egypt, the Greeks are the foreign ones. We never usually see the ancient Greeks from that perspective, as the unwanted foreign group. Whereas in France, their culture was held up as the epitome of sophistication. So we get the Gallic tribes trying to emulate Greek culture as an exhibition of their own power. Whilst in Ukraine, it’s more of a fight for survival for the Greeks, living in this land that they are not used to with these people who don’t live like they do at all. It’s a nice contrast. The history of the Greeks is not just people hanging around Athens eating olives and talking to Plato . There’s so much more going on. We can say the same about the Romans and the Egyptians—all these dominant cultures where we build an image in our head of what they looked like. What I wanted to do with this book is not dismantle that. I don’t want to say it’s wrong, but it is a perspective. It is a set of lived experiences, and there are so many more that are just as interesting. Absolutely. I tell you, we could have done all the continents! I had to be reined in at one point because if you wanted to extend the concept of the ancient world, we could even have looked at places like Micronesia and the city building on the reefs there. There’s just so much going on. And I suppose, the one core fundamental element of my book I wanted to get out was, ‘Look at all this stuff! Isn’t it interesting?’"