To the Ends of the Earth
How Ancient Conquerors, Explorers, Scientists, and Traders Connected the World
Raimund J Schulz author Robert Savage translator
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:19th Jun '24
Should be back in stock very soon
A sweeping history of ancient exploration, the first full-scale account in over a century Odysseus. Jason and the Argonauts. Heracles. Greek mythology is full of tales of heroes setting out for the unknown. Such tales reflected and instilled a sense of confidence in the Greeks as they explored the limits of their world. Their voyages of discovery (and conquest), most dramatically under Alexander the Great, are but the most famous examples of ancient exploration. These expeditions were built on earlier voyages, notably those by Bronze Age Egyptians and Mesopotamians, and led to further global travel, trade, and warfare among the Romans, Persians, Scythians, Indians, and Chinese. To the Ends of the Earth is the first modern history of ancient exploration in over a century. Ranging from the Mediterranean Bronze Age to the third century CE, it reveals long-distance, explorative campaigning to be more than a mere ephemeral phenomenon of ancient history. Rather, exploration was, and still is, an integral and driving force of economic, political, and cultural development. Through the prisms of trade, travel, and politics, Raimund J. Schulz provides a sweeping, 1000-year history of all of Eurasia. He traces the pathways and periods of ancient discovery--from the North Atlantic to China, from the Russian steppes to the Sahara--understanding these journeys not as isolated actions, but within their political, military, economic, and cultural contexts. This book explains why adventurers, traders, colonisers, generals, and envoys set out over and over to explore new horizons, the intentions that guided them, and the long-term consequences of their discoveries. By the third century CE remote civilizations were connected as never before and the foundational dynamics of these voyages later contributed to European overseas exploration in the Early Modern Age. To the Ends of the Earth not only offers a fresh look at the ancient world, but also significantly contributes to an understanding of premodern world history by releasing Greco-Roman antiquity from its relative isolation and placing it in a global context.
Exploration of "new worlds" did not start with Columbus. In To the Ends of the Earth, Schulz offers a compelling, vivid account of those earlier journeys and the connectivity they brought across unfathomable distances and cultural divides. Following the trail of epic enterprises, technological innovations, and obscure knowledge-chains of Phoenicians, Greeks, Persians, and Romans, among others, Schulz' history decenters the Classical powerhouses and expands in every cardinal direction beyond colonial and imperial networks * Carolina López-Ruiz, Author of Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean *
To the Ends of the Earth is a wonderful romp through the history of Greco-Roman exploration, revealing an important and underappreciated aspect of the ancient Mediterranean world. From Phoenician sailors to the campaigns of Alexander and the wonders described by Pytheas in the north Atlantic, Schulz reminds us how new knowledge was created, and what the impacts of newly encountered places were on the Greco-Roman world. This is a very well written and serious book, and a complete joy to read. I learned something on every single page. * J. G. Manning, Author of The Open Sea *
To the Ends Of the Earth is a synthetic and incisive discussion of why exploration took place in environments where leaving home would be a difficult and often fatal proposition. The chronological scope of the book is impressive and includes issues of why exploration seemed to come to a stop in late Roman times and then began again in the Renaissance. There is no recent book available that covers the broad range of exploration found in Schulz' book. * Duane W. Roller, Author of Empire of the Black Sea *
[Schulz'] comprehensive study of commerce, conquest and exploration follows various Bronze Age adventurers on paths that lead to Carthage, Persia, India, China and elsewhere... The dangers courted by travelers in To the Ends of the Earth will daunt its readers. The wonders paraded ought to impress or inspire them. But it is to the curiosity of the ancient explorers that we owe the greatest debt. * Wall Street Journal *
So deft is the author's handling of his material, and so lively his touch with ancient sources, that the reader never flags... Schulz has, I think, a convincing sense of why explorers' mental worlds are transcendent--always imagined before they become real, always fantastic even when experienced. His way of treating geography as a kind of literature, documented in poetry and fiction as much as in scholarship and science, helps us see explorers as they commonly saw themselves: heroes of fictions of their own, based in part on their readings, in part on their yearnings. * Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Times Literary Supplement *
Successfully creates a comprehensive account of explorations that took place during the Middle Bronze Age (2000â1600 BCE) right up to the first century of the Common Era... The book rapidly covers enormous ground, and it utilizes a breadth of resources—literary, mythological, archaeological - from a vast array of Eurasian cultures in a compelling synthesis that never feels like mere survey... Highly recommended for scholarly readers, but general readers who are interested in reading titles that reevaluate when globalization began will appreciate it as well. * Library Journal *
ISBN: 9780197668023
Dimensions: 226mm x 170mm x 58mm
Weight: 930g
560 pages