The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations

This comprehensive and informative work by John Haywood presents a helpful introduction to a wide variety of civilisations from all over the world. There's a preface plus an introduction entitled: 'What is Civilisation?. After that these are two pages of very helpful timelines. The rest of he work is divided into five sections followed by 'Further Reading', index and acknowledgements. The five sections are:1: The Ancient Near East. 2. The African Civilisations. 3. The First Civilisations of Africa. 4. The First European Civilisations. 5. The Ancient Americas. The information about the civilisations is accompanied by a whole host of helpful maps. and there are some very good illustrations.Besides being helpful in itself, this work forms an excellent companion and guide to further, more extensive research concerning any one of the civilisations the reader might be especially interested in. It's a valuable 'getting to know' work. 'Oh, look what those people did there so very long ago! This is wonderful! I must find out more about them.' Then the reader can search for more information on the internet and so on. We have here a valuable gate opening work, stimulating us to find out more about what built the world into what it has become. It's a gem.

This book is a fast, easy to read introduction to Ancient Civilizations from around the world, including regional maps, diagrams and pictures. It should server as a good place to start if you're thinking about learning about the ancient world. The material from this book can be a reference guide to then seek out more specialised books.The only criticism I would make of this book is the title, because it is not a true atlas as one would normally recognise.

Exactly what I was looking for. Offers a brief entry into Ancient History and how civilizations moved across the globe. Gives you a better picture of which civilization started where and which direction they migrated to. Very beautiful colored maps and pictures of ancient buildings and items. Recommend!

If you want a quick version of the rise and fall of Ancient civilizations with detailed text and wonderful maps then this is the book for you. It is a good reference of the various states and empires that a rose and explaining why and where and wets the appetite for further interest on each subject.

Bought this for my husband. He says it's a good read, physically smaller than he was expecting.

Worth it and will buy similar. Thank you.

I bought this for a junior schoolboy and it's far too advanced. Also the print is very small and light and difficult to read

I struggled to get into this, as I planned on reading cover-to-cover rather than using it for reference.But I’m really enjoying it now, the maps and pictures compliment the text well and it reads like a narrative as it’s in order. Very good for someone wanting an overview, and as a trainee primary school teacher this is a good read to prepare for this aspect of the history syllabus.