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《A Brief History of Western Civilization:The Unfinished Legacy/ Fifth Edition》

By Mark Kishlansky  Patrick Geary  Patricis O'Brien

中国人民大学出版社 2008年10月第1次

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INTRODUCTION

THE IDEA OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

The west is an idea. It is not visible from space.

An astronaut viewing the blue-and-white terrestrial sphere can make out the forms of Africa, bounded by the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean.

Australia, the Americas, and even Antarctica are distinct patches of blue-green in the darker waters that surround them.But nothing comparable separates Asia from Europe, East from West.

Viewed from 100 miles up, the West itself is invisible. Althought astronauts can see the great Eurasian landmass curving around the Northern Hemisphere , the Ural Mountains— the theoretical boundary between East and West— appear faint from space.

Certainly they are less impressive than the towering Himalayas, the Alps, or even the Caucasus. People, not geology, determined that the Urals should be the arbitrary boundary between Europe and Asia.

Even this determination took centuries. Originally, Europe was a name that referred only to central Greece. Gradually, Greeks extended it to include the whole Greek mainland and then the landmass to the north. Later, Roman explorers and soldiers carried Europe north and west to its modern boundaries.

Asia too grew with time. Initially, Asia was only that small portion of what is today Turkey inland from the Aegean Sea. Gradually, as Greek explorers came to know of lands farther east, north, and south, they expanded their understanding of Asia to include everthing east of the Don River to the north and of the Red Sea to the south.

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Western civilization is as much an idea as the West itself. Under the right conditions, astronauts can see the Great Wall of China snaking its way from the edge of the Himalayas to the Yellow Sea.

No comparable physical legacy of the West is so massive that its details can be discerned from space. Nor are Western achievements rooted forever in one corner of the world.

What we call Western civilization belongs to no particular place. Its location has changed since the origins of civilization, that is, the cultural and social traditions characteristic of the civitas, or city.

"Western" cities appeared first outside the "West", in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins in present-day Iraq and Iran, a region that we today call the Middle East. These areas have never lost their urban traditions, but in time, other cities in North Africa, Greece, and Italy adapted and expanded this heritage.

Until the sixteenth century C.E., the western end of the Eurasian landmass was the crucible in which disparate cultural and intellectual traditions of the Near East, the Mediterranean, and northern and western Europe were smelted into a new and powerful alloy.

Then "the West" expanded by establishing colonies overseas and by giving rise to the "settler societies" of the Americans, Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa.

Western technology for harnessing nature, Western forms of economic and political organization, Western styles of art and music are — for good or ill — dominant influences in world civilization.

Japan is a leading power in the Western traditions of capitalist commerce and technology. China, the most populous country in the world, adheres to Marxist socialist principles —  a European political tradition.

Millions of people in Africa, Asia, and the Americas follow the religions of Islam and Christianity, both of which developed from Judaism in the cradle of Western civilization.

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Many of today's most pressing problems are also part of the legacy of the Western tradition. The remnants of European colonialism have left deep hostilities throughout the world.

The integration of developing nations into the world economy keeps much of humanity in a seemingly hopeless cycle of poverty as the wealth of poor countries goes to pay interest on loans from Europe and America.

Hatred of Western civilization is a central, ideological tenet taht inspired terrorist attacks on symbols of American economic and military strength on September 11, 2001, and that fules anti-Western terrorism around the world.

The West itself faces a crisis. Impoverished citizens of former colonies flock to Europe and North America seeking a better life but often finding poverty, hostility, and racism instead. Finally, the advances of Western civilization endanger our very existence.

Technology pollutes the world's air, water, and soil, and nuclear weapons threatern the destruction of all civilization. Yet these are the same advances that allow us to lengthen life expectancy, harness the forces of nature, and conquer disease. It is the same technology that allows us to view our world from outer space.

How did we get here? In this book we attempt to answer that question. The history of Western civilization is not simply the triumphal story of progress, the creation of a better world.

Even in areas in which we can see development, such as technology, communications, and social complexity, change is not always for the better. However, it would be equally inaccurate to view Western civilization as a progressive decline from a mythical golden age of the human race.

The roughly 300 generations since the origins of civilization have bequeathed a rich and contradictory legacy to the present. Inherited political and social institutions, cultural forms, and religious and philosophical traditions form the framework within which the future must be created.

The past does not determine the future, but it is the raw material from which the future will be made. To use this legacy properly, we must first understand it, not because the past is the key to the future, but because understanding yesterday frees us to create tomorrow.

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Chapter 1 THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS

The Visual Record: Ötzi's Last Meal

The idea that we can visit with an ancestor from three hundred generations past seems incredible. And yet a discovery in the Intalian Alps a decade ago has brought us face to face with Ötzi (so-named for the valley where he was found), an ordinary man who faced a cruel death more than five thousand years ago.

Ötzi's  perfectly preserved body, clothing, tools, and weapons allow us to know how people lived and died in Western Europe before it was Europe — before indeed it was the West.

Ötzi was small by modern European standerds: he stood at just 5 feet 4 inches. Around 40 years old, he was already suffering from arthritis, and his several tattoos were likely a kind of therapy. He probably lived in a village below the mountain whose inhabitants survived by hunting, simple agriculture, and goat herding.

One spring day around 3000 B.C.E., Ötzi enjoyed what would be his last meal of meat, some vegetables, and flat bread made of einkorn wheat. He dressed warmly but simply in a leather breechcloth with a calfskin belt covered by a leather upper garment of goatskin sewn together with animal sinews. Blew, he wore leather leggings and sturdy shoes made of bearskin soles and deerhide tops, lined with soft grasslike socks. On his head was a warm bearskin cap.

Ötzi carried an ax with a blade of almost pure copper and  a flint knife in a fiber scabbard. He secured his leather backpack on a pack-frame made of a long hazel rod bent into a Up-shape and reinforced with two narrow wooden slats. Among other things it held birth bark containers, one filled with materials to start a fire, which he could ignite with a flint he carried in his pouch. He also equipped himself with a multipurpose mat made from long stalks of Alpine grass and a simple first-aid kit consisting of inner bark from the birch tree—a substance with antibiotic and styptic properties.

For so small a man, Ötzi  carried an imposing weapon: a yew-wood bow almost six feet long and a quiver of arrows. He must have been working on the weapon shortly before he died; the bow and most of the arrows were unfinished.

greenhill

Where can I find an electronic one?

一古斋主

greenhill 发表于 2012-2-27 22:55
Where can I find an electronic one?

卷一【需翻墙】：
www.topdg.com/234220-western-civilization-a-brief-history-volume-i-7-edition.html

卷二电驴上有。

greenhill

一古斋主 发表于 2012-2-28 01:52
卷一【需翻墙】：
www.topdg.com/234220-western-civilization-a-brief-history-volume-i-7-edition.html ...

Thank you.

小七战士

继续支持没话说~ 楼主真强











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