The history of modern times will be documented in minute detail in print, on film, on tapes and in computer records. Early history is different: our distant past, like a richly coloured mosaic, must be pieced together by archaeologists and scholars from surviving written records and the products of years of paintstaking excavation. Many of the fragments of the picture are missing. New facts constantly come to light. One thing is certain, that history is never dull. The pages of history are peopled with flesh and blood characters whose stories are by turns thrilling, romantic, comic, often tragic. The world's earliest known civilizations may have had some barbaric customs and primitive beliefs by modern standards, but they were frequently highly structured. The exquisite jewelry and artifacts excavated from Sumerian tombs, the staggering dimensions of the Pyramids, Roman roads and Greek temples, all bear witness to the highly developed and shophisticated societies. This entertaining and lavishly illustrated encyclopedia covers the whole span of ancient and medieval history fromt he earliest recorded civilizaitons right up to the relatively 'modern' times of Elizabeth I. It tells the story of the rise and fall of empires and the development of art and religion. To read it is to explore many different worlds and yet to recognize in all of them the foundations of our own age. We have our roots in history - and the pattern of history may well be the key to our future. - from Amzon