Feats and Wisdom of the Ancients

Download or read book Feats and Wisdom of the Ancients written by Time-Life Books and published by Time Life Medical. This book was released on 2004 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Smug in the certainty that we stand in the vanguard of history's forward march, modern humans tend to regard the past as little more than a backdrop for current achievements. Progress, we think, has been a steady, linear advance, leading inexorably from superstition to enlightenment, from primitivism to sophistication, from ignorance to knowledge. This comfortable assumption is being challenged, however, as archaeologists, historians, and other scholars point out evidence hinting that humankind's progress has been less a lockstep march than a lurching dance, with steps forward and steps back, with bursts of genius ahead of its time and lost knowledge that even now rests unretrieved - or is gone forever.