2019; 407 pages. Full Title: The
Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000 Year History of Human Culture, Connection. New Author? : Yes. Genres
: Ancient History; World History; Non-Fiction;
Anthropology. Overall Rating: 9½*/10.
Okay, I admit it. I’m a history nerd. I’ve been one ever since 7th grade
when Mrs. Stoudt taught “World History 1”, introducing us to ancient empires
and closing with the fall of the Roman Empire. She made a profound impact on me, but I have noticed, however, that there’s a subtle bias in history classes,
even if it’s a college history course.
For instance, in the “Greeks
vs. Persians” chapters (Alexander the Great,
Thermopylae, Socrates, etc.) the Greeks are always portrayed as the
heroic defenders of democracy; the Persians are always the evil bullies. The Crusaders are invariably cast as the
defenders of the Faith, even though they were invading the Near East. And in 476 CE, after Rome was sacked, we
entered the Dark Ages where evidently nothing notable happened anywhere in the
world for the next 400 years.
But how did those Persians view their wars with Greece?
What went through the minds of Palestinian Muslims (besides swords and
arrows) when the Crusaders fought into the streets of Jerusalem?
And surely the empires in China, India, and the Middle East were doing
something while Europe was enduring four centuries of the Dark Ages, right?
Tamim Ansary examines all
those questions, and a whole lot more, in his book, The
Invention of Yesterday.
What’s To Like...
As the subtitle indicates, Tamim Ansary places
the dawn of human civilization at 50,000 BCE
(after a brief review of terrestrial life dating back to 15 million BCE), when
homo sapiens separated themselves from the rest of animal world via three innovations:
tools, environment adaptation, and most importantly, language. He divides The
Invention of Yesterday into 31 chapters, covering world history from way back then up until now, with the last three chapters even giving his musings about where
we’re headed.
Squeezing 50 millennia of history into 400 pages is amazing, but what impressed me even more was the breadth of the realms that Ansary focuses on. Events in China, India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt get just as much attention as European happenings. The Americas and Africa also get some ink, albeit not as lengthy due to a lack of annals in those areas.
The main point of the book is
that there inevitably were a lot more interactions between all the
various empires (aka “social constellations”;
more on that in a bit.), not only via wars, but also through trading,
traveling, technological advancements, and even plagues. The author even goes so far as to suggest that
“the policies of China’s Qing government did contribute to the birth of the
United States. Thank you for asking.”
There are lots of maps, all of
them easily expandable. There are lots
of footnotes, a majority of which are the author’s asides, and worth your time reading. The text is crammed full of fascinating
historical tidbits, including Mithraism
(I once knew a devotee of it!); the “People of
the Sea” (one of the great historical mysteries); Daevas (who?!); and the etymology of the word “Lombards”.
So if you’re looking for a comprehensive history book that’s both enlightening and interesting, which goes beyond just “Western Civilization” and is filled with lots of facts and trivia, The Invention of Yesterday might be a perfect fit. You’ll even get to see those invading Persians, the Crusaders, and the Dark Ages in an entirely different light.
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 307 ratings
and 61 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.27*/5,
based on 1,022
ratings and 151 reviews.
Kewlest New Word ...
Concatenation (n.) : a series of
interconnected things or events.
Others : Reifying (v.).
Excerpts...
In many cases, the paintings in a given
cave were made over the course of thousands of years; people were coming there
to paint, generation after generation.
But the oldest of them were made about forty thousand years ago, and the
odd thing is, those earliest paintings were already quite sophisticated. What hasn’t turned up are transitional
products. It’s not like Stone Age
painters spent a few hundred generations learning to doodle and then a few
hundred making blotches vaguely suggestive of animal shapes and then finally
figuring out how to make recognizable horses and hunters. Instead, it seems that around thirty-five to
forty-five millennia ago, people rather suddenly started making sophisticated
art. (pg. 13)
The Americas had grasslands too, but the
hunter-gatherers who lived there never developed into pastoral nomadic
civilizations capable of taking on the big urban powers. Instead, they continued to refine their
hunting-and-gathering way of life. The
reason is simple: North America had no animals that could be domesticated. It had no sheep, no goats, no cows, nothing
that could be herded. It’s true that
millions of bison roamed the great plains, but for some reason, these
ill-tempered animals can’t be tamed, and when you can’t domesticate a grouchy
two-ton animal with horns, you’d better not try to milk it. (pg. 170)
Kindle Details…
The
Invention of Yesterday sells for $17.99 right now at Amazon. Tamim Ansary has eight other e-books for your
Kindle, ranging in price from $2.99 to $17.99.
In 1290, after
populist rumors arose that Jews were eating Christian babies for Passover, all
Jews of England were expelled. (pg.
220)
As one would expect, there’s very little cussing in The Invention of Yesterday; just 4 instances in the entire book: two “damns”, one “hell”, plus one “for Christ’s sake”. The typos were few and far between, but more than I expected. Examples: Atilla/Attila; lamas/llamas; unleased/unleashed; Columbia/Colombia; identity/identify; honey bees/honeybees.
The author likes to coin
phrases such as social constellations, social
organisms, trialectic (a modification of “dialectic”), progress narrative, belief systems, and my
favorite: bleshing (a portmanteau of
‘blending’ and ‘meshing’, referring to what happens when cultures, religions,
and/or nations collide). These are quite
innovative, but sometimes I struggled to remember exactly what they meant.
That’s all I can gripe
about. For me, The Invention of Yesterday
was a great read, giving me new insights into all sorts of historical
interactions and an opportunity to learn about various ancient empires that
existed in places outside of Europe. I’m
looking forward to reading more books by this author.
9½ Stars. One last thing. There’s a small town here in Arizona called Bisbee. It’s not well known, and mostly exists for artists and tourists who want to experience that “Old West” feeling. Incredibly, it gets mentioned in The Invention of Yesterday (pg. 75). Wowza.
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