The Archives
The ancient world, organised by question.
Twenty-seven civilisations, each worked through the same eight themes, so a single question can be followed across four continents and more than five thousand years.
The Archives are a reference library of the ancient world, covering twenty-seven civilisations at the moment. Each civilisation is worked through the same eight themes, so a single question can be followed across four continents and more than five thousand years, and I’ll keep adding to them as my research grows.
You might be used to history being organised by story, around a civilisation, a war or a ruler. The Archives are organised by question instead, so the argument becomes the structure. Because every civilisation is worked through the same themes, the differences between them become the evidence, and the picture of the wider world gets richer as more is added.
Read Law across Rome, Han China and the Inca and you are looking at three answers to the same historical challenge: how does a state make its will binding on the people who will never meet the person issuing it?
❦The eight themes
- Government and LawHow power was constituted, and what counted as legitimate.
- Military and WarfareArmies, frontiers, and the cost of holding ground.
- Economy and TradeWhat was produced, moved, taxed and owed.
- Society and Daily LifeHouseholds, status, work, and who was excluded.
- Religion and BeliefCult, ritual, and the shape of the cosmos.
- Art, Architecture and BuildingWhat was built, and what it was arguing.
- Knowledge, Writing and ScienceRecords, literacy, and how things were known.
- Sources and How We KnowThe evidence itself, and where it runs out.
Other ways in
- By themeEight themes, side by sideEach theme set out across all twenty-seven civilisations at once.Read by theme
- Meanwhile, elsewhereWho lived at the same time?Pick any year from 3500 BCE to 1700 CE and see who else was alive.Open the timeline
- One question, 27 answersHow civilisations endSieges, slow abandonments, collapse from within, and endings nobody can date.See all twenty-seven
- One question, 27 answersWhat did they believe?Feeding the gods, religion as rule, creeds and quarrels, and conversions.See all twenty-seven
- One question, 27 answersHow did they write it down?Invented, borrowed, remembered by heart, or lost and unread.See all twenty-seven
- One question, 27 answersWho did the fighting?Citizens, a warrior class, hired men, and wars that were never about land.See all twenty-seven
- One question, 27 answersWhat could women do?Owned, signed, ruled, wrote… or seen only through other people’s records.See all twenty-seven
- One question, 27 answersWho was in charge?Gods, generals, assemblies and charters… and a few with no ruler to find.See all twenty-seven
- One question, 27 answersHow did they build it?Organised labour, clever engineering, buildings with a point… and a lot of rebuilding.See all twenty-seven
- One question, 27 answersHow did they get rich?Gold and dye, toll roads, treasuries… and rich states with no money at all.See all twenty-seven
- One question, 27 answersHow do we know?Their own archives, their enemies’ histories, late stories… and inventions.See all twenty-seven
- One question, 27 answersWhat did they eat?Barley rations, mare’s milk, a caliph’s cookbook… and how the food reached the table.See all twenty-seven
How to read it
Every civilisation opens with a free overview of what the civilisation was and why it matters here. Below it sit the eight thematic syntheses, with the detail, the arguments, the scholarship, and the points where the evidence runs out and more exploration is needed. They are free to read, and in time I’ll write essays drawn from them too, without the granular scholarly detail.
Where the material demands it, a theme goes further, as with the khipu in the Inca archive and the Spanish conquest in the Aztec one.
❦The civilisations
The Mediterranean and the Near East
Ancient GreeceCity-states, and the long argument about who counts as a citizen.
Ancient RomeA republic that became an empire without ever admitting it had.
Hellenistic WorldWhat Alexander left behind, and how Greek became a world language.
Mycenaean GreecePalace bureaucracies that vanished, leaving only their accounts.
Minoan CreteA civilisation whose script we can read and whose language we cannot.
Ancient EgyptThree thousand years of continuity, and the periods it preferred to forget.
MesopotamiaWhere writing, cities and law were first attempted.
HittitesAn empire recovered from clay archives within the last century.
PhoeniciaThe traders who gave the Mediterranean its alphabet and left little else.
CarthageRome’s rival, known almost entirely through Rome.
Achaemenid Persian EmpireThe largest empire the world had yet seen, told by its enemies.
The Sasanian EmpireRome’s equal for four centuries, and barely taught.
The Byzantine EmpireA Roman empire that spoke Greek for a thousand years.
The Islamic CaliphatesConquest, and the translation movement that saved Greek science.
The Ottoman EmpireSix centuries across three continents.Africa
Ancient AfricaAksum and Kush: African states minting coin and ruling Egypt.
Medieval West African EmpiresGhana, Mali and Songhai on the gold and salt roads.Asia
Ancient IndiaThe Indus cities, the Mauryan state, and the traditions that outlived both.
Han ChinaA bureaucracy that ran an empire on paperwork and examination.
Ancient JapanMyth, court, and the first written histories of the islands.
The Mongol EmpireThe largest contiguous land empire, and what moved along it.The Americas
AztecsA tribute empire recorded by the people who destroyed it, and by its own survivors.
MayansDivine kingship, a decipherable script, and a collapse that was not one.
IncasTwo million square kilometres administered without writing as we define it.Europe
Free to read
Every page of the Archives is open.
All twenty-seven civilisations, the eight themes and the in-depth pages beneath them are free to read. There is plenty here to read, and to judge the research by.
If the Archives are useful to you, you can help keep them growing. A small donation, one-off or monthly, pays for the books and the time each new civilisation takes. If you teach this material, or you want research, talks or tutoring, I would like to hear from you too.