"Investment in the study of the distant past by institutions of higher education, it seems, is becoming harder to justify. Classics programs in the U.S. and even in Europe are dwindling in number. Are classics and ancient history doomed? In this manifesto, ancient historian Walter Scheidel aims to show that our engagement with early cultures is being held back by stifling and even unethical traditions that have become fossilized over time and that are increasingly difficult to uphold in a diverse, interconnected, and global world. A new vision for what ancient history is, what it can be, and why it matters is needed. His goal is to identify changes that promote intellectual renewal as well as inclusion, and that are feasible and sustainable across different national traditions. Scheidel develops this vision by redefining "ancient history" not merely as some distant past, but as a critical phase of transformative and foundational development that created everything that shapes the world we inhabit today.

This development, he argues, was a global process that not only laid the foundations of later civilizations but also set humanity on a track from which it is difficult to depart. However, it is one which we must understand better to know where we might be headed. In doing so, he explains why the way we have been studying our shared foundational history has failed to do justice to its enduring significance. Its current practices are deeply rooted in ideals that emerged in the late eighteenth century, and while these may have made sense within the intellectual and political context of their time, they have long since outlived their usefulness. Shackled by institutional inertia, the study of ancient cultures is in dire need of yet another reorientation. Scheidel argues that it is necessary to liberate Greek and Roman history and archaeology from its embrace by classics in order to embed these pursuits in the context of a foundational history that is truly global in scope"--"From one of todays most innovative ancient historians, a provocative new vision of why ancient history matters-and why it needs to be told in a radically different, global way. Its easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history-obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk of extinction. In What Is Ancient History?, Walter Scheidel presents a compelling case for a new kind of ancient history-a global history that captures antiquitys pivotal role as a decisive phase in human development, one that provided the shared foundation of our world and continues to shape our lives today.

For Scheidel, ancient history is when the earliest versions of todays ways of life were created and spread-from farming, mining, and engineering to housing and transportation, cities and government, writing and belief systems. Transforming the planet, this process unfolded all over the world, in Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas, often at different times, sometimes haltingly but ultimately unstoppably. Yet its rarely studied or taught that way. Since the eighteenth century, Western intellectuals have dismembered the ancient world, driven not only by their quest for professional expertise but also by nationalism, colonialism, racism, and the idealization of Greece and Rome. Specialized scholarship has fractured into numerous academic niches, obscuring broader patterns and dynamics and keeping us from understanding just how much humanity has long had in common. The time has come, Scheidel argues, to put the ancient world back together-by moving beyond the limitations of Greco-Roman "classics," by systematically comparing ancient societies, and by exploring early exchanges and connections between them. The time has come, in other words, for an ancient history for everyone"--.