This book presents the major engineering achievements in underground aqueducts from around the world and throughout history. It provides valuable insights into water technologies and management with respect to durability, adaptability to the environment, and sustainability. Comparisons of the technological underground aqueduct developments from several regions are made. These technologies are the underpinning of modern achievements in water supply engineering and water management practices...

Memory Improvement: Implications for Memory Theory brings together researchers working on various aspects in the field. Recent findings on memory improvement are examined, and their relevance to memory theory is demonstrated. A majority of the chapters review how certain psychological factors (psychopharmacology, emotional state, metamemory, strategies, practice, external aids, social interaction, context, and attention) may be influenced to improve one's memory. In the fi...

An objective guide to this fascinating science of history and cultureArchaeology continually makes headlines--from recent discoveries like the frozen Copper-Age man in the Italian Alps to the newest dating of the first people in America at over 14,0000 years ago. Archaeology For Dummies offers a fascinating look at this intriguing field, taking readers on-site and revealing little-known details about some of the world's greatest archaeological discoveries....

Elixir spans five millennia, from ancient Mesopotamia to the parched present of the Sun Belt. As Brian Fagan shows, every human society has been shaped by its relationship toour most essential resource. Fagan's sweeping narrative moves across the world, from ancient Greece and Rome, whose mighty aqueducts still supply modern cities, to China, where emperors marshaled armies of laborers in a centuries-long struggle to tame powerful rivers. He sets out three ages of water: In the first age, ...

The little-known history of how the Sahara was transformed from a green and fertile land into the largest hot desert in the worldThe Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, equal in size to China or the United States. Yet, this arid expanse was once a verdant, pleasant land, fed by rivers and lakes. The Sahara sustained abundant plant and animal life, such as Nile perch, turtles, crocodiles, and hippos, and attracted prehistoric hunters and herders. What tra...

An examination of the Paleolithic and Neolithic communities that inhabited not only the Nile Valley and Delta, but also the Western and Eastern Deserts.The remarkable archaeology of pharaonic Egypt continues to captivate countless people worldwide but evidence for Egypt's prehistoric or Stone Age past has been relatively neglected. This is perhaps understandable, as the archaeology of Stone Age Egypt often seems crude in comparison, and the number of works publishe...

Mesopotamia was one of the earliest regions to produce writing, literature and the fine arts, as well as being one of the first areas to construct states. This comprehensive and detailed survey of the region's prehistory and protohistory shows how these fascinating developments were possible. Petr Charvát explores the economic, social and spiritual spheres in Mesopotamia from the Palaeolithic to the time of the early states, c. 100,000 BC to 2334 BC. The narrative is supplemented by numero...

The inside story, told by excavators of the extraordinary discovery of the world’s oldest papyri, revealing how Egyptian King Khufu’s men built the Great Pyramid at Giza.Pierre Tallet’s discovery of the Red Sea Scrolls—the world’s oldest surviving written documents—in 2013 was one of the most remarkable moments in the history of Egyptology. These papyri, written some 4,600 years ago, and combined with Mark Lehner’s research, changed what we thought we knew about th...

This new revised edition of African Civilizations re-examines the physical evidence for developing social complexity in Africa over the last six thousand years. Unlike the two previous editions, it is not confined to tropical Africa but considers the whole continent. Graham Connah focuses upon the archaeological research of two key aspects of complexity, urbanism and state formation, in ten main areas of Africa: Egypt, North Africa, Nubia, Ethiopia, the West African savanna, the West Afric...

Ancient Egypt is a beautifully illustrated, easy-to-read book covering the formative era of the Egyptian civilization: the age before the pyramids. Douglas Brewer shows why an awareness of the earliest phase of Egyptian history is crucial to understanding of later Egyptian culture. Beginning with a quick review of the fields of Egyptology and archaeology, Ancient Egypt takes the reader on a compelling survey of Egypt's prehistoric past. The books tours the Nile Valley to ...

This book provides the first truly comprehensive multi-period study of the archaeology of Ethiopia, surveying the country's history, detailing the discoveries from the late Stone Age, including the famous 'Lucy' and moving onto the emergence of food production, prehistoric rock art and an analysis of the increasing social complexity that can be obs

A COMPANION TO THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EASTA Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East is a comprehensive and authoritative overview of ancient material culture from the late Pleistocene to Late Antiquity. This expansive two-volume work includes 58 new essays from an international community of ancient Near East scholars.With coverage extending from Asia Minor, the eastern Mediterranean, and Egypt to the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Indo-I...