100 Cultures That Influence the World

Author: Deng Shusheng et al.
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-04-01
Features: "The outside world is wonderful." This is a popular saying in Chinese society after the reform and opening-up. Its meaning is not only to express the desire to travel and explore outside but also, on a deeper level, a yearning and pursuit to understand the world. In reality, being blind and deaf, ignorant and narrow-minded has been criticized. The Ming scholar Wang Fuzhi sighed after reading history: "If one's ears are limited to what they hear, they lose their natural wisdom; if one's eyes are limited to what they see, they lose their natural clarity." The era of closing doors to live out one's days has long passed. The purpose of the "World 100 Series" is to make an effort to help readers understand the outside world, outlining a rough outline of human historical development through five aspects that have significantly influenced the world: major events, wars, figures, works, and cultures. The development of human history is a long and complex process of negating oneself, overcoming oneself, and gradually improving oneself. How many figures, both positive and negative, have played roles on the stage of world history? How many and inevitable major events have occurred in the long river of history? How many wars, the history books of which have recorded the and of historical development, can be listed? How many chapters and classic books that have survived disasters can be counted? How can the colorful and diverse ancient and modern civilizations of humanity be encompassed by artificially dividing them into several forms? With 100 as a fixed number, the series inevitably leaves much to be desired, gathering a handful of rice from the vast ocean, and is also limited by its length. The five books included in the series—The 100 People Who Influenced the World, The 100 Events That Influenced the World, The 100 Wars That Influenced the World, The 100 Books That Influenced the World, and The 100 Cultures That Influenced the World—can only select 100 relevant foreign topics that have influenced the world, with each article being around 3,000 words, and each book being over 300,000 words. The five books together total 1.5 to 1.6 million words, though not a grand series, it is still quite substantial. The 100 Cultures That Influenced the World contains the most complex content. First, it is necessary to distinguish between two concepts: culture and civilization. Human culture predates human civilization. In the late Paleolithic era, humans already knew how to decorate their cave dwellings with murals and even draw on animal bones and antlers, but they were not civilized people but rather barbarians skilled in art. Only around 5,000–1,000 years ago did humans gradually move away from barbarism toward civilization. Only with the emergence of advanced ancient civilizations in certain regions did humans spread civilization across the major continents of the world. This book introduces several ancient civilizations other than China, including ancient Egyptian civilization, ancient Mesopotamian civilization, ancient Indus Valley civilization, as well as several famous cultures: Greek culture, Arab culture, Roman culture, Native American culture, etc. The book focuses on introducing ancient cultural sites and historically significant religions, arts, sciences, and architectures. In the academic culture section, in addition to introducing each major discipline, it also introduces major theories and inventions in science and technology from the 19th and 20th centuries in thematic sections. In the half-century since the end of World War II, human cultural development has been rapid and ever-changing, leading to swift changes in the of human civilization. Scholars from around the world are exploring the new trends of mutual penetration and conflict between different types of human civilizations from various perspectives, but these are not something this book can reflect or encompass.