Antiquities

Reviews

This is a wonderful book! The written details of the sites depicted are outstanding. This would also be a great tool for a teacher.

My father thoroughly enjoyed this book and its beautiful photos and informative text. He felt like he was there seeing the sights and experiencing the incredible locations. A coffee table adornment must!

Magnificently illustrated throughout, "Great Discoveries: Explorations That changed History" showcases succinct histories underlying epic explorations and discoveries in such diverse subjects as geography, paleontology, astronomy, and archaeology. From dinosaur digs to underwater dives for the Titanic, from Egyptian tombs to space age explorations of the solar system, "Great Discoveries" truly lives up to its title and readers will find it as informed and informative as it is engaging and entertaining. With its thoroughly 'reader friendly' text, "Great Discoveries" is a strongly recommended addition to both school and community library collections.

The editors of TIME, noted for putting out a slew of quality books on various educational topics such as America: An Illustrated History, Abraham Lincoln: His Life and Times, and The Middle East: The History, the Conflict, the Culture, the Faiths, have outdone themselves with their newest offering, Great Discoveries: Explorations that Changed History. This visually appealing book takes a look at 30 different discoveries that every schoolchild should study. The topics covered within Great Discoveries are quite varied and include a look at China's clay army, the bog bodies, Lewis and Clark's adventures, Yellowstone, Indonesia's `hobbits,' comets, and the mapping of Mars. Broken down into four main sections, exploring the past, exploring planet Earth, exploring life on Earth, and exploring the solar system, it is easy to flip the pages to find a topic of interest. Each topic is accompanied by numerous photographs, most in color with a few in black and white. Indeed, it is likely that youngsters reading this book are apt to pick their favorites by the beautiful, vibrant pictures that accompany each article. (This reviewer found the full page photos of Saturn and Jupiter particularly stunning.) But once on a particular topic, the clear, concise writing will keep the reader's attention. Readers have probably heard about all (or most) of the discoveries covered in this book, however, the editors have done a wonderful job of including the most up-to-date information on each as well as adding little known facts. For instance, did you know that a tyrannosaur was recently found with feathers? That the fingers of one of the "bog bodies" was so well preserved that scientists were able to get fingerprints from them? What about the reason(s) the Pueblo "cliff dwellers" abandoned their now famous cliff homes? You'll have to get a copy of Great Discoveries to read the current theories on what happened! Quill says: A coffee table book that should be on every coffee table!

What a great new addition to my collection of adventure books: TIME Great Discoveries: Explorations that Changed History. This is more than your ultimate coffee table fodder. Filled with stunning photographs that capture the most amazing discoveries of our world ¬- spanning the wonders of geography, paleontology, astronomy and archaeology - and combined with wonderful, classic tales of exploration, this is the perfect book for an armchair adventurer like me. The book is filled with page after page of stunning, high-resolution, color photographs of the most amazing scenery of this world and beyond. Overhead shots of Machu Picchu, Stonehenge and Mayan pyramids are simply mind-boggling in scope and detail. The collections of ancient coins and weapons, unearthed after being lost for hundreds of years, and the fascinating bog bodies provide dazzling links to the past and remind us that our ancestors were not much different than we are. With an informative and educational narrative accompanying each discovery, the book is perfect for young adults and seasoned travelers alike. From the depth of the diamond mine in Kimberly, South Africa to the frozen North and South Poles, to the far reaches of our solar system, TIME takes you on an adventure through time and space, visiting Shackleton's crew in 1915 and journeying beyond the Milky Way, looking back through billions of years of supernovas and galaxy clusters. Dinosaurs and cavemen, the aurora borealis, an elk herd crossing the mountains of Montana, robots exploring the surface of Mars (if you like this kind of stuff then you'll love Great Discoveries). And that's just the tip of the iceberg - which also makes a cameo in the cool section about the Titanic. My daughter is 4 and just becoming interested in the wonders of the world. This is the perfect book to leave on display for her to discover and page through at her leisure, or one for me to read carefully as I sit back with a glass of wine and some light music on a lazy autumn night. Stunning, engaging and delightfully well-crafted, this is the type of book that will inspire the mind and encourage you to travel the world and enjoy the wonders it has to offer! Mark McGinty is the author of "Elvis and the Blue Moon Conspiracy"

Reviews

Whether mummifying a donated corpse to see how the Egyptians did it, or excavating a pet cemetery of sorts, or looting one of Cleopatra's Needles in 1878 to make America one of the company of nations to display an ancient obelisk of its very own (there are now more Cleopatra's Needles in Rome than in Egypt), Egyptologists have long been able to capture the imaginations of the general population.This compilation from "Archaeology Magazine" begins with the most fascinating of Egypt's secrets, the mummy. Bob Brier, consulting everything he could find on the subject, realized how little was really known and set out to create a modern mummy to answer some of the practical questions. He took a year just to assemble the right bronze and copper and obsidian knives, to collect the natron from the salt fields north of Cairo, to replicate the embalmer's table. As Brier expected, the actual procedure (accompanied by photos) answered many questions, from the practicality of the obsidian knife to the Egyptians' fairly limited knowledge of anatomy.Brier's attention-getting piece leads on to other mummy research, revealing the prevalence of parasitic disease and the shorter, more brutal lives of the laboring classes as opposed to the wealthy classes. Modern carbon dating and scanning techniques revealed the busy history of a damaged mummy, which had been unwrapped, rewrapped and held together with wooden dowels. But each emerging answer - three dates spanning hundreds of years, for instance - gave rise to new questions.The book's second section explores Egyptian origins, including a lively piece by Renee Friedman on the busy industrial facility (beer brewing, pottery production) at the early, Predynastic site of Hierakonpolis, where mummification was just beginning and the average worker was well-nourished but dead before 35.The third section includes six articles on the "Marvels of Giza," including the origins and purpose of the Sphinx, and several examinations of the workers who built the pyramids. An article on dating the pyramids includes surprisingly fascinating detail on the organic materials used in the mortar and how carbon dating is done.Part four explores other sites - "The Other Pyramids" in ancient Nubia, "Hunting Alexander's Tomb," and the gem mines so valuable to Rome."The Saga of Cleopatra's Needles," by Bob Brier, comes in the fifth and final section and describes several daring feats of looting, the most arduous being the American acquisition of an obelisk for Central Park. And Brier has another interesting piece on the gathering of scientists in Napoleon's ill-fated invasion of Egypt. These scientists - chemists, botanists, mathematicians, naturalists, engineers and more - in addition to their many sketches and collections, unearthed the Rosetta Stone in 1799, making possible the eventual translation of the Egyptian hieroglyphs.Sidebars throughout focus in on findings of particular interest - diseases found in studies of skeletons, the burial of a woman who may have been a witch doctor, the secrets yielded up by teeth, to mention a few. Black and white photographs or diagrams illustrate many of the undated articles and there's a useful timeline and index. Appendices include short bios of the authors and suggested further readings listed for each article.Geared for the general reader, most of the articles are written with the juicier details up front and just enough science to remind you that archaeology is a matter of patience and care and excavating a ruin takes a great deal of time - more than some modern projects, like sewers, are willing to allow. The writing ranges from skilled and enthusiastic to pedantic, but the wooden academicians are definitely in the minority. An enjoyable, informative, and wide-ranging collection.