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Civilization takes the reader from the earliest days of human settlement to the civilizations of the New World overthrown by the Spanish conquistadors. After a brief look at humanity's development as monadic hunters and gatherers, the book opens with the crucial step taken around 10,000 years ago when some communities started to ultimate plants. The settled villages of these early farmers were the forerunners of the complex cities and highly sophisticated cultures that were later to flourish in the emergent civilizations around the world. Focusing largely on the world's key civilizations in each time period, the book begins with the primary civilizations in Mesopotamia, India, Egypt, and China, and from there to Greece, Rome, and their contemporary cultures, culminating in the settlements in the Americas.