New publication: Antike global

A new history of the ancient world between 1000 BC and 300 AD breaks away from the Eurocentric perspective. In a new book, the American ancient historian Stanley Burstein broadens the view to an antiquity from the Atlantic to the Pacific. After a phase of regionalisation, a few great empires emerged in temperate Afro-Eurasia - Rome, Sassanid Persia, the Jin Empire in China - that ruled over half the world's population. These empires were not isolated from each other. An extensive network of trade routes linked them to Southeast and Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, making this period the world's first global era. The new book-based religions - Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Christianity, Manichaeism - also spread along these routes, setting the course for the next millennium.

With this cleverly composed, compact volume, Kai Brodersen, Professor of Ancient Culture at the University of Erfurt, has now presented the first global history of Afro-Eurasia in Antiquity in German translation and editing.