The Maya
A Very Short Introduction
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Narrated by:
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Tim Campbell
About this listen
The Maya forged one of the greatest societies in the history of the ancient Americas and in all of human history. Long before contact with Europeans, Maya communities built spectacular cities with large, well-fed large populations. They mastered the visual arts, and developed a sophisticated writing system that recorded extraordinary knowledge in calendrics, mathematics, and astronomy.
The Maya achieved all this without area-wide centralized control. There was never a single, unified Maya state or empire, but always numerous, evolving ethnic groups speaking dozens of distinct Mayan languages. The people we call "Maya" never thought of themselves as such; yet something definable, unique, and endlessly fascinating-what we call Maya culture-has clearly existed for millennia. So what was their self-identity and how did Maya civilization come to be "invented?"
With the Maya historically subdivided and misunderstood in so many ways, the pursuit of what made them "the Maya" is all the more important. In this Very Short Introduction, Restall and Solari explore the themes of Maya identity, city-state political culture, art and architecture, the Maya concept of the cosmos, and the Maya experience of contact with including invasion by outsiders.
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A legendary civilization vanished under the Fertile Crescent and escaped a fate worse than death until Sumerologists questioned widely accepted truths. The Sumerians reemerged onto the extraordinary timeline of human history. Their tales of kings and gods, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, and their fearless trade in distant lands, during the remarkable Bronze Age, centered in the world’s first city-states that chronicled ancient rivalries and their enduring impact.
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The writing is so poor I could not listen.
- By Erin on 12-04-21
By: Henry Freeman
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Ancestral Journeys
- The Peopling of Europe from the First Venturers to the Vikings (Revised and Updated Edition)
- By: Jean Manco
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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This paradigm-shifting book paints a spirited portrait of a restless people that challenges our established ways of looking at Europe's past. The story is more complex than at first believed, with new evidence suggesting that the European gene pool was stirred vigorously multiple times. Genetic clues are also enhancing our understanding of European mobility in epochs with written records, including the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, the spread of the Slavs, and the adventures of the Vikings.
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Needs pictures.
- By Ray on 11-21-20
By: Jean Manco
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The Fall of Rome
- And the End of Civilization
- By: Bryan Ward-Perkins
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
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In The Fall of Rome, eminent historian Bryan Ward-Perkins argues that the "peaceful" theory of Rome's "transformation" is badly in error. Indeed, he sees the fall of Rome as a time of horror and dislocation that destroyed a great civilization, throwing the inhabitants of the West back to a standard of living typical of prehistoric times. Attacking contemporary theories with relish and making use of modern archaeological evidence, he looks at both the wider explanations for the disintegration of the Roman world and also the consequences for the lives of everyday Romans.
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best book ever on Fall of Rome
- By james m. on 01-30-22
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The Greeks
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- By: Roderick Beaton
- Narrated by: Anna Crowe
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
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More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek city-states, led by Athens and Sparta, laid the foundation for much of modern science, the arts, politics, and law. But the influence of the Greeks did not end with the rise and fall of this classical civilization. As historian Roderick Beaton illustrates, over three millennia Greek speakers produced a series of civilizations that were rooted in southeastern Europe but again and again ranged widely across the globe.
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An Ethnography of the Greeks
- By gmurphy92 on 03-27-22
By: Roderick Beaton
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The Dawn of Everything
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A trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state", political violence, and social inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.
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exactly what I've been looking for
- By DankTurtle on 11-10-21
By: David Graeber, and others
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1177 B.C. (Revised and Updated)
- The Year Civilization Collapsed
- By: Eric H. Cline
- Narrated by: Eric H. Cline
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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This audiobook narrated by acclaimed archaeologist and best-selling author Eric Cline offers a breathtaking account of how the collapse of an ancient civilized world ushered in the first Dark Ages.
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Look past the one-star reviews: this is an enlightening and engaging read.
- By Alonzo Nightjar on 03-07-22
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Children of Ash and Elm
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- By: Neil Price
- Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
- Length: 17 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The Viking Age - from 750 to 1050 saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe. But for centuries, the Vikings have been seen through the eyes of others, distorted to suit the tastes of medieval clerics and Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian imperialists, Nazis, and more. None of these appropriations capture the real Vikings, or the richness and sophistication of their culture.
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Outstanding
- By Than on 10-06-20
By: Neil Price
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The Invention of Sicily
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- By: Jamie Mackay
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Sicily has always acted as a gateway between Europe and the rest of the world. Fought over by the Phoenicians and Greeks, the Romans, Goths and Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, Germans, and the Spanish and the French for thousands of years, Sicily became a unique melting pot where diverse traditions merged, producing a unique heritage and singular culture. In this fascinating account of the island from the earliest times to the present day, author and journalist Jamie Mackay leads us through this most elusive of places.
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Wonderful overview of Sicily
- By jay lazier on 01-28-24
By: Jamie Mackay
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Thebes
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- By: Paul Cartledge
- Narrated by: David Timson
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Among the extensive writing available about the history of ancient Greece, there is precious little about the city-state of Thebes. At one point the most powerful city in ancient Greece, Thebes has been long overshadowed by its better-known rivals, Athens and Sparta. In Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece, acclaimed classicist and historian Paul Cartledge brings the city vividly to life and argues that it is central to our understanding of the ancient Greeks' achievements - whether politically or culturally.
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Why is this author considered an expert scholar of Ancient Greece?
- By DaneDeer on 11-06-20
By: Paul Cartledge
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True to the title this is a very short introduction
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What listeners say about The Maya
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Bruce
- 08-15-24
Outstanding introduction
The authors do a superb job distilling an enormous and ever-growing mass of material into an enjoyable and useful guide to essentials. The references at the end including equally useful commentary on places to start doing further research, too. And the reading is equally excellent, getting the nuances of Mayan pronunciation right for Mayan names and words. Highly recommended.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-15-24
Pretty great, but a bit superficial.
This is an excellent intro into a massive history. The authors seem to do a great job of submitting a complete overview of the historical information available today on a scholarly level. Yet some is glossed over, not just in the sense that it’s not an in-depth writing, but in the sense that the astronomy, architecture, spirituality, and wisdom of the Maya, are basically avoided. The Maya are presented as perhaps an impressive yet somewhat regular ancient society, no better or worse morally than any other, based on the evidence. Which is to be appreciated as a more reasonable view of the Maya to balance the everpresent extreme views from many ends. Yet, there is not much discussion of the actual ideology, knowledge or wisdom that existed with Maya, which I would hold to be the pinnacle of the topic itself. They rightfully blame european historians of old for not giving them credit for their architecture, while failing to give them full credit by way of analysis of that architecture and the lifestyle behind it. A bit more there would have been necessary and appreciated. Still its a great historical overview, that I enjoyed and recommend for sure. They present tons of relevant and important information on the historical timeline, and for that it is a wonderful writing. The reader has a great voice and pacing, and does a pretty good job of pronouncing Mayan words.
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