Episodes6
Iraq - The Cradle of Civilization
In places like Uruk and Eridu in modern-day Iraq, humans founded the first cities nearly 6,000 years ago. They left us literature, astronomy, and mathematics, as well as lessons in overpopulation and environmental stewardship.
India - Empire of the Spirit
Beginning 5,000 years ago, the "Land of the Seven Rivers" cultivated a tradition of nonviolence, renunciation of the material world, and a focus on humans' inner life. Today, these ideas survive in tension with the vestiges of Western colonialism.
China - The Mandate of Heaven
With great thinkers such as Confucius and Lao-Tzu, the Chinese conceived a civilization reflecting cosmic harmony, sustained by civic and social virtue, ancient ritual, and reverence for ancestors.
Egypt - The Habit of Civilization
In the world's first great nation, the annual flooding of the Nile conferred not only fertility, but also a deep respect for social and cosmic stability, a belief in the resurrection of the dead, and the hope of eternal life.
Central America - The Burden of Time
Independent of great civilizations elsewhere, the Maya and Aztecs developed a violent, fatalistic culture, envisioning a cosmos that required bloody sacrifice for renewal. It placed the sovereignty of nature above all else - even human life.
The Barbarian West
Now adopted nearly all over the globe, the modern Western ideas of individualism, property, and purposeful history trace their roots to Christianity, Greco-Roman humanism, and Germanic social values.