Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

I would also like to draw attention to the sponsors and editors of the various university presses around the world. Many of the most interesting and important books discussed in the following pages were never going to be commercial propositions; but university presses exist, at least in part, to see that new ideas get into print: we are all in their debt. Nor should we forget the translators (some anonymous, some long-departed) of so many of the works described in this book. As Leo Rosten acknowledged, linguistic skills ought not to be taken for granted.

In the chapters on China I have used the Pinyin system of transliteration as opposed to Wade-Giles, except for certain words where the Wade-Giles format is well known even to non-specialists (Pinyin dispenses with all apostrophes and hyphens in Chinese words). In transcribing other scripts (for example, Arabic, Greek, Sanskrit) I have omitted virtually all diacritical marks, on the grounds that most readers will not know how, for example, å or ẹ modifies the sound. Marks are included only where essential – for example, to distinguish the Russian prehistoric site of Mal’ta from the Mediterranean island of Malta. For the most part I have referred to the books of the Hebrew Bible as scriptures. Occasionally, for the sake of variety, I have used Old Testament.

My greatest debt, as always, is to Kathrine.

A Chronology of Ideas

Some dates, especially the early ones, are approximate

60,000–40,000 years ago: ‘Creative explosion’: cave art and carvings in abundance

14,000–6,000 years ago: domestication of plants and animals

11,000 BC: first use of clay

5500 BC: first writing, in India

after 2900 BC: Gilgamesh – first imaginative epic

2100 BC: first legal code

2000 BC: invention of the wheel

before 1200 BC: first alphabet

640 BC: invention of money

600 BC: first evidence for written Latin

585 BC: Thales of Miletus predicts solar eclipse: for Aristotle this was the moment when science and philosophy began

538 BC: Buddha begins his travels

507 BC: democracy introduced in Athens by Cleisthenes

after 336 BC: Aristotle classifies the world

mid-third century BC: Aristarchus proposes that the earth goes around the sun

second century BC: paper in use in China

160 BC: concepts of Resurrection and the Messiah gain wide currency in Israel

120 BC: the term ‘Judaism’ first used in Second Book of Maccabees

First century AD: wheelbarrow invented in China

33 AD: Paul converted

80 AD: compass in use in China

170s AD: four Christian Gospels emerge

before 242 AD: Neoplatonism flourishes in Alexandria

431 AD: Mary beatified as the Mother of God

570 AD: birth of Muhammad

633 AD: Qu’ran collated

eighth century AD: crop rotation system introduced

751 AD: paper reaches the West from China

904–906 AD: gunpowder first used in anger in China

after 1001 AD: Leif Eriksson explores Vinland

1087 AD: Irnerius teaches law at Bologna University

1094/1117 AD: first named teachers at Oxford

late thirteenth/early fourteenth century AD: origins of capitalism and banking in Italy

early fourteenth century AD: explosion of universities in Europe, first hints of perspective in Western art

late fourteenth century AD: double entry bookkeeping in use

1403 AD: movable type in use in Korea

1440 AD: invention of printing

after 1450 AD: rediscovery of Plato in Europe

1506 AD: first printed map to show America

1517 AD: Martin Luther nails his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg church: the Reformation

1519 AD: Magellan discovers southern route to Pacific and his assistant Sebastián del Cano circumnavigates the earth

1525 AD: Peasants’ Revolt in Germany, led by Anabaptists

1543 AD: Copernicus, On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs; Vesalius, The Structure of the Human Body

1605 AD: Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning; William Shakespeare, King Lear and Macbeth; Cervantes, Don Quixote, part 1 (part 2, 1615)

1619 AD: René Descartes conceives the significance of doubt, and the mind-body dualism

after 1625 AD: rise of the novel

1669 AD: fossils first recognised as residue of living creatures

1670 AD: Spinoza, Tractatus theologico-politicus

1675–1683 AD: Van Leeuwenhoek discovers protozoa, spermatoza, bacteria