The Far Edges of the Known World: A New History of Ancient Civilisations

by Owen Rees

Synopsis:

When Ovid was exiled from Rome to a border town on the Black Sea, he despaired at his new bleak and barbarous surroundings. Like many Greeks and Romans, Ovid thought the outer reaches of their world was where civilisation ceased to exist. Our fascination with the Greek and Roman world, and the abundance of writing that we have from it, means that we usually explore the ancient world from this perspective too. Was Ovid's exile really as bad as he claimed? What was it truly like to live on the edges of these empires, on the boundaries of the known world?

Taking us along the sandy caravan routes of Morocco to the freezing winters of the northern Black Sea, from Co-Loa in the Red River valley of Vietnam to the rain-lashed forts south of Hadrian's Wall, Owen Rees explores the powerful empires and diverse peoples in Europe, Asia and Africa beyond the reaches of Greece and Rome. In doing so, he offers us a new, brilliantly rich lens with which to understand the ancient world.

Thanks to archaeological excavations, we now know that the borders of the empires we consider the 'heart' of civilisation were in fact thriving, vibrant cultures – just not ones we might expect. This is where the boundaries of 'civilised' and 'barbarians' began to dissipate; where the rules didn't always apply; where normally juxtaposed cultures intermarried; and where nomadic tribes built their own cities.

Owen Rees’ The Far Edges of the Known World was a random choice from the library, and I had a good time with it. The premise is that we know a lot about the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians, and how they viewed the other peoples they bumped up against (and sometimes invaded), but most of what we know about those other peoples is what the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians have recorded.

But of course there’s more there in archaeology, in other accounts, and by reading between the lines. Rees doesn’t dig deeply into any one location/group of people, and is careful to note the limitations of the evidence he does discuss, but he does his best to give us a less biased picture of these other worlds.

It’s hard to pick a favourite, but I think maybe the stuff about the various areas in Ukraine. It’s a part of the world I haven’t read much about in general, but which has come up in a few recent books, and broadened my horizons a little!

I mostly found the book very accessible, but did find toward the end that my attention kept wandering for some reason; I think that was me, and not the book — Rees’ writing is fine and easy to read.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)