Extracted articles from various sources.

Some 5000 years ago, civilized societies emerged in the valleys of four great rivers: the Nile, the Euphrates, the Yellow, and the Indus. Of these primary Old World civilizations, that of the Indus remains the least known and the most enigmatic, though, paradoxically, it has left perhaps the most lasting influence on the societies that followed it. In this lucid account - abundantly illustrated with maps and photographs, including sixteen pages in full color - archaeologist Jane McIntosh addresses what we know about the rise and fall of the civilization of the Indus and Saraswati valleys, what it might be reasonable to speculate, and what we still hope to learn. While drawing on archaeological and linguistic evidence to create a portrait of the civilization from the inside, McIntosh also carefully pieces together a wider picture of the Indus civilization using evidence from its trading partners in Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, and Southwest Asia. The result is an outstandingly vivid recreation of one of the world's great but all-but-lost ancient civilizations.

In the autumn of 1924, the archaeologist John Marshall made an announcement that dramatically altered existing perceptions of South Asia's antiquity: the discovery of 'the civilization of the Indus valley'. Marshall's news conveyed one of the most monumental discoveries in the history of civilization, on the same scale as the findings of Heinrich Schliemann (who unearthed Troy) and Arthur Evans (who dug out Minoan Crete). The Troy and Crete stories have been well told. But a detailed, archivally rich and accessible narrative of the people, processes, places and puzzles that led up to Marshall's proclamation on the Indus civilization has, like the civilization itself, long remained buried. Now, for the first time in this book, we have the whole story, enchantingly told. Finding Forgotten Cities comprises a powerful narrative history of how India's antiquity was unexpectedly unearthed, it will interest every serious reader of history and anyone who likes to read an utterly fascinating story.

In this lively survey, Guy D. Middleton critically examines our ideas about collapse - how we explain it and how we have constructed potentially misleading myths around collapses - showing how and why collapse of societies was a much more complex phenomenon than is often admitted.

Spengler's work describes how we have entered into a centuries-long "world-historical" phase comparable to late antiquity, and his controversial ideas spark debate over the meaning of historiography.

From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future. What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Jared Diamond's Collapse also shows how - unlike our ancestors - we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors. 'A grand sweep from a master storyteller of the human race' - Daily Mail 'Riveting, superb, terrifying' - Observer 'Gripping ... the book fulfils its huge ambition, and Diamond is the only man who could have written it' - Economis 'This book shines like all Diamond's work' - Sunday Times

Gibbon offers an explanation for why the Roman Empire fell, a task made difficult by a lack of comprehensive written sources, though he was not the only historian to tackle the subject. Most of his ideas are directly taken from what few relevant records were available: those of the Roman moralists of the 4th and 5th centuries.