VISUAL THINKING, SEEING THROUGH TIME, PART 2 OF 5: Architecture, the Arts, Geometry

by Roger Burrows

Part Two illustrates that human ideas and perceptions are not universal constants; rather, they are profoundly shaped by each society’s beliefs, historical context, and environment. This section explores four ancient civilizations— the Harappans of the Indus Valley, the Ancient Greeks of the northeastern Mediterranean, the Khmer Empire of Southeast Asia, and the Maya of Mesoamerica—each offering a distinct lens on the world.
Despite the immense distances and diverse environments that separated ancient civilisations, people around the world independently developed remarkably similar abilities in language, mathematics, geometry, the arts, and architecture. This parallel evolution points to universal human tendencies—a shared drive to communicate, quantify, create, and build. The educational, governmental, and religious systems that arose in these societies also reflected core aspects of human nature, including patterns of dominance and subservience, aggression, cooperation, conformity, and belief in unseen forces. These commonalities suggest that, beneath cultural differences, there are deep-rooted similarities in how humans think, feel, organise themselves, and seek meaning in the world.

149 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 20, 2025