By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia

by Barry Cunliffe

By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean is nothing less than the story of how humans first started building the globalized world we know today. Set on a huge continental stage, from Europe to China, it is a tale covering over 10,000 years, from the origins of farming around 9000 BC to the expansion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century AD.An unashamedly 'big history', it charts the development of European, Near Eastern, and Chinese civilizations and the growing links between them by way of the Indian Ocean, the silk Roads, and the great steppe corridor (which crucially allowed horse riders to travel from Mongolia to the Great Hungarian Plain within a year). Along the way, it is also the story of the rise and fall of empires, the development of maritime trade, and the shattering impact of predatory nomads on their urbanneighbours.Above all, as this immense historical panorama unfolds, we begin to see in clearer focus those basic underlying factors - the acquisitive nature of humanity, the differing environments in which people live, and the dislocating effect of even slight climatic variation - which have driven change throughout the ages, and which help us better understand our world today.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Archaeology, Anthropology, Ancient History, Geography, Asia

526 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 24, 2015

About the author

Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe taught archaeology in the Universities of Bristol and Southampton and was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2008, thereafter becoming Emeritus Professor. He has excavated widely in Britain (Fishbourne, Bath, Danebury, Hengistbury Head, Brading) and in the Channel Islands, Brittany, and Spain, and has been President of the Council for British Archaeology and of the Society of Antiquaries, Governor of the Museum of London, and a Trustee of the British Museum. He is currently a Commissioner of English Heritage.

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The only book I had previously read by this author was The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek, a micro-history that I had liked a lot, possibly because I had known nothing about the subject beforehand. This book is the polar opposite in approach, as it’s a high-level view of more than 10,000 years in the history of Eurasia.

In his Preface, the author explains that the book is based on archaeological evidence supplemented by historical sources. He advises that he “has used DNA evidence sparingly” and discounts linguistic evidence altogether. Make of that what you will. I would have to say that I found the early part of the book quite dry and plodding.

“Connectivity” is one of the two big themes of this book. Early on the author highlights a point made by others, that Eurasia is orientated predominantly on an east-west axis and it is therefore possible to travel long distances along the same latitude and within the same ecological zone. In ancient times a horseman could have started a journey on the Hungarian plain in springtime and reached Mongolia before winter set in, and could have made the whole journey without ever leaving the Eurasian steppe. I mention the steppe as it plays an important in this book. The author describes it as “the most remarkable natural corridor in the world.”

If you have a particular interest in India or in the civilisations of South-East Asia, you can safely skip this book. The former gets surprisingly little coverage and the latter none at all. Instead the author concentrates on China, Central Asia and the Near East, and Mediterranean Europe. He also spends a lot of time looking at the interaction between these societies and the nomadic peoples around them. Mainly these are the steppe nomads although also of course at how the Arabs burst out of their desert homeland to leave a lasting impact.

I thought the focus on the steppe was the most interesting aspect of the book. It’s not normally considered central to Eurasian history, but the author illustrates just how much these horse-based warrior societies affected the sedentary civilisations around them. China clashed with the Xiongnu for centuries and a tribe called the Parni took over Iran and created the Parthian Empire. The clearest pattern however, was for the steppe nomads to migrate in an east to west direction. It started with the ancient Yanmaya Culture and was followed by the Scythians, and then by the numerous steppe peoples who crashed into Europe in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. In later centuries Turks, Bulgars, Magyars and others all came in turn, culminating of course in the great Mongol conquests of the 13th and 14th centuries. These regular invasions are one of the most notable aspects of European history.

I liked the latter parts of the book more than the first half, but overall I found it quite a dry read. Most people seem to have enjoyed it more than I did.

[Keith Currie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable book. In its ambition, its scope and its production values Barry Cunliffe’s study is extremely impressive.

Some years ago I very much enjoyed reading his ‘Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek’ which now reads as a minor foothill to the mountain range of this volume. Make no mistake, despite its chronological range of over 10,000 years, this is no light skim through the centuries. It is a detailed, highly readable account of the geography, archaeology and history of Eurasia from China in the East to the fringes of Europe in the west.

Not the least of the pleasures of this book are the many maps, all in full colour, all with their orientation putting the ‘European peninsula’ at an unusual angle for the Eurocentric reader. This alone creates a sense of perspective which provokes thought. These maps wonderfully trace movements and settlements of peoples, topographical aspects, the rise and fall of political empires, the spread of plague and disease, beautifully capturing the inter-connectedness of Asia with Europe – Eurasia.

There is much to learn here and a marvellous amount of scholarship on display, but the book is straight-forward to read and always tells a fascinating story. For me the most interesting parts were those dealing with classical to medieval times, but I enjoyed all parts, including the prehistoric. East-west movements and less commonly, west-east movements of people and peoples are explained through the geography of the continents. Thus historical events which loom large in European history, such as the crusades, can be seen for what they were – a side-show, even if they had a lasting effect for future generations.

The book contains a wide choice of gorgeous illustrations and photographs, more to be expected in a coffee-table book than a scholarly volume. These pictures enhance the text wonderfully. It is really evocative to look upon a series of photographs of Palmyra, read about the city’s importance to east-west communication and trade and think about what has happened there in the past few months of 2015. One wonders too about the current state of other sites such as the Greco-Macedonian foundation of Ai Khanum in Afghanistan.

Cunliffe’s book shows the cross fertilisation of ideas, discoveries and knowledge over the centuries, the mixing of race, religion and culture, the importance of understanding this, and how all these could have positive effects in the future. I looked for and found a reference to Menander (not Meander, p.256!), the Greco-Macedonian king of Bactria, a man of European descent who embraced Buddhism, in a land which is now almost wholly Muslim.

[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone knows that no matter what Professor Cunliffe writes about, something is always going to learned. This book is no exception.

I loved all the maps and illustrations and photographs that helped bring across the points that professor Cunliffe was trying to get across. But most if all I liked the information presented.

This is a book that shows the history and interactions between east and west. It is a book about connectivity and exchange of ideas. But mostly it is a book about Eurasia that is not Euro-centric and everyone should really read it.

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Beyond this region … where the sea ends somewhere on the outer fringe, there is a very great inland city called Thina [China], from where silk floss, yarn, and cloth are shipped by land … and via the Ganges river … It is not easy to get to this Thina; for rarely do people come from it and only a few.”

- From the Periplus of the Erithraean Sea, a first century CE sailing handbook from Roman Egypt

The Eurasian landmass is composed of a series of broad ecological zones which span the continent latitudinally: beginning with the southern tropics, they range through the temperate niches of woods and grassland conducive to agriculture, the steppe corridor interspersed with forests and deserts, and the dense taiga biome of the north, before ending with the arctic tundra. While the more southerly outer rim of Eurasia became the seat of its great sedentary civilizations—Chinese, Indian, Persian, Greco-Roman—it was the steppe corridor and the nomadic peoples who traversed it, interfacing with the urban empires and transferring ideas, commodities, and people from one end of the continent to the other, that banded Eurasia together and set in motion an historical process of connectivity which makes it possible to speak, certainly by the first century CE, of an integrated world system. This book is a high-altitude history of that system, beginning with the gradual shift from foraging to food production (namely, farming and animal husbandry) after the end of the Younger Dryas (c. 10,000 BCE) and ending with the Mongol triumph of the thirteenth century CE, which marked both the apogee and the swan song of steppe culture as the central vehicle of the transcontinental network, as hitherto marginal states on the western tip of the European peninsula would soon capitalize on advanced maritime technology and navigational knowledge to bypass overland trade routes diminished by the Black Death and guarded by hostile Turks and Mongol khanates to seek out transoceanic routes to the east, ushering in a new phase of world history in which the oceans, rather than the overland routes, would become the great highway that would, in time, integrate Eurasia itself into a truly global civilization. One might call this a history of Eurasia from the horse to the caravel; or, even more minimalistically, from the interior to the rim.

Barry Cunliffe identifies six major historical “thresholds” in the development of the Eurasian system. The first, as mentioned, was the independent emergence of food production strategies in two separate areas: the Fertile Crescent and its “hilly flanks” (namely the foothills of the Zagros and Taurus Mountains) in the Near East, and in China between the Yellow and Yangtze River valleys. In the former, agriculture and animal domestication began experimentally around 10,000 BCE and was fully established as the primary means of subsistence by 6000 BCE, while in the latter food production began to develop between 9000 and 8000 BCE. One critical difference between the two regions, which would shape the historical rhythms of each, was that while the Chinese area was largely isolated—bounded to the north by mountains, to the west by deserts, to the east by the ocean, and to the south by tropics—the Near East was in close proximity to several other areas conducive to early food production and sedentary life, to each of which the “Neolithic package”—domesticated animals, barley, and emmer and einkorn wheat—quickly spread: the Indus and Nile valleys, the Aegean, and thence to a large swathe of continental Europe, where food production was widely practiced by 5000 BCE, and from which pastoralism began to penetrate the Pontic steppe and begin its march to the Altai-Sayan and beyond. This variation may partially account for the relative continuity of sedentary Chinese civilization, centered around the original core, compared to the Near East and its environs, which saw a succession of competing states and, from the second half of the first millennium BCE, the emergence of two political centers of gravity in the Mediterranean basin and the Iranian plateau, each of which would play host to a series of empires engaged in a perpetual tug-of-war over the original core of Mesopotamia, eastern Anatolia, and the Levant: an endemic rivalry which culminated in a long series of brutal and ultimately fruitless wars between Rome and Persia, beginning with the ill-fated expedition of Marcus Licinius Crassus in 53 BCE and ending in the mid seventh century CE, when both empires, exhausted from their latest bout, proved largely defenseless against a wave of conquering Arabs united by their new religion of Islam. Food surpluses allowed for increasing specialization and social complexity, producing new products and services that could be traded along with the food itself. The advent of larger empires created more consumer demand and saw the establishment of tribute systems and networks of exchange in luxury goods for diplomatic purposes between the elites of various states. The effect of all this was to increase the volume and range of trade and communication, creating and energizing networks that, by the first century BCE, linked Han China and the Roman Empire in a single chain.

The domestication of the horse, likely beginning somewhere on the Pontic-Caspian steppe in the second half of the fifth millennium BCE—originally for the purpose of slaughtering horses for food and only later for riding—was the second threshold. Cunliffe wryly comments that the first young man who accepted a dare to jump on the back of a wild horse near the turn of the fourth millennium started a revolution in human history, establishing a symbiotic relationship between man and beast that would profoundly impact the fate of the continent. If the steppe corridor was the great natural highway of Eurasia, the horse was its natural vehicle. Setting out from the Great Hungarian Plain in the spring, a rider could traverse the Pontic-Caspian steppe north of the Black and Caspian Seas, skirt the southern ridge of the Ural mountains, continue across the Kazakh steppe, thread the Dzungarian pass between the Altai-Sayan and Tien Shan mountains (the only bottleneck of the journey) and reach Mongolia before winter, with no real geographical barrier to prevent him from continuing eastward to Manchuria or south to the central plains of China. In addition to making travel, trade, and communication substantially faster and easier, equestrianism vastly augmented the pastoral lifestyle of the steppe communities, allowing them to range more widely and manage larger flocks and herds. The enhanced mobility enabled the more fully nomadic existence which was to characterize steppe culture thenceforth; especially when the four-wheeled wagon was invented during the same period, allowing entire populations to live on the move. This would in turn increase the speed and scale of migration, enable the formation of large, cohesive bands, and, later, facilitate raiding: all perennial phenomena throughout the rest of this history.

The third and fourth thresholds are directly linked: the former, the establishment of the earliest trade networks and patterns of cultural exchange between the settled states and the steppe communities, beginning with the interface between the Mesopotamian urbanites and North Caucasian pastoralists in the closing centuries of the Uruk Expansion (c. 3700-3100 BCE) and intensifying across the Near East/steppe frontier in the early second millennium and the China/steppe frontier a few centuries later; the latter, the advent of predatory nomadism early in the first millennium BCE: the strategy of maintaining the cohesion and livelihood of nomadic bands by raiding rival bands and sedentary communities. The nomads supplied horses (and likely, early on, the training to tame and ride them), chariots (after c. 2100 BCE), livestock, slaves, metals, and other raw materials, while the sedentary states supplied prestige goods which would become essential for maintaining the nomadic social structure, allowing band leaders to use the distribution of these goods to establish patronage relationships and ensure loyalty. As the demand for prestige goods grew, so too did the imperative to acquire more steppe goods to trade for them: an imperative that could only be fulfilled by raiding, which both required and (when successful) reinforced group cohesion. Thus, in addition to engendering trade networks that threaded deep into Central Asia and formed a critical piece of what would become the transcontinental system, the establishment of north-south connectivity between steppe and state also created the economic feedback loops that generated and perpetuated predatory nomadism.

This social transformation on the steppe also interacted with the perennial westward flow of steppe populations: a phenomenon observable as early as 2800 BCE, when the Yamnaya culture of the Pontic steppe migrated into the Carpathian Basin, establishing a pattern that would be repeated by Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Alans, Avars, and Mongols. Population growth among the nomadic peoples of China’s northern frontier would exert expansionary pressure. If the nomads moved south into China, they would either bounce off the surface or settle into the sedentary lifeway of the region; whereas if they moved west they would displace other nomadic groups, who would in turn displace the groups west of them, creating a domino effect that would end with the inhabitants of the western steppe crashing into Europe. Thus the wars between the Han Dynasty and the nomadic Xiongnu between the second century BCE and the first century CE drove displaced groups into the Central Asian steppe, which drove the Sakas into the Sarmatian lands and the Sarmatians into the Hungarian plain, where a subgroup of the latter, the Iazyges, attempted to raid Pannonia but were defeated by Rome under Marcus Aurelius in 175 CE, whereupon they contributed cavalrymen to the empire, some of whom ended up stationed in Britain. Climate also played a role, as the weather became milder and vegetation more abundant as one traveled west through the steppe corridor. The size, cohesion, and ferocity of these westward migratory waves increased after the development of predatory nomadism, as successful raids would empower a band leader and entice other steppe communities to unite under his patronage, creating a snowball effect.

If the third and fourth thresholds saw the establishment of north-south connectivity, then the fifth threshold entailed the establishment of east-west connectivity and the fusion of Eurasia’s various trade routes into a single network. This was brought about by the simultaneous entrepreneurial ambitions of Rome and China between the third century BCE and the third century CE. Part of the Han strategy against the Xiongnu was to isolate them by incorporating the Gansu Corridor and the Tarim Basin into the empire in the first century BCE, giving it control over an important trade node with links to India, Persia, and beyond. On the other end of the continent, the emperor Trajan annexed the Nabatean Kingdom and established the Roman province of Arabia Petraea in 106 CE, acquiring the main entryway into the Mediterranean world by eastern goods via the northern rim of the Red Sea and signaling the Roman economic strategy of establishing maritime trade links with India (which in turn had links to the South China Sea) to circumvent the overland routes controlled by Persia. These two usages of imperial muscle forced the establishment of long-distance trade routes over desert and ocean, operated by a host of middlemen.

The Kushan Empire provides a wonderful case study in the continental connectivity of the period. It was established by the Yuezhi, a nomadic people who originally lived just west of the Yellow River near the Gobi Desert before being pushed out by the Xiongnu in the second century BCE. Migrating west across the northern edge of the Tarim Basin and through the Tian Shen, then south into Bactria, where Alexander had established a series of Greek colonies that proved to be enduring bastions of Hellenistic culture, the Yuezhi displaced the last Greco-Indian state there and established the Kushan Empire in the first century CE, which grew to encompass the territories of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, northern India, and eastern Iran. They used an adapted Greek script, and their religious landscape was a syncretic mixture of Buddhism, Shaivism, Zoroastrianism, and the worship of the Olympian pantheon. Excavations at Kushan sites have uncovered glassware from Roman Syria with depictions of gladiators, a “dragon master” pendant displaying a fusion of Chinese and steppe motifs, and bodhisattvas in Greco-Roman garb. Cunliffe gives a vivid impression of the variety of goods from throughout the Eurasian world that travelled through the Kushan lands, centrally located as they were:

Something of the reality of this international trade is shown by the contents of two sealed store-rooms found by archaeologists in a building thought to be the summer palace of the Kushan kings at Kapisa near Begram. The doors of the rooms had been bricked up and carefully plastered over. Inside the astonished archaeologists found piles of goods dating to the first or early second century AD, including 180 Roman glass vessels, mostly of Egyptian origin, bronze tableware, carved and polished stone vessels from Egypt, ostrich eggs worked to be wine pourers, quantities of furniture of Indian origin decorated with carved and painted ivory and bone plaques, and hundreds of painted lacquer bowls from China. There were also fifty or so plaster casts used for manufacturing metal vessels decorated with scenes from Roman mythology. No doubt there were other goods such as fabrics and plant materials that have not survived. It is tempting to see this great cache of luxury goods as diplomatic gifts accumulated by a Kushan king, brought to him by ambassadors coming from India, China, and the Red Sea, material redolent of his status but surplus to his immediate needs.

The final threshold was to some extent merely the culmination of the predatory nomad phenomenon: the emergence of powerful nomadic groups in the far east, mostly of Turkic and Mongol origin, which proved capable of spanning the entire steppe zone and overthrowing the most powerful sedentary states altogether. The last and greatest of these were the Mongols, who, in the thirteenth century, established the largest empire in world history, stretching from the Korean peninsula to what is now eastern Poland, from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf, and from Manchuria to the Gulf of Tonkin. The unified Mongol Empire was destined to be a short-lived phenomenon, given the inherent lack of generational durability in a social system driven by personal leadership and the redistribution of plunder.

If one were to read this book and follow it with John Darwin’s After Tamerlane, one would be well-grounded in the broad, global sweep of imperial history.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barry Cunliffe's By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia is a brilliant, if at times politically left-of-center and dry, read.

If you are looking for a sweeping read that helps explain the massive landmass between Ireland and Japan.

It concludes with the 13th Century but covers all major issues up until this time.

At times enlightening and frustrating [the maps are all on a north-south axis rather than an east-west axis and this seems to be make a political point rather than to be enlightening] Cunliffe's work is very useful and enjoyable.

Rating 5 out of 5 stars.

Highly recommended for Eurasian history buffs.

[Rex · Rating 5 out of 5]

"History is far more than a series of events and the biographies of big names; it is the subtle interweaving of human actions spread over vast landscapes and through deep time creating a dense fabric, every thread of which has significance. The wonder of it all lies in how interconnected everything is."

Sir Barry Cunliffe's overview of the development of political and cultural networks across Eurasia is staggeringly successful for its tremendous scope. With just the right amount of illustration and anecdote, Cunliffe surveys the rise and fall of various civilizations from one end of the world's largest continent to the other, from prehistory up to the revolutions of the fourteenth century. His title reflects his interest in viewing the continent as a dynamic whole, shaped by its unique geography. Steppes, deserts, and oceans all served at various times as barriers between civilizations and as connections and meeting-places. It is restless Central Asian nomads, not kings of Europe or emperors of China, who receive the most extended attention in Cunliffe's chapters, as he weaves together cultural motifs and enduring patterns with long-term transformations.

Archaeological evidence and travelers' narratives make frequent appearances; his willingness to get particular with the sites, climate features, and commodities that constituted the environment of Eurasians is one of the things that lends such color to his account. So his tour in passing introduces us to "the beauty of a Song bowl, the behaviour of wild horses on the steppe coming down to drink in the evening, the statue of the mathematician al-Khwarizmi in Khiva, [and] the name of a Viking scratched in runic script on a balustrade in the Hagia Sophia." Cunliffe allows all of these things to interact and so draw us in to the grand theater of the past.

On almost every page, Cunliffe mentions an exquisite character, location, cultural feature, or story that makes one want to pull up Google or check his bibliography for more. It would be easy to complain about what Cunliffe chose to leave out--century on century goes by in his mere 500 or so pages. But this should not obscure his accomplishment, which is suited to anyone desiring a broader and more complete understanding of the roots of world civilization.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 2 out of 5]

I finally gave up in despair. I felt like I was watching thousands of tribal peoples march across the page only to turn back and march the other way. A poor metaphor but one true to the feeling of ennui and confusion I felt at the same time. All of you who liked it: I can only say you are clearly the better person than I.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

History on a grand scale - complex and detailed, extensively researched, and excellently written. A fascinating, very worthwhile read.

[Annikky · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are interested in early history and the peoples, events and forces that shaped Eurasia, this is a very solid book. Although it spans centuries, it does go into quite a bit of detail on the elements that it focuses on and the approach is relatively academic, so I would probably not recommend it to absolute beginners. But if you have some grounding in the topic, this is a good step up.

What I did find annoying though is that Cunliffe uses hardly any DNA data and disregards linguistic evidence entirely (he says so himself). Considering the huge strides that (ancient) DNA research has made in recent years, it seems baffling. And talking about the Yamnaya without even mentioning that they were likely the speakers of Proto-Indo-European is distinctly odd. I can sense Cunliffe's skepticism towards non-archeological evidence and of course, genetic and linguistic theories need to be treated with caution. But in that, these disciplines are not different from archeology.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book regardless and the main issue I had was my own fault, not Cunliffe's. Namely, I listened to this, as it was free on Audible for a week or so. Unfortunately, this is really not the best book to be consumed in this format - it is too dense (I mean it in a good way) and I also really missed the maps. So I will at some point get this on paper and reread.

[Doug Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great, sweeping history of Eurasia, covering some 10,000+ years. It was a very readable account of a very complex subject. If there is a theme, it is that nations, civilizations, and empires come and go, but commerce and the flow of goods remain. It was especially interesting that events of great significance to western history -- such as Alexander the Great and the Crusades -- are mere blips when considered in the overall flow of world history.

This was also a good lesson in geography for me and, although I often got lost in the many names of places and peoples that appeared throughout, I did learn for the first time how places like Kazakhstan and the other "-stan" countries fit into world history. I also learned a lot more about Chinese history as well. So now there are a few dozen more places that I have to try to see someday...

[John Ferngrove · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having recently come to understand that you can't understand Global history without understanding at least what the broad sweep of what archaeology has to tell us about patterns of migration, agriculture, trade and city and state formation discovering Barry Cunliffe has been completely eye opening.

His books represent about the maximal value for money that could be hoped for in a specialist book. Not only is his text optimally clear and engaging, the photographic illustrations in vivid colour evocative, but above all the numerous detailed maps allow one's geographic knowledge to be painlessly expanded.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some takeaways from this book:

-American history is comparatively small when you look at the history of the Eurasian continent.
-Early man was incredibly violent and disturbingly primitive in many ways.
-Gorgeous book! The maps, illustrations, and photos really add to it.
-Ambitious book in how much ground he covered. He manages to pull it off well.
-If you like history, you'll love this book.

[Ginger Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent overview with a good "further reading" section at the end. Heavy emphasis on the Eurasian steppe, where successive groups of nomadic pastoralists emerged over thousands of years (with each newcomer sending its predecessors fleeing for new lands). As they were pushed around like billiard balls, nomadic tribes encroached on settled populations -- and often preyed on them, making a lasting mark on the civilizations they encountered.

Lots of great archaeological data here, plus many interesting illustrations. Particularly intriguing is the author's discussion on how climate affected the constant churn of migration, with even short-term climate changes frequently setting off major population shifts among steppe nomads, who tended to live on the edge of ecological disaster in semi-arid grasslands.

[Igor Zurimendi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grand history from a primarily archaeological viewpoint, enjoyable if not exactly my thing. Happily didn't buy on Kindle - lot would be lost with Kindle maps and photographs.

[Jasmin Halvorsen]

A re-read for uni

[Роман Вашурин · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read about half-way through, since I was only interested in prehistory. Gorgeous illustrations, clear explanation, absolutely amazing list of further reading recommendation on each and every topic brought up in the book. The only weird thing about this book is, probably, purposeful avoidance of the term "Indo-European" even when speaking about archaeological cultures widely considered being core to IE community.

[Mark Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. This book tied together many little pieces of knowledge I already had. There were also may things that I did not know, especially about the peoples and importance of the area from the Caspian Sea to Tarim depression. The book is a very straightforward account of the peoples and civilizations from China to Eastern Europe relying mostly on archeological sources as the author states up front. I really enjoyed this book and learned a lot from it.

[Julian Ticehurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

Widescreen story. Trade connections between differing geographic areas of Eurasia are emphasised. Big broad brushstrokes peppered with old familiar history snippets, a little recent archeo material, standard macro politics. Language deliberately omitted. Peoples and social history are skimmed. I enjoyed listening to this well-written prose but there's nothing here that Barry Cunliffe and others have not covered before. It is a good generalist read.

[Mary Catelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather technical book about the civilizations in Europe and Asia and their technological and cultural changes and exchanges.

Full of bits like the first evidence of wheels existing (on a pot found in Poland), the way Bactria had an unusual amount of Hellenistic influence, and other such details.

[Andrew Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A panoramic view of the early European and Asian civilizations. The book is well presented with many maps and colorful photos, and printed on good paper. The story focuses on the historical aspects of the past civilizations, without much reference to the latest DNA discoveries.

[Renée · Rating 4 out of 5]

As all books I've read by Cunliff: thorough and well written and defenitely highly interesting. However it seems more like an overview without new breakthroughs in ideas

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly, the tides of history ebb and flow. This is Big History on a grand scale, covering 11 millennia of Eurasian history, with a primary focus on the steppes, China, the Near East and Central Asia, less so on Europe (other than the Great Hungarian Plain) and India. The focus is on the steppes and the peripheral, sedentary states it touched and connected.

Cunliffe is an archaeologist by training, so it’s not surprising that the pre historical chapters (before 250 AD) are the most exciting parts of the book. Did you know that certain steppe cultures would bury entire chariots as part of funerary culture. Very cool! Cunliffe is fascinated by technological development and its spread through trade networks. I learned that copper smelting may have been invented only one time in Eurasia (in Serbia of all places) but spread rapidly and changed the world in its process. The book is extremely generous with maps, so it’s easy to visually trace the migration and trade networks, and as a result, certain patterns become apparent, such as the ecologically-driven trend of steppe people consistently migrating in a westward direction. The Huns’ displacement of the Goths, e.g., being just the last chain in a great repeating ripple across the Eurasian pond.

The book appears to have a strong materialistic view of history. There is extremely little discussion of the history of ideas. I’m not sure the words “Jesus Christ” appeared at all. Imagine if someone wrote a history of the world 1500-2000 and didn’t discuss monarchism, republicanism, nationalism or communism. Even when religion is mentioned, such as a very brief discussion of Buddhism, Cunliffe treats it as another commodity or technology and focuses mainly on how it spread on the same trade networks that carried silk or horses.

The second half of the book is bit of a slog, comprising of very brief and unsatisfying synopses of well known history. The fall of the western Roman Empire gets maybe two paragraphs. Readers need only skim this material. Also, disappointingly, there are factual errors, likely due to Cunliffe writing outside his expertise. As a Roman history buff, I did a double take when told that the last Western emperor was deposed in the famous year of 467!

Overall, I appreciate the book for the chapters on prehistory and for giving the reader a grand sense of perspective. States and kingdoms rise and fall on the same geographic canvas and will do so for all the days to come.

[Pathikrit Basu · Rating 4 out of 5]

An epic read tracing Eurasian history from the end of the ice age to the end of Mongols and the role changing climate and geographical features play on a massive scale spanning millennia.
The book starts a little dry with a lot of reference to climatic conditions influencing behavioural changes from hunter gatherers to a pastoralist and agrarian society but you soon appreciate the significance that the steppes had in influencing the known ancient civilizations of the Egyptians, Mesopotamians and Chinese and later Romans and the middle East.
It does pick up steam from 1000 BC and gives us a sweeping view of the rise and fall of empires and their interactions through the silk roads of the steppes and the oceans.
My only peeve which prevents me from giving the book a full 5 stars is a certain bias of downplaying the significance of India and South East Asia towards the trade building between West and East. It is well established that the Silk routes weren't just land routes and in fact the bulk of trade happened from the red sea and Persian gulf to the Arabian Sea and across the Indian peninsula to China via South East Asia. With the constant conflict between Romans and Parthians and then Sassanians it is conceivable to believe that major trade was happening between Rome and China through the steppes. (Side note - my hypothesis on the author's inherent bias against South Asia was further validated when he conveniently doesn't even give credit for the birth of zero to India and puts it on China :) ).
Neverheless a good read to have to appreciate the sheer scale and sweeping changes that happened in Eurasia spanning 10 millennia. I would recomend to balance the author's inherent bias with Dalyrimple's Golden Road which upvotes the role of the Sea routes more than the Silk roads. (I believe both books have bias across the spectrum but only if you read both would you end somewhere in the centre with a broad understanding of Eurasian history and the interactions between West and East)

[Erik Champenois · Rating 4 out of 5]

"By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean" is a beautiful book - full of photos and maps - that explains and illustrates the connectivities of Eurasian history from prehistoric times through ~1300. Though the book covers both the steppe, desert, and ocean connections, it is first and foremost focused on the steppes - and helped, more than any other book I've read so far, provide a more holistic view of the impact and influence of the steppes on Eurasian history. I already knew much of the history contained in this book - but also learned a lot that I didn't know, and mostly improved my overall perspective of Eurasian history.

The steppes is an ecological zone that stretches, nearly uninterrupted, from Mongolia to the Hungarian plain. Riding by horse, it is possible to cover that amount of territory in merely half a year. Ecological and population pressures in the east often resulted in the western movement of steppes people, disrupting and conquering (and becoming) sedentary cultures in their wake. The interaction between nomadic and sedentary peoples, including the constant movement of nomadic peoples from east to west, significantly influenced Chinese, north Indian, Central Asian, Persian, Caucasian, Anatolian, and Eastern European history. The book covers a nearly endless array of steppes peoples and their influence on Eurasian history: the Scythians, Parthians, Xiongnu, Huns, Avars, Turks, Mongols, and many others.

This is the second Barry Cunliffe book I've read (I read his "Europe between the Oceans" nearly a decade ago) and it's just as readable, digestible, and exciting archeological-historical synthesis of Big History as his prior book. I look forward to reading his book on North Africa in the future.

[Norman Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a splendid book, covering 10,000 years of history very succinctly and offering a well-balanced broad overview of human development in Eurasia.

There is a lot that is omitted, of course. The author says that there are paragraphs that could be chapters. Indeed, there are sentences that could be books! The challenge of trying to cover this much time and space require omission.

The book is very well illustrated, with maps galore, sketches, and photographs of some archaeological finds, buildings, and other artifacts. The maps are essential, as most of the geography will be known only vaguely by most of the readers.

The book is very dense with information, and a great deal of it was new to me even though I have been keenly reading histories for the last 55 years or so. Archaeology has really opened vast new fields of knowledge over those 55 years.

I am enthusiastic about books which shed light on what I call my "fields of ignorance" - things that I knew that I did not know. This book did that, but in addition, it revealed that there are far broader fields that I was, until now, ignorant of - things that I didn't even know that I did not know. What a pleasure to be able to look forward to even more exploration of these fields in coming years!

[Nosemonkey · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a synthesis of several thousand years of history and pre-history (from roughly the end of the last ice age to roughly the 15th century and Age of Exploration that unlocked sea routes to Asia), this is fairly solid - albeit it reads a bit like a succession of Wikipedia entries in places.

The trouble is that there's a thesis here - laid out neatly in the final chapter - that gets lost with all the sidetracks. To make sense of the flow of people and goods through Central Asia, do we really need diversions about the rise of Charlemagne? And if the rise of major political powers at either end of the trade routes - Rome, China, Persia, Islam - was part of the driving force, why so little attention paid to India, South East Asia, or even Egypt? And - really - did half the book need to be devoted to pre-history, when all there is to go on is sparse archaeological evidence and lots of repetitive speculation?

[Carlos · Rating 1 out of 5]

Cunliffe seeks to join the histories of the western and eastern reaches of the vast Eurasian continent through an overview of the many steppe cultures that populated its interior. He seeks to frame the discussion of common east-to-west movement of steppe peoples through the geographic and climactic features that favored movement in this direction. While the work makes interesting connections, the need to keep pace with developments across such vast landscapes meant that the reader was forced to go back and forth over each period and each region. Though Cunliffe certainly seeks to minimize the detail so as to not overburden the reader further, the narrative nonetheless becomes unwieldy and distracting.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a magisterial overview, both in time and space, connecting the Near East with the Far East, with Central Asia getting the attention it deserves. It could serve as the primary text for an undergraduate survey course, and one could supplement it with narrowly focused studies of one's choosing. The book reads much better than any textbook, and it contains helpful maps and beautiful illustrations. I primarily focused on the first two chapters, which focus on the elements of history that are only accessible through archaeology and the natural sciences, since they predate written language.

[Ronan Lyons · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic and wonderfully clear overview of the (pre)history of Eurasia from the 9th millennium BCE to the 14th century CE, with a particular emphasis on the interaction between sedentary states and predatory nomadic polities, of which there have been am almost infinite supply over the last few millennia! Cunliffe is clearly a master of his topic but also an accomplished writer - even the first and final chapters alone should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in the forces that have shaped world history. What more can I say? Read it!

[Cynthia Fuller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great tome; what a ride! Lots of detail, so it reads a bit like a Russian novel. But a fascinating book. I did notice some "male bias" where the author discusses groups invading and killing all the men and "marrying" the women to change the genetic makeup of culture. Marrying the women? C'mon, call it what it is - wholesale rape. We need to bring out the truth about our history if we are ever going to outgrow our more violent tendencies.