Looking for book recommendations for ancient histories of all continents.

by Poopiepants666

I have a few caveats:

  1. I am mainly interested in the period just before the creation of cities all the way up to circa 1000 CE. This is not a hard deadline year - just a period that is considerably pre-Renaissance. A complete early history of the Ottoman Empire is an exception to this time period. There would obviously be others.
  2. I am looking for overviews of large regions, not intensive in-depth histories of small city states. Bonus for overlapping cultural influences with other continents.
  3. I would much prefer histories that do not focus solely on wars. I know that ancient and early histories are largely comprised of this topic, but it is not my main area of interest. Some war is fine, but preferably it would be less than 50% of the book.
  4. Although I am looking for books devoted to entire regions and/or continents, I am particularly interested in ancient China, India, and sub-Saharan Africa. Please, no Egypt-specific recommendations - I already have plenty.

Thanks in advance for your recommendations :)

xLuthienx

Three books on antiquity that I have found to be of great quality and encompass a wide geographic area are:

Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek - this book is a great history that focuses not just on Babylon but the entire Mesopotamian/Near East region. It covers the creation of the first cities like Eridu to the Persian take-over of Babylon by Cyrus.

1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline - I can never recommend this book enough to people. It is written by one of the world's top scholars on the Late Bronze Age in a way that's easily accessible to lay readers. The geographic area covered by Cline covers places like Mycenae to Anatolia, and the Near East. Cline does an amazing job illustrating the connections between Bronze Age civilizations in this book.

Ghost On The Throne by James Romm- This book is primarily a narrative history covering the years following Alexander The Great's death. It heavily focuses on the Macedonian elite but also includes how their power struggles influenced regions like Afghanistan and India.

I hope this helped!