What Makes Civilization? The Ancient Near East and the Future of the West Quotes

“Civilizations, from the perspective of history, are shown to be the outcome of mixtures and borrowings, often of quite arbitrary things, but always on a prodigious scale.”
― David Wengrow, What Makes Civilization?: The Ancient Near East and the Future of the West

“Antiquity and modernity are cut from the same cloth. That is to say, our sense of things being ‘ancient’ is produced—both historically and in practice—by the sense that we ourselves are ‘modern’.”
― David Wengrow, What Makes Civilization?: The Ancient Near East and the Future of the West

“The idea of civilization has always been linked to the desire for universal history; a history that transcends written records, extending back in time to the origins of our species, outwards in space to encompass the full range of contemporary human diversity, and—at least in its early formulations—onwards into some improved future condition.”
― David Wengrow, What Makes Civilization?: The Ancient Near East and the Future of the West