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The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection
From language to culture to cultural collision: the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age
Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative.
Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories--to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable. Ultimately these became the basis for empires, civilizations, and cultures. And when various narratives began to collide and overlap, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs.
Through vivid stories studded with insights, Tamim Ansary illuminates the world-historical consequences of the unique human capacity to invent and communicate abstract ideas. In doing so, he also explains our ever-more-intertwined present: the narratives now shaping us, the reasons we still battle one another, and the future we may yet create.
Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative.
Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories--to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable. Ultimately these became the basis for empires, civilizations, and cultures. And when various narratives began to collide and overlap, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs.
Through vivid stories studded with insights, Tamim Ansary illuminates the world-historical consequences of the unique human capacity to invent and communicate abstract ideas. In doing so, he also explains our ever-more-intertwined present: the narratives now shaping us, the reasons we still battle one another, and the future we may yet create.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2019
About the author
Tamim Ansary
28 books472 followersMir Tamim Ansary is an Afghan-American author and public speaker. Ansary gained prominence in 2001 after he penned a widely circulated e-mail that denounced the Taliban but warned of the dangers of a military intervention by the United States. The e-mail was a response to a call to bomb Afghanistan "into the Stone Age." His book West of Kabul, East of New York published shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, is a literary memoir recounting his bicultural perspective on contemporary world conflicts. Ansary writes about Islam, Afghanistan, and history. His book Destiny Disrupted retells the history of the world through Islamic eyes. His new book The Invention of Yesterday explores the role of narrative as a force in world history Ansary directed the San Francisco Writers Workshop for 22 years.
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August 19, 2021
Time, said Heraclitus the Dark, is a river, an endless, ceaseless flow into which no one steps twice, and from its unfathomable waters Tamim Ansary has written a pond: broad, flat, and shallow. But no, “The Invention of Yesterday,” whatever its other innumerable faults, is too vast and imposing. It is more of a swamp.
Through its bogs and quicksands, Ansary proposes to stalk the most elusive of Big History’s big game, the causes and processes of cultural evolution. He thinks he's tracked them down to some nebulous quality he calls “narrative.” Later, this becomes “master narrative” and sometimes “world narratives” whose “interconnectedness” form a “through line” across “world historical monads” in “intercommunicative zones,” whatever those may be. In this thicket of arglebargle he imagines he has cornered his prey.
Right from the start, you know your guide is unreliable. With the confidence of the utterly lost, Ansary early on decrees that human history began some hundred thousand years ago when “true language came into being.” To his credit, Ansary has managed to commit two fallacies in just five words, no mean feat. Anything which may not fit his subsequent thesis will be dismissed like a counterfeit Scotsman as no true language, with the thesis itself one gigantic begged question.
Narrative, as Ansary has it, may well be an inherent function of human language, and language itself a primary attribute distinguishing our species from our predecessors, but so what? Apart from its artifacts, what is narrative itself? How did it so blithely come into being and what shapes it? Riddle me that, and then the bewildering skeins of human culture and random chains of historical causation might well untangle. At this point Ansary might have spoken usefully of evolutionary biology, of climate and geography, of resource distribution, of the human psychological gestalt, or of memetics and communication theory, say. Instead we get a Gee Whiz tour of history from a pop psyche perspective, as if "The Decline of the West" were a postapocalyptic YA novel about vampires.
For make no mistake, this is a very bad book. It is junk history, replete with errors you’d question in a high school term paper. Ansary cannot be bothered to get his facts right. In the most egregious example, the Ming Great Wall of China is “the only man-made artifact visible from space today.” No, it’s not. Its color blends in to the terrain; at best it is marginally visible under ideal conditions from low earth orbit if you know where to look, but so are any number of bridges. The natural reservoir of the Black Death was “people living in the Himalayan foothills.” No, it wasn’t. Plague is a very young pathogen that evolved as an enzootic disease among marmots, but opportunistically infects through the vector of fleas other rodents such as rats and mammals such as man. Gutenberg only “figured out” printing “with an adaptation of the wine press.” No, he didn’t. Presses had been used to print patterns onto textiles for centuries by then, while woodcuts and even playing cards were being printed when Gutenberg was born. His precise methods are still debated, but since he was a goldsmith he almost certainly made matrixes that let him cast moveable type from lead. Gutenberg deserves credit for the invention of publishing, for which Ansary has more reason to be grateful than his readers. Ansary repays his debt by reducing Gutenberg to some guy who found that a screw press can squish almost anything.
It’s junk logic, too, full of contradictions. Having beaten the Templars, for instance, the Mongol Empire “stood poised to sweep across Europe to the Atlantic Ocean.” Two paragraphs later, having lost to the Mamluks, “it had surely reached its absolute administrative limit.” The Persians had their “huge empire humming like a well-tuned engine.” A few pages later after Salamis, they “had to slink home in defeat.” Ansary, always one to print the legend, calls the Persians “overextended” against Greeks enjoying the “unified coherence of a people fighting at home.” That’s the same story Herodotus tells, of course, but he was an Athenian. The Persian Empire flowered for another full century until Alexander, and the so-called Greek victory was as much merely a Persian strategic withdrawal. Ansary is as credulous of such lore as Herodotus himself buying a tall tale about the pyramids from an Egyptian huckster.
Some of this might be forgivable if the book were well written, but alas. Its prose aims for breezy and finds windy instead. His style might be called conversational if you enjoy trivial personal asides about his handwriting and the camels in Kabul. He scatters italics and flings exclamation marks when he’s afraid you might be missing a point, but he should’ve tried stronger and more vivid language instead. The overall effect is as monotonous as an evening watching Uncle Harry’s slide show of his trip to Nova Scotia. The insipidness descends to functional illiteracy at one point on page 248. In the wake of the Black Plague, people question the Catholic narrative, “not it’s accuracy but its relevance.” I’d like to believe this butchery an erratum, but I have my doubts. Maybe the Hatchette Book Group can’t afford truth checkers to correct all Ansary’s errors of fact, evidence, and reasoning, there’s just so many of them. But haven’t they even any proofreaders?
The often sophomoric and always slipshod language is more part of the conceptual vacuum at the book’s core than you might think. Ansary papers over every exception to his vaporous theories with semantics. In discussing nation-states, for instance, he notes China’s resistance to his model, so, neither empire nor nation-state, it becomes “to coin a term, a civilization-state.” Ansary is forever coining terms, most of which, like “narrative” and the especially clunky “intercommunicative zone,” mean nothing in particular. Otherwise, like Humpty Dumpty on a meth bender, he renames concepts which have perfectly well understood names already. The Middle East, or Southwest Asia if you prefer, becomes the “Islamic Middle World.” The High Middle Ages, or Late Medieval Era if you prefer, become the “Long Crusades.” The Enlightenment becomes the “progress narrative,” the Columbian Exchange the “Columbus moment,” the Industrial Revolution “the invention explosion,” and so on, ads infinitum, absurdum, and nauseum. None of Ansary’s clumsy neologisms contribute a thing to the discussion. Perhaps the clumsiest, bleshing, when cultures both blend and mesh, he stole from eminent hack Theodore Sturgeon. A distinction which makes no difference is Ansary’s stock in trade, but it shouldn’t sound like Sylvester the Cat saying grace.
Most ethereal of all these phantoms, even more undefined than narrative itself, is the word constellation, so roundly abused here as to lose all meaning. Sometimes it's social groups, sometimes cultural associations, sometimes public institutions and agencies, sometimes a society or culture as a whole, and when Ansary needs it to, sometimes all of suffering humanity standing on its ear. It’s like a four-syllable relative pronoun he trots out whenever he can’t think of the name of something. He couldn’t be less specific if he were using a bowl of Alpha-Bits.
It’s a rule of thumb that when you have something important to say, use the simplest, clearest, and most direct language possible. By the obvious corollary, “The Invention of Yesterday” conceals its paucity of conception within dense, choking clouds of gaseous verbiage. The jungle of jargon closes in, the swamp of inanity swallows all. Gertrude Stein would’ve said there is no here, here, but then, Gertrude would’ve had the common sense not to gag this whole turkey down like I did. It lacks any explanatory power whatsoever, and any comparison to “Guns, Germs, and Steel” is empty flattery. Next to Jared Diamond, Tamim Ansary is cubic zirconium. It’s too late for me, but you can still save yourself.
Through its bogs and quicksands, Ansary proposes to stalk the most elusive of Big History’s big game, the causes and processes of cultural evolution. He thinks he's tracked them down to some nebulous quality he calls “narrative.” Later, this becomes “master narrative” and sometimes “world narratives” whose “interconnectedness” form a “through line” across “world historical monads” in “intercommunicative zones,” whatever those may be. In this thicket of arglebargle he imagines he has cornered his prey.
Right from the start, you know your guide is unreliable. With the confidence of the utterly lost, Ansary early on decrees that human history began some hundred thousand years ago when “true language came into being.” To his credit, Ansary has managed to commit two fallacies in just five words, no mean feat. Anything which may not fit his subsequent thesis will be dismissed like a counterfeit Scotsman as no true language, with the thesis itself one gigantic begged question.
Narrative, as Ansary has it, may well be an inherent function of human language, and language itself a primary attribute distinguishing our species from our predecessors, but so what? Apart from its artifacts, what is narrative itself? How did it so blithely come into being and what shapes it? Riddle me that, and then the bewildering skeins of human culture and random chains of historical causation might well untangle. At this point Ansary might have spoken usefully of evolutionary biology, of climate and geography, of resource distribution, of the human psychological gestalt, or of memetics and communication theory, say. Instead we get a Gee Whiz tour of history from a pop psyche perspective, as if "The Decline of the West" were a postapocalyptic YA novel about vampires.
For make no mistake, this is a very bad book. It is junk history, replete with errors you’d question in a high school term paper. Ansary cannot be bothered to get his facts right. In the most egregious example, the Ming Great Wall of China is “the only man-made artifact visible from space today.” No, it’s not. Its color blends in to the terrain; at best it is marginally visible under ideal conditions from low earth orbit if you know where to look, but so are any number of bridges. The natural reservoir of the Black Death was “people living in the Himalayan foothills.” No, it wasn’t. Plague is a very young pathogen that evolved as an enzootic disease among marmots, but opportunistically infects through the vector of fleas other rodents such as rats and mammals such as man. Gutenberg only “figured out” printing “with an adaptation of the wine press.” No, he didn’t. Presses had been used to print patterns onto textiles for centuries by then, while woodcuts and even playing cards were being printed when Gutenberg was born. His precise methods are still debated, but since he was a goldsmith he almost certainly made matrixes that let him cast moveable type from lead. Gutenberg deserves credit for the invention of publishing, for which Ansary has more reason to be grateful than his readers. Ansary repays his debt by reducing Gutenberg to some guy who found that a screw press can squish almost anything.
It’s junk logic, too, full of contradictions. Having beaten the Templars, for instance, the Mongol Empire “stood poised to sweep across Europe to the Atlantic Ocean.” Two paragraphs later, having lost to the Mamluks, “it had surely reached its absolute administrative limit.” The Persians had their “huge empire humming like a well-tuned engine.” A few pages later after Salamis, they “had to slink home in defeat.” Ansary, always one to print the legend, calls the Persians “overextended” against Greeks enjoying the “unified coherence of a people fighting at home.” That’s the same story Herodotus tells, of course, but he was an Athenian. The Persian Empire flowered for another full century until Alexander, and the so-called Greek victory was as much merely a Persian strategic withdrawal. Ansary is as credulous of such lore as Herodotus himself buying a tall tale about the pyramids from an Egyptian huckster.
Some of this might be forgivable if the book were well written, but alas. Its prose aims for breezy and finds windy instead. His style might be called conversational if you enjoy trivial personal asides about his handwriting and the camels in Kabul. He scatters italics and flings exclamation marks when he’s afraid you might be missing a point, but he should’ve tried stronger and more vivid language instead. The overall effect is as monotonous as an evening watching Uncle Harry’s slide show of his trip to Nova Scotia. The insipidness descends to functional illiteracy at one point on page 248. In the wake of the Black Plague, people question the Catholic narrative, “not it’s accuracy but its relevance.” I’d like to believe this butchery an erratum, but I have my doubts. Maybe the Hatchette Book Group can’t afford truth checkers to correct all Ansary’s errors of fact, evidence, and reasoning, there’s just so many of them. But haven’t they even any proofreaders?
The often sophomoric and always slipshod language is more part of the conceptual vacuum at the book’s core than you might think. Ansary papers over every exception to his vaporous theories with semantics. In discussing nation-states, for instance, he notes China’s resistance to his model, so, neither empire nor nation-state, it becomes “to coin a term, a civilization-state.” Ansary is forever coining terms, most of which, like “narrative” and the especially clunky “intercommunicative zone,” mean nothing in particular. Otherwise, like Humpty Dumpty on a meth bender, he renames concepts which have perfectly well understood names already. The Middle East, or Southwest Asia if you prefer, becomes the “Islamic Middle World.” The High Middle Ages, or Late Medieval Era if you prefer, become the “Long Crusades.” The Enlightenment becomes the “progress narrative,” the Columbian Exchange the “Columbus moment,” the Industrial Revolution “the invention explosion,” and so on, ads infinitum, absurdum, and nauseum. None of Ansary’s clumsy neologisms contribute a thing to the discussion. Perhaps the clumsiest, bleshing, when cultures both blend and mesh, he stole from eminent hack Theodore Sturgeon. A distinction which makes no difference is Ansary’s stock in trade, but it shouldn’t sound like Sylvester the Cat saying grace.
Most ethereal of all these phantoms, even more undefined than narrative itself, is the word constellation, so roundly abused here as to lose all meaning. Sometimes it's social groups, sometimes cultural associations, sometimes public institutions and agencies, sometimes a society or culture as a whole, and when Ansary needs it to, sometimes all of suffering humanity standing on its ear. It’s like a four-syllable relative pronoun he trots out whenever he can’t think of the name of something. He couldn’t be less specific if he were using a bowl of Alpha-Bits.
It’s a rule of thumb that when you have something important to say, use the simplest, clearest, and most direct language possible. By the obvious corollary, “The Invention of Yesterday” conceals its paucity of conception within dense, choking clouds of gaseous verbiage. The jungle of jargon closes in, the swamp of inanity swallows all. Gertrude Stein would’ve said there is no here, here, but then, Gertrude would’ve had the common sense not to gag this whole turkey down like I did. It lacks any explanatory power whatsoever, and any comparison to “Guns, Germs, and Steel” is empty flattery. Next to Jared Diamond, Tamim Ansary is cubic zirconium. It’s too late for me, but you can still save yourself.
December 28, 2019
Consider the game Chess. When invented in India around 600 CE,it was called Chaturanga,which meant "4 branches or limbs". Unlike the modern version it was a game of 4 players. One represented The King and One Top General from two sides.The rest of pieces stood for: Chariots/Cavalry/Elephants/Foot-Soldiers-Typical divisions of Indian armies at that time.
From India the game flowed to Persia,whose worldview consisted polarity as the fundamental principle of reality i.e. Light V Dark,Good V Evil etc etc. In that context,the game Chaturanga turned into a game for 2 players each having 16 pieces.The board was also redesigned featuring alternating squares of black and white.The Genreal became the Vizier. Why? Every persian monarch had one of those. Since Chariots were no longer used in war,it became in the game, a Rukh,a gigantic bird of Persian Folklore.Also the name changed to similar sounding persian word " Sataranj".
When the game permeated to Western Europe through Spain in medieval times,it changed again to fit the European Narrative.The Vizier became the Queen,The Cavalry to Knights,the Elephants to Bishops.What happened to Rukh?Europe has no folklore equivalent to Rukh but as it sounded like roq(French for Stone), the piece became Stone Castle.
Though the surface features were changed the internal structure(no of pieces,the movement)remain unchanged.The King remained the most precious though he hardly did anything.The pawns remained pawns cause every society has lots of those.
What we learn from this evolution of chess is that as people interact,ripple effects pass fron one human culture to another,and in the process some things change,some dont and sometimes something new comes into being-in general,something bigger.
This book is basically the retelling of those ripple effects of one human society interacting with another for the last 50000 years.In this riveting, erudite but essentially a very long esaay on human story Tamim Ansary views History as not isolated rather connected by people/invention/catastrophe in short any activity done by big Communities .So what happened in China ultimately affects Rome.How? the building of The Great Wall forces the nomadic tribes to go west and ultimately attack Rome..It doesnt happen instantly but gradually.so it may look like an isolated incident but ultimately it was connected by the Great Wall.This is only an example from many described in the book.
According to the book, Human History is shaped by 3 : Geography,Tool and Language.The Writer's brilliance is his weaving of these 3 to form a coherent narrative which at no times felt boring.His progression of different cultures shaped by the Master Narrative of that geography bound communication zone is simple but brilliantly written. Master Narratives are important beacuse in a intercommunicative zone (the zone with similar geography,race,family bonding) people find similarties with each other with these narratives.Some Narratives grow bigger with time and ultimately they become independent of the geograph. The abrahamic religions(Islam,Chritinaity)are prime examples.Sometimes big master narratives co-exist with each other because their view though not the same,are similar and compatible. May be this is the reason why there is so much divide in the Indian Sub continent,cause Islam and Hiduism is totally non-compatible.So it is also very evident that there is nothing pure about culture or race,which right now is sweeping through the Globe in the name of Patriotism and Anti-immigrant movemen.
A fascinating book in many ways.It answered my question of how Buddihism went to China,why the mongols didnt last long,how Islam turned inward after the Mongol Invasion and many more.with all these answered finally The Book asked how can we all create a Master Narrative/Narratives which is /are inclusive and global enough to build a bettet future.Cause without that there will be no concensus among human tribes bout the impending climate catastrophe and many other troubles of Modern Times.
Could have write so many more about this book,but i think it will be too long a review.However this is a sweeping,easy to digest,easy to grasp history book(not in a traditional way of telling though) every aspiring reader should read. A better book than sapiens in my opinion
My rating -5/5
From India the game flowed to Persia,whose worldview consisted polarity as the fundamental principle of reality i.e. Light V Dark,Good V Evil etc etc. In that context,the game Chaturanga turned into a game for 2 players each having 16 pieces.The board was also redesigned featuring alternating squares of black and white.The Genreal became the Vizier. Why? Every persian monarch had one of those. Since Chariots were no longer used in war,it became in the game, a Rukh,a gigantic bird of Persian Folklore.Also the name changed to similar sounding persian word " Sataranj".
When the game permeated to Western Europe through Spain in medieval times,it changed again to fit the European Narrative.The Vizier became the Queen,The Cavalry to Knights,the Elephants to Bishops.What happened to Rukh?Europe has no folklore equivalent to Rukh but as it sounded like roq(French for Stone), the piece became Stone Castle.
Though the surface features were changed the internal structure(no of pieces,the movement)remain unchanged.The King remained the most precious though he hardly did anything.The pawns remained pawns cause every society has lots of those.
What we learn from this evolution of chess is that as people interact,ripple effects pass fron one human culture to another,and in the process some things change,some dont and sometimes something new comes into being-in general,something bigger.
This book is basically the retelling of those ripple effects of one human society interacting with another for the last 50000 years.In this riveting, erudite but essentially a very long esaay on human story Tamim Ansary views History as not isolated rather connected by people/invention/catastrophe in short any activity done by big Communities .So what happened in China ultimately affects Rome.How? the building of The Great Wall forces the nomadic tribes to go west and ultimately attack Rome..It doesnt happen instantly but gradually.so it may look like an isolated incident but ultimately it was connected by the Great Wall.This is only an example from many described in the book.
According to the book, Human History is shaped by 3 : Geography,Tool and Language.The Writer's brilliance is his weaving of these 3 to form a coherent narrative which at no times felt boring.His progression of different cultures shaped by the Master Narrative of that geography bound communication zone is simple but brilliantly written. Master Narratives are important beacuse in a intercommunicative zone (the zone with similar geography,race,family bonding) people find similarties with each other with these narratives.Some Narratives grow bigger with time and ultimately they become independent of the geograph. The abrahamic religions(Islam,Chritinaity)are prime examples.Sometimes big master narratives co-exist with each other because their view though not the same,are similar and compatible. May be this is the reason why there is so much divide in the Indian Sub continent,cause Islam and Hiduism is totally non-compatible.So it is also very evident that there is nothing pure about culture or race,which right now is sweeping through the Globe in the name of Patriotism and Anti-immigrant movemen.
A fascinating book in many ways.It answered my question of how Buddihism went to China,why the mongols didnt last long,how Islam turned inward after the Mongol Invasion and many more.with all these answered finally The Book asked how can we all create a Master Narrative/Narratives which is /are inclusive and global enough to build a bettet future.Cause without that there will be no concensus among human tribes bout the impending climate catastrophe and many other troubles of Modern Times.
Could have write so many more about this book,but i think it will be too long a review.However this is a sweeping,easy to digest,easy to grasp history book(not in a traditional way of telling though) every aspiring reader should read. A better book than sapiens in my opinion
My rating -5/5
January 27, 2022
The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection
By Tamin Ansary. History can be dull, lets not lie..and beat around the bush, but Tamin's style is like a good friend visiting for wine and cheese, and conversation might turn to some random fact in history, which he tells in a fascinating manner, then he keeps going and going like the every ready bunny. Not once did I feel bored and seeing history from an Afghanistan gentleman is refreshing if what confusing to what I read of most western writers of history, well sometimes, but then you stop think hang on mate, that make sense and its sort of cool. I admit several holy smokes moments rose up and bit me in the proverbial. Don't Fear he's far less humorous than Bill Bryson, Ansary does have his moments, versus laugh a minute short history of the world' but still engaging enough. Then if somewhat he kind of dangerously skirting towards borderline Graham Hancock pseudoscience. All in all its fun enough sometimes a bit left field but hey judge it for yourself.
By Tamin Ansary. History can be dull, lets not lie..and beat around the bush, but Tamin's style is like a good friend visiting for wine and cheese, and conversation might turn to some random fact in history, which he tells in a fascinating manner, then he keeps going and going like the every ready bunny. Not once did I feel bored and seeing history from an Afghanistan gentleman is refreshing if what confusing to what I read of most western writers of history, well sometimes, but then you stop think hang on mate, that make sense and its sort of cool. I admit several holy smokes moments rose up and bit me in the proverbial. Don't Fear he's far less humorous than Bill Bryson, Ansary does have his moments, versus laugh a minute short history of the world' but still engaging enough. Then if somewhat he kind of dangerously skirting towards borderline Graham Hancock pseudoscience. All in all its fun enough sometimes a bit left field but hey judge it for yourself.
March 8, 2020
Like the butterfly effect, what happened in China affected what happened in Rome; what the Vikings did affected the world. No culture is ‘pure’; every nation has been changed by others. We are all interconnected; progress does not take place in a vacuum.
The average world history book aimed at the English speaking world tends to start with the Fertile Crescent, give a fair bit of time to the Greeks and Romans, and then go straight to Western Europe for the rest of the book, with some time spent on North and South America. Ansary looks beyond those, and focuses mainly on connections. The far flung Roman Empire put many different cultures and religions in touch with each other, as did the Vikings, and then the Crusades. When Columbus discovered the Americas, a whole new world of cultures, foods, animals, and inventions collided and merged. The advent of factory work changed how the world worked, as much or more than the transistor did. Communications and management changed the world as much as armies and navies did.
The book reminded me of “Guns, Germs, and Steel” in the way the author looked at things other than kings and armies as forces that shaped our civilization. Ansary's is a bit more casually written, at times drifting into slang, but the thinking and writing is solid. I enjoyed this book a lot, and it taught me things I’d not thought of before.
The average world history book aimed at the English speaking world tends to start with the Fertile Crescent, give a fair bit of time to the Greeks and Romans, and then go straight to Western Europe for the rest of the book, with some time spent on North and South America. Ansary looks beyond those, and focuses mainly on connections. The far flung Roman Empire put many different cultures and religions in touch with each other, as did the Vikings, and then the Crusades. When Columbus discovered the Americas, a whole new world of cultures, foods, animals, and inventions collided and merged. The advent of factory work changed how the world worked, as much or more than the transistor did. Communications and management changed the world as much as armies and navies did.
The book reminded me of “Guns, Germs, and Steel” in the way the author looked at things other than kings and armies as forces that shaped our civilization. Ansary's is a bit more casually written, at times drifting into slang, but the thinking and writing is solid. I enjoyed this book a lot, and it taught me things I’d not thought of before.
January 29, 2020
If you think history is a cold recitation of dates and the names of kings and battles, you owe it to yourself to check out Big History. And the best introduction I’ve found to that fascinating new field is Tamim Ansary‘s brilliant 50,000-year survey, The Invention of Yesterday. Unlike many of the pioneering books in Big History, Ansary’s is written in a breezy, conversational style that brings the past to life. And, in never straying from the 30,000-foot perspective that characterizes the field, it’s crammed with insight that’s missing from conventional histories that illuminate the trees but miss the forest. Tamim Ansary will help you understand human history as an extraterrestrial might view it.
Everything’s connected to everything else
You might say that the subtext of The Invention of Yesterday is that everything’s connected to everything else. The book emphasizes “interconnectedness itself as an aspect of human history.” Here, for example, is Ansary on some of those connections as they unfolded in what in the European context is called the Middle Ages:
“The humbling of the Song [Dynasty in China], the Turkification of the Islamic world, the Afghan expansion into northern India, the Crusades — these dramas loom large in the world historical narratives of China, India, the Islamic world, and Europe. From the panoramic point of view, however, they look like a single interwoven drama that began in northern Europe, rippled through the Asian steppes, created disruptions in the urban civilizations along the whole perimeter of that region, and resulted finally in that great tilting of the table that shifted the balance of cultural power from the Eurasian east to the Eurasian west. The next five centuries saw this story continue to unfold across a vast swath of planet Earth.”
From Ansary’s perspective, all these changes were triggered by climatic changes in Scandinavia that drove the Vikings south and westward, eventually pushing the nomadic tribes of Central Asia east into China, south into India, and west into the Middle World (a term Ansary uses for the Middle East).
Money, Math, Messaging, Management, and Might
To Ansary, Jared Diamond’s touchstone of “guns, germs, and steel” is a start but only that in illuminating how the West conquered the East. To answer the much broader question of how empires grew throughout history, he asserts that five factors were paramount: Money, Math, Messaging, Management, and Might. In other words, communications capabilities, technology, infrastructure, and management systems helped explain the expansion of empires as surely as the funds to pay for armies and navies and the strength and prowess of those military forces. “The increasing size of empires,” Ansary writes, “correlated to the increasing speed at which messages could be transmitted, which in turn reflected the development of technology and infrastructure.”
Understanding human history as an alien might see it
Historians invariably write from an ethnocentric perspective. “Every world history is really a somebody-centric story framed by a master narrative and puts itself as the center.” By a master narrative, Ansary means this: “every stable society is permeated by a social paradigm that organizes human interactions, gives purpose to people’s lives, and makes most events meaningful.” In other words, the widely known view of the Chinese through the ages that their empire was the center of the world is just one example. Read any history of Europe or Western civilization, and you’ll find much the same point of view. And every one of what Ansary calls the “world historical monads” — China, India, Western Europe, and Islam — is grounded in a coherent narrative about its origins and the cultural values on which its civilization is grounded.
Gaining perspective on the broad sweep of history
For the most part, Ansary eschews assigning dates to individual events. The book accounts for developments that evolve over hundreds or thousands of years. But one of the few dates he celebrates is 1492. “If history is the drama of ever-increasing interconnectedness, Columbus’s first voyage to America must be considered the pivotal event — the event that ‘changed everything.'” Then, the two halves of the planet came together in what other historians call the Columbian Exchange, forever altering the economic and political history of the Eurasian states and eradicating more than 90 percent of the people of the Americas.
“[T]he pandemic triggered by Columbus’s epic journey must be considered the single greatest catastrophe in history, dwarfing the Mongol holocaust, the Black Death, and the world wars of the twentieth century.” Later, Ansary explains, “three drugs [tobacco, coffee, and alcohol (rum)], along with gold, silver, and cotton — these were the goods that fueled the European colonization of the Americas.” And it’s that perspective from 30,000 feet that characterizes this remarkable book.
An extraordinary, Big-Picture view of the past
It’s difficult for us in modern times to understand just how much larger and more complex the human project has become over the years. Consider this, for instance: “Single cities such as Tokyo, Mumbai, or Sao Paulo have more inhabitants than did the entire earth in 3000 BCE.”
However, you’ll also find less sweeping lessons along the way. If you want to understand the origins of Christian holidays and rituals, the nature of money, and the central importance of geography in understanding history, read The Invention of Yesterday.
About the author
The Invention of Yesterday is the seventh of Tamim Ansary’s books. He is Afghan-American and has written extensively about his native country and about Islam. An author and public speaker, Ansary lives in San Francisco with his wife and two daughters.
Everything’s connected to everything else
You might say that the subtext of The Invention of Yesterday is that everything’s connected to everything else. The book emphasizes “interconnectedness itself as an aspect of human history.” Here, for example, is Ansary on some of those connections as they unfolded in what in the European context is called the Middle Ages:
“The humbling of the Song [Dynasty in China], the Turkification of the Islamic world, the Afghan expansion into northern India, the Crusades — these dramas loom large in the world historical narratives of China, India, the Islamic world, and Europe. From the panoramic point of view, however, they look like a single interwoven drama that began in northern Europe, rippled through the Asian steppes, created disruptions in the urban civilizations along the whole perimeter of that region, and resulted finally in that great tilting of the table that shifted the balance of cultural power from the Eurasian east to the Eurasian west. The next five centuries saw this story continue to unfold across a vast swath of planet Earth.”
From Ansary’s perspective, all these changes were triggered by climatic changes in Scandinavia that drove the Vikings south and westward, eventually pushing the nomadic tribes of Central Asia east into China, south into India, and west into the Middle World (a term Ansary uses for the Middle East).
Money, Math, Messaging, Management, and Might
To Ansary, Jared Diamond’s touchstone of “guns, germs, and steel” is a start but only that in illuminating how the West conquered the East. To answer the much broader question of how empires grew throughout history, he asserts that five factors were paramount: Money, Math, Messaging, Management, and Might. In other words, communications capabilities, technology, infrastructure, and management systems helped explain the expansion of empires as surely as the funds to pay for armies and navies and the strength and prowess of those military forces. “The increasing size of empires,” Ansary writes, “correlated to the increasing speed at which messages could be transmitted, which in turn reflected the development of technology and infrastructure.”
Understanding human history as an alien might see it
Historians invariably write from an ethnocentric perspective. “Every world history is really a somebody-centric story framed by a master narrative and puts itself as the center.” By a master narrative, Ansary means this: “every stable society is permeated by a social paradigm that organizes human interactions, gives purpose to people’s lives, and makes most events meaningful.” In other words, the widely known view of the Chinese through the ages that their empire was the center of the world is just one example. Read any history of Europe or Western civilization, and you’ll find much the same point of view. And every one of what Ansary calls the “world historical monads” — China, India, Western Europe, and Islam — is grounded in a coherent narrative about its origins and the cultural values on which its civilization is grounded.
Gaining perspective on the broad sweep of history
For the most part, Ansary eschews assigning dates to individual events. The book accounts for developments that evolve over hundreds or thousands of years. But one of the few dates he celebrates is 1492. “If history is the drama of ever-increasing interconnectedness, Columbus’s first voyage to America must be considered the pivotal event — the event that ‘changed everything.'” Then, the two halves of the planet came together in what other historians call the Columbian Exchange, forever altering the economic and political history of the Eurasian states and eradicating more than 90 percent of the people of the Americas.
“[T]he pandemic triggered by Columbus’s epic journey must be considered the single greatest catastrophe in history, dwarfing the Mongol holocaust, the Black Death, and the world wars of the twentieth century.” Later, Ansary explains, “three drugs [tobacco, coffee, and alcohol (rum)], along with gold, silver, and cotton — these were the goods that fueled the European colonization of the Americas.” And it’s that perspective from 30,000 feet that characterizes this remarkable book.
An extraordinary, Big-Picture view of the past
It’s difficult for us in modern times to understand just how much larger and more complex the human project has become over the years. Consider this, for instance: “Single cities such as Tokyo, Mumbai, or Sao Paulo have more inhabitants than did the entire earth in 3000 BCE.”
However, you’ll also find less sweeping lessons along the way. If you want to understand the origins of Christian holidays and rituals, the nature of money, and the central importance of geography in understanding history, read The Invention of Yesterday.
About the author
The Invention of Yesterday is the seventh of Tamim Ansary’s books. He is Afghan-American and has written extensively about his native country and about Islam. An author and public speaker, Ansary lives in San Francisco with his wife and two daughters.
July 20, 2022
Ech, būtų mokykloje kas taip istoriją dėstęs.
February 19, 2024
كتاب رائع! تعجبني الأطروحات التي تستعرض التاريخ البشري كسلسال واحد متداخل ومترابط إنما جدير بالتجزئة والتشريح.
ولأن تاريخ البشرية أكبر من أن يحويه كتاب واحد مهما بلغ حجمه، ولأننا لا نعرف من تاريخنا إلا القدر الذي تم تدوينه وتداوله، فإن هذا الكتاب أعجبني لكونه ركّز على عوالم أو منظومات أو تكتلات الحضارة الكبرى -سمّاها المؤلفConstellations ؛ كيف تفاعلت وترابطت أو تنافرت لتشكل التموجات الرئيسية التي أخذت بالمجتمعات البشرية إلى الحالة الراهنة.
يقول المؤلف؛ أن أهم ما يميز أية منظومة مدنية هو امتلاكها لـ "سردية" مقنعة: قصة ما تبرر وجود سلطتها وتشرعن لهذه السلطة بالحد الكافي لتستكين الشعوب لها وتقنع بالانتماء لها، بل وتقاتل من أجل استمراريتها إن لزم. وبدون تلك المروية/السردية/الحكاية الأم، فإن تماسك النظام الافتراضي سيتهاوى. ستتهاوى السلطة ومعها المجتمع متيحة المجال لـ منظومة أو فضاء آخر ليبتلعها ويسبغ عليها سرديته الجديدة المقنعة.
ذلك كان الحال مع قدماء المصريين ودول ما بين النهرين وأفريقيا تحت الصحراوية والصين والهند وفارس والمنظومات البوذية والإسلامية والبيزنطية والشظايا اليهودية؛ ثم فضاءات الاستعمار والعوالم الجديدة والشركات العابرة للقارات انتهاء بانتصار الرأسمالية وتهافتها إلى استهلاكية فردانية رقمية.. وهي الخاتمة المقلقة التي ينتهي بها الكتاب. وخلال كل تلك التحولات، تتكثف أسئلة الهوية والانتماء العرقي والقومي والجندري وتتشكل طوراً إثر طور. يسري ذلك على الفرد فالعشيرة فالأمّة فالشَعب.
جدير بالذكر أن تميم أنصاري أميركي من أصل أفغاني، وقد برّد قلبي بتناوله للمنظومة الإسلامية بشكل منطقي بعيداً عن ترهات شتات المستشرقين وتهويمات النيوليبراليين.
ولأن تاريخ البشرية أكبر من أن يحويه كتاب واحد مهما بلغ حجمه، ولأننا لا نعرف من تاريخنا إلا القدر الذي تم تدوينه وتداوله، فإن هذا الكتاب أعجبني لكونه ركّز على عوالم أو منظومات أو تكتلات الحضارة الكبرى -سمّاها المؤلفConstellations ؛ كيف تفاعلت وترابطت أو تنافرت لتشكل التموجات الرئيسية التي أخذت بالمجتمعات البشرية إلى الحالة الراهنة.
يقول المؤلف؛ أن أهم ما يميز أية منظومة مدنية هو امتلاكها لـ "سردية" مقنعة: قصة ما تبرر وجود سلطتها وتشرعن لهذه السلطة بالحد الكافي لتستكين الشعوب لها وتقنع بالانتماء لها، بل وتقاتل من أجل استمراريتها إن لزم. وبدون تلك المروية/السردية/الحكاية الأم، فإن تماسك النظام الافتراضي سيتهاوى. ستتهاوى السلطة ومعها المجتمع متيحة المجال لـ منظومة أو فضاء آخر ليبتلعها ويسبغ عليها سرديته الجديدة المقنعة.
ذلك كان الحال مع قدماء المصريين ودول ما بين النهرين وأفريقيا تحت الصحراوية والصين والهند وفارس والمنظومات البوذية والإسلامية والبيزنطية والشظايا اليهودية؛ ثم فضاءات الاستعمار والعوالم الجديدة والشركات العابرة للقارات انتهاء بانتصار الرأسمالية وتهافتها إلى استهلاكية فردانية رقمية.. وهي الخاتمة المقلقة التي ينتهي بها الكتاب. وخلال كل تلك التحولات، تتكثف أسئلة الهوية والانتماء العرقي والقومي والجندري وتتشكل طوراً إثر طور. يسري ذلك على الفرد فالعشيرة فالأمّة فالشَعب.
جدير بالذكر أن تميم أنصاري أميركي من أصل أفغاني، وقد برّد قلبي بتناوله للمنظومة الإسلامية بشكل منطقي بعيداً عن ترهات شتات المستشرقين وتهويمات النيوليبراليين.
June 19, 2019
Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC to review.
I absolutely love this book. Well, it's less a book than an extended essay. It deals with absolutely everything to do with human history and how we relate to one another. I learned quite a bit from this book and it held my interest well. The thoughts and metaphors were incredibly thought provoking and it was well researched. The only true criticism I have for it was the shift in the wording and language choice. Much of the book has very proper and easy read educational language, but the book lapses into common vernacular such as "naw". I found the shifts to be jarring and to lessen the impact of the work and its value. Some editing and a few choices about the intended audience and impact the book is meant to have can clear that problem up. It's still most definitely a five star and fun read.
I absolutely love this book. Well, it's less a book than an extended essay. It deals with absolutely everything to do with human history and how we relate to one another. I learned quite a bit from this book and it held my interest well. The thoughts and metaphors were incredibly thought provoking and it was well researched. The only true criticism I have for it was the shift in the wording and language choice. Much of the book has very proper and easy read educational language, but the book lapses into common vernacular such as "naw". I found the shifts to be jarring and to lessen the impact of the work and its value. Some editing and a few choices about the intended audience and impact the book is meant to have can clear that problem up. It's still most definitely a five star and fun read.
September 29, 2019
The Invention of Yesterday by Tamim Ansary is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in mid-September.
The connectivity of events occurring in different parts of the world, though told with a jutted, sometimes halting narration, sort of like being in careful conversation with someone who’s had a drug or alcohol-based epiphany (i.e. “Dude, I’m telling you, it’s all connected!). However, this makes for much more cohesive reading, since it clears away any kind of academic stuffiness and/or annotations. You just have to read about larger topics, like world religions, civilization-building, the spread of disease, economy, and industry with an occasional “No, hear me out!”
The connectivity of events occurring in different parts of the world, though told with a jutted, sometimes halting narration, sort of like being in careful conversation with someone who’s had a drug or alcohol-based epiphany (i.e. “Dude, I’m telling you, it’s all connected!). However, this makes for much more cohesive reading, since it clears away any kind of academic stuffiness and/or annotations. You just have to read about larger topics, like world religions, civilization-building, the spread of disease, economy, and industry with an occasional “No, hear me out!”
July 28, 2021
A história humana, vista como um imparável fluxo entre civilizações e geografias. Tamim Ansary olha para a história global, dos seus primórdios aos dias de hoje, e filtra-a de acordo com uma perspetiva informacional, ou seja, de que a história não depende das façanhas de homens importantes, ou das decisões, mas sim de um movimento de fluxo de ideias entre blocos civilizacionais, que se vão influenciando mesmo que não tenham relação direta entre si, porque as evoluções e convulsões internas vão sempre alastrar para as fímbrias, onde os mundos se tocam, e com isso repercutir-se em cadeia cíclica.
Ansary divide as grandes civilizações humanas em três: o mundo chinês, que apesar das convulsões da sua história é uma unidade geográfica e cultural contínua há milénios; o mundo médio, desde o crescente fértil ao islamismo contemporâneo; e o mundo ocidental, que tirando o período romano sempre foi relativamente inferior face aos mundos orientais, mas que com a filosofia e a tecnologia, conseguiu impor as suas ambições sobre o planeta. A história global, para este autor, é feita de interações entre estes mundos, apoiados essencialmente numa ideia de narrativa geradora de identidade. Para Ansary, mais do que a capacidade política, militar ou económica, é a visão que um grupo humano tem sobre si mesmo, aquilo a que chama a sua narrativa, o que define as civilizações.
De origem afegã, Ansary traz-nos uma refrescante perspetiva não-ocidental sobre a história. Por outro lado, na sua ambição de olhar para toda a história humana como um contínuo de fluxos de informação interrelacionados, dá-nos um enorme panorama, rico de ideias, mas necessariamente sem as detalhar. Não deixa de ser um livro fascinante, daqueles que nos leva a repensar o que conhecemos, e a olhar de forma diferente para as nossas raízes históricas.
Ansary divide as grandes civilizações humanas em três: o mundo chinês, que apesar das convulsões da sua história é uma unidade geográfica e cultural contínua há milénios; o mundo médio, desde o crescente fértil ao islamismo contemporâneo; e o mundo ocidental, que tirando o período romano sempre foi relativamente inferior face aos mundos orientais, mas que com a filosofia e a tecnologia, conseguiu impor as suas ambições sobre o planeta. A história global, para este autor, é feita de interações entre estes mundos, apoiados essencialmente numa ideia de narrativa geradora de identidade. Para Ansary, mais do que a capacidade política, militar ou económica, é a visão que um grupo humano tem sobre si mesmo, aquilo a que chama a sua narrativa, o que define as civilizações.
De origem afegã, Ansary traz-nos uma refrescante perspetiva não-ocidental sobre a história. Por outro lado, na sua ambição de olhar para toda a história humana como um contínuo de fluxos de informação interrelacionados, dá-nos um enorme panorama, rico de ideias, mas necessariamente sem as detalhar. Não deixa de ser um livro fascinante, daqueles que nos leva a repensar o que conhecemos, e a olhar de forma diferente para as nossas raízes históricas.
August 15, 2019
This is an almighty book and a fascinating journey through thousands of years - looking back at how yesterday was formed geographically, politically, economically, culturally, and socially. How what occurred through the ages was in many ways interconnected just as things are today, but for many reasons we still remain apart - in different worlds - “we” and “others.” Tamim Ansary has done an amazing job weaving boatloads of information from around the world throughout the ages in a digestible and interesting format. This is definitely a book to read and re-read again and again to absorb and retain the myriad pieces of fascinating history, culture, and trivia (but not trivial) interspersed throughout the book. While the book is in essence, the history of the world, it doesn’t feel so with its informal and conversational style (may not be to others’ liking). It almost feels like having a discussion in the coziness of one’s den or living room with a group of friends discussing... the invention of yesterday. A definite five-star plus book. This is my third Ansary book and it’s right up there with the others. A highly recommended read. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this must-read treasure.
August 27, 2020
This was a decent read. The Invention of Yesterday is the chronological telling of the last ~50,000-year history of man; his migrations, subsequent culture, societies, religions, warfare, and disease.
This book covers all the major societies of the World, and all the major pivotal events; from prehistory to the present day. As such, it makes for a great reference resource.
I did find the information presented here very interesting, as he covers quite a bit of ground. However, I found the overall style and writing here to be a bit dry and arduous, which is a common complaint shared with many of the other history books I've read.
Overall, this was a good book, other than a few ridiculous paragraphs near the end about race being a social construct, and not based in biology (eye roll...)
I would recommend it to anyone interested in a big picture history of humanity.
4 stars.
This book covers all the major societies of the World, and all the major pivotal events; from prehistory to the present day. As such, it makes for a great reference resource.
I did find the information presented here very interesting, as he covers quite a bit of ground. However, I found the overall style and writing here to be a bit dry and arduous, which is a common complaint shared with many of the other history books I've read.
Overall, this was a good book, other than a few ridiculous paragraphs near the end about race being a social construct, and not based in biology (eye roll...)
I would recommend it to anyone interested in a big picture history of humanity.
4 stars.
May 11, 2020
The overall book is brief, straight to the point and overly simplistic. Tamim covers all of human history, which is nearly impossible to hit all the important subjects that fuse history together in 400 pages. He missed a few important events that should of been included, or that were briefly skimmed. The writer lacked research through primary sources, which made is writing style seem lazy and brought very little new information to the table. This book should only be recommended if you are new to history.
January 9, 2020
Great great writing. This book discusses one main task of human: the construction of meanings for their life. There are many narratives that move around, evolve, or disappear throughout time. Even though Ansary is extremely knowledgeable, his summary of different narratives is undoubtedly has to be simplified quite a bit. The book tends towards painting big pictures, and so it's up to you to decide whether it fits your taste.
February 4, 2020
Whew! This is one of those books full of a-ha moments. Similar to 'Guns, Germs, and Steel', this book explains how culture and religion contributed to Western Europe's technological advancement beyond the ancient empires of China and Asia. While those two regions recovered from the destruction of the Golden Hordes, only to revert to the navel gazing of their former glories, the backwater Europe could only look to the future. Thus an ethos of progressive thought was born.
July 3, 2020
The Invention of Yesterday would be much more appealing if it got the other half of its facts right. I tried my best to sift through the errors or the simplistic and misleading explanations given by the author, but I don't want to see the end of this. Here are just a few mistakes I spotted that I remember:
A) The original Indian chess pieces in the very beginning of the book are portrayed wrong. I agree that it's a fine example to discuss cultural passage between Asia and Europe, but he could have done some effort and got them right.
B) The author pretty much explicitly says that the development of language is biological and not psychological. As far as its origins go, yeah, but we wouldn't be able to pick them up without social influences. Does he elaborate? Of course not.
C) He states that the island of Madagascar has a language derived from Indonesia due to maritime trade. Ignoring the fact that he doesn't bother to mention either the terms "Austronesian" or "Malagasy", his statement reflects certainty when the reason behind the migration of the Austronesians remains speculation.
I understand that the author probably wished to keep his chapters short and sweet, but poor explanations of his sentences and misleading details could frustrate those who are well versed in the subject and misinform those who are relatively new to the field. For all its readability, still wouldn't recommend this.
A) The original Indian chess pieces in the very beginning of the book are portrayed wrong. I agree that it's a fine example to discuss cultural passage between Asia and Europe, but he could have done some effort and got them right.
B) The author pretty much explicitly says that the development of language is biological and not psychological. As far as its origins go, yeah, but we wouldn't be able to pick them up without social influences. Does he elaborate? Of course not.
C) He states that the island of Madagascar has a language derived from Indonesia due to maritime trade. Ignoring the fact that he doesn't bother to mention either the terms "Austronesian" or "Malagasy", his statement reflects certainty when the reason behind the migration of the Austronesians remains speculation.
I understand that the author probably wished to keep his chapters short and sweet, but poor explanations of his sentences and misleading details could frustrate those who are well versed in the subject and misinform those who are relatively new to the field. For all its readability, still wouldn't recommend this.
March 12, 2021
I am not a history scholar by any means so the brief review of all of human history was somewhat revelatory to me. The interconnectedness the author focused on and the larger world view he presented were also pros in my reading of this book.
However, he had a rather breezy style to his writing, inserting little quips and personal facts, that was quite bothersome. I didn’t want a history textbook, but I did expect a professional presentation. He made some strange analogies throughout the whole book, including this winner: “Like a bipolar parent, the river that was the source of all abundance also unleashed sudden catastrophe from time to time.” An editor worth his or her salt should have pointed out the awkwardness of these anomalous analogies.
The author really seemed to lose his way in the last couple of chapters by philosophically discussing everything facing the world today, including global warming, artificial superintelligence, and mass extinction events, which didn’t seem to fit the purpose of the book. There were a number of typographical errors throughout, which is definitely one of my pet peeves. Finally, I still don’t understand what the title of the book, The Invention of Yesterday, means and how the contents of this book relate to that title.
However, he had a rather breezy style to his writing, inserting little quips and personal facts, that was quite bothersome. I didn’t want a history textbook, but I did expect a professional presentation. He made some strange analogies throughout the whole book, including this winner: “Like a bipolar parent, the river that was the source of all abundance also unleashed sudden catastrophe from time to time.” An editor worth his or her salt should have pointed out the awkwardness of these anomalous analogies.
The author really seemed to lose his way in the last couple of chapters by philosophically discussing everything facing the world today, including global warming, artificial superintelligence, and mass extinction events, which didn’t seem to fit the purpose of the book. There were a number of typographical errors throughout, which is definitely one of my pet peeves. Finally, I still don’t understand what the title of the book, The Invention of Yesterday, means and how the contents of this book relate to that title.
February 19, 2023
It’s one part history book and two parts essay. Tamin Ansary has squeezed 10,000 years of history into a 600-page volume.
Throughout, his central point remains constant. Every culture is defined by a narrative that springs from its religions, its rulers, and its conquests. He finds the roots of today’s Chinese culture (narrative) in the teachings of Confucius and its history of being ruled by all-powerful emperors. The Middle Kingdom of Southern Asia has always been grounded in the combination of state power and Islamic religious teaching.
Europe and western culture stand out as perhaps the only region where the narrative has evolved by virtue of the integration of the Roman Empire and the nomadic tribes of Northern Europe to a “progress narrative” beginning in the Renaissance. It’s a narrative that continues to this day. It gave birth to industrialization, capitalism, and women’s rights.
The details are fascinating, and the author’s command of them is awe-inspiring. It’s a great read and a must for any history buff.
Throughout, his central point remains constant. Every culture is defined by a narrative that springs from its religions, its rulers, and its conquests. He finds the roots of today’s Chinese culture (narrative) in the teachings of Confucius and its history of being ruled by all-powerful emperors. The Middle Kingdom of Southern Asia has always been grounded in the combination of state power and Islamic religious teaching.
Europe and western culture stand out as perhaps the only region where the narrative has evolved by virtue of the integration of the Roman Empire and the nomadic tribes of Northern Europe to a “progress narrative” beginning in the Renaissance. It’s a narrative that continues to this day. It gave birth to industrialization, capitalism, and women’s rights.
The details are fascinating, and the author’s command of them is awe-inspiring. It’s a great read and a must for any history buff.
December 4, 2019
I'm not sure I've ever used the word 'enthralling' to describe a nonfiction book, but The Invention of Yesterday is just that.
The writing is masterful. Tamim Ansary takes us on a journey through 50,000 years of human history. He's like a tour guide, showing us how civilization evolved to where we are now and pointing out the connecting influences from one culture to the next. His approach is unique and thoroughly fascinating.
While Ansary covers an immense amount of material, I never felt overwhelmed by it all. The book's layout is easy to follow, flowing perfectly from one topic to the next.
Clearly this book holds appeal for readers interested in history. But it's so much more. This book is for anyone interested in humanity, our connectedness, how and why our different cultures evolved as they did, the way we identify with our origins, where we came from, and where we're headed.
*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.*
The writing is masterful. Tamim Ansary takes us on a journey through 50,000 years of human history. He's like a tour guide, showing us how civilization evolved to where we are now and pointing out the connecting influences from one culture to the next. His approach is unique and thoroughly fascinating.
While Ansary covers an immense amount of material, I never felt overwhelmed by it all. The book's layout is easy to follow, flowing perfectly from one topic to the next.
Clearly this book holds appeal for readers interested in history. But it's so much more. This book is for anyone interested in humanity, our connectedness, how and why our different cultures evolved as they did, the way we identify with our origins, where we came from, and where we're headed.
*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.*
September 19, 2023
A very interesting point of view on the impact that culture and geography had on the development of mankind. I really enjoyed hearing about the identity of Europe being born from the “otherness” of the Middle Eastern geography.
Only reason I’m not giving five stars is because I wish he would have kept going and given his thoughts on the future. Can’t have that much insight into the past without a couple of opinions on the future!
Only reason I’m not giving five stars is because I wish he would have kept going and given his thoughts on the future. Can’t have that much insight into the past without a couple of opinions on the future!
January 3, 2021
Big History books sacrifice details for detailed discussions on broad across-era trends. Mr. Ansary's fast history book does an excellent job describing the important historic events through headlines and the quickest of summaries but is wanting in sufficient discussions on underlying themes.
On the positive side, the author does an excellent job culling the list. Extremely few history-defining events miss a mention. The summaries are light even for a big history book that is supposed to cover all eras, all regions, and all events, but the book's seamless and lucid account more than makes up for it.
The biggest drawback is the author's desire for a linear historic arc. There is no real-life messiness in the way humanity's story is presented. The author spends absolutely no time discussing what could have been or alternate roads missed. There is a needless inevitability as the author refuses to strongly critic any event or development except the most obviously heinous.
The story arc presented has a handful of obvious themes, but none radical. The author makes no real attempt to present any novel ideas, which would be most jarring for readers who have read other big history works.
The book ends up being little more than a source of quick summaries on hundreds of topics by avoiding anything too contentious. And to be fair, everyone is likely to walk away with a few new information bits from these well-written briefs. Overall, the book will be most valuable for those picking it as their first Big History read.
On the positive side, the author does an excellent job culling the list. Extremely few history-defining events miss a mention. The summaries are light even for a big history book that is supposed to cover all eras, all regions, and all events, but the book's seamless and lucid account more than makes up for it.
The biggest drawback is the author's desire for a linear historic arc. There is no real-life messiness in the way humanity's story is presented. The author spends absolutely no time discussing what could have been or alternate roads missed. There is a needless inevitability as the author refuses to strongly critic any event or development except the most obviously heinous.
The story arc presented has a handful of obvious themes, but none radical. The author makes no real attempt to present any novel ideas, which would be most jarring for readers who have read other big history works.
The book ends up being little more than a source of quick summaries on hundreds of topics by avoiding anything too contentious. And to be fair, everyone is likely to walk away with a few new information bits from these well-written briefs. Overall, the book will be most valuable for those picking it as their first Big History read.
February 1, 2023
I have a fondness for large-scale historical works in the vein of Harari and Diamond, and I can overlook occasional inaccuracies or peculiar historical interpretations. Thus, I had high expectations for this book. However, my expectations were not met. The book is replete with factual errors (e.g. the Great Wall is not the sole man-made structure visible from space, the American withdrawal from Vietnam occurred in 1973, not 1975, etc.). More significantly, the narrative at times is overly simplified and neglects important details in order to advance the author's argument. Although I found the book to be an intriguing read in regards to periods in history about which I was previously unfamiliar, every time I encountered a section that I was knowledgeable of, I couldn't help but raise my eyebrows due to the oversimplification and omissions.
June 19, 2020
Worth reading!
February 26, 2022
I found Ansary's "The Invention of Yesterday" while scrolling the eBooks available at my local library. The book stuck out because I recognized the author; several years ago, I read Ansary's "Destiny Disrupted", a riveting world history told from the perspective of Islam. "Yesterday" is perhaps even more ambitious, it that is seeks to tell the entire history of the world from everyone's perspective at once, a multi-polar history of the world. The actors certainly change over time-- pre-historical societies eventually congealed into four distinct cultures surrounding major rivers: the Egyptians around the Nile, the Semitic peoples between the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus around the Indus, and the Chinese around the Huang He. This changes and morphs as new civilizations arise, merge, and engulf others eventually settling into the West, the Islamic world, and the Indian world, but he also includes sub-Saharan Africa, Native American cultures, Russia, and others.
The book begins with a fascinating observation that perhaps sparked the whole book: The building of the Great Wall of China had ripple effects that eventually caused the fall of the Roman Empire. Wha? When the nomadic peoples of Central Asia could no longer raid China, they pushed and pushed and pushed west ward. These become the "barbarians" in the Roman version of the story. Ansary draws many such connections throughout the book that illustrate how history is all connected. But we rarely see the bigger picture, because we're so invested in our own telling of the story where we're the protagonists.
Central to Ansary's telling is the concept of a "constellation":
"History deals in facts, of course, but in history, those facts fundamentally serve a narrative. When we construct our story, we are inventing ourselves. That's what we were doing in those caves, long ago, gathered around the fire, passing on to our children what we remembered about our grandparents reminiscing about life-changing adventures we'd shared and arguing about which of us really killed the bear and drawing conclusions about the meaning of life from the stars we saw above-- for when ancient folks looked up at the night sky, they didn't just see stars, they saw constellations. They said "There's a bear." and they said, "Hey, look, a mighty hunter," and their companions nodded, and as long as everybody in the group saw the bear and the mighty hunter, there they were."
"It's all too easy for us modern folks to say the constellations weren't really there. Yes, it's true that those constellations existed only in the minds of the people looking, but then, everything we see and know as human beings is in some sense a constellation: it's there because we see it. We exist as constellations of people. We're immersed in constellations of ideas. We live in a universe of constellations, which are themselves made up of constellations. In the social universe, constellations are as real as it gets."
"Social constellations form intentions and set the agendas of history: countries, families, empires, nations, clans, corporations, tribes, clubs, political parties, societies, neighborhood groups, social movements, mobs, civilizations, high school cliques-- they're all constellations. They do not exist outside culture. The mighty hunter dissolves upon closer inspection into random individual stars. The same is true of social constellations. Clan, country, movement, mob-- get up close to any of these and all you see are individual human beings and their ideas."
He uses this term throughout to define the major actors on the world stage. This is important, because many look at the world of nation-states today and assume that's the way it has always been. I sure did so back in high school days, so vague empires with undetermined boundaries that may even overlap didn't make a lot of sense.
The book ends looking forward to what kind of constellations may arise, and it gets kind of sci-fi-ey. He speculates that there might be a "bleshing" (a combination of "bleeding" and "meshing", what happens when two cultures intermix) of our culture with the world of machines. He talks about how it was originally environments that defined cultures, but now it's our tools that define culture.
It was a great read, and it revealed a few more corners of history I would like to explore in the future.
The book begins with a fascinating observation that perhaps sparked the whole book: The building of the Great Wall of China had ripple effects that eventually caused the fall of the Roman Empire. Wha? When the nomadic peoples of Central Asia could no longer raid China, they pushed and pushed and pushed west ward. These become the "barbarians" in the Roman version of the story. Ansary draws many such connections throughout the book that illustrate how history is all connected. But we rarely see the bigger picture, because we're so invested in our own telling of the story where we're the protagonists.
Central to Ansary's telling is the concept of a "constellation":
"History deals in facts, of course, but in history, those facts fundamentally serve a narrative. When we construct our story, we are inventing ourselves. That's what we were doing in those caves, long ago, gathered around the fire, passing on to our children what we remembered about our grandparents reminiscing about life-changing adventures we'd shared and arguing about which of us really killed the bear and drawing conclusions about the meaning of life from the stars we saw above-- for when ancient folks looked up at the night sky, they didn't just see stars, they saw constellations. They said "There's a bear." and they said, "Hey, look, a mighty hunter," and their companions nodded, and as long as everybody in the group saw the bear and the mighty hunter, there they were."
"It's all too easy for us modern folks to say the constellations weren't really there. Yes, it's true that those constellations existed only in the minds of the people looking, but then, everything we see and know as human beings is in some sense a constellation: it's there because we see it. We exist as constellations of people. We're immersed in constellations of ideas. We live in a universe of constellations, which are themselves made up of constellations. In the social universe, constellations are as real as it gets."
"Social constellations form intentions and set the agendas of history: countries, families, empires, nations, clans, corporations, tribes, clubs, political parties, societies, neighborhood groups, social movements, mobs, civilizations, high school cliques-- they're all constellations. They do not exist outside culture. The mighty hunter dissolves upon closer inspection into random individual stars. The same is true of social constellations. Clan, country, movement, mob-- get up close to any of these and all you see are individual human beings and their ideas."
He uses this term throughout to define the major actors on the world stage. This is important, because many look at the world of nation-states today and assume that's the way it has always been. I sure did so back in high school days, so vague empires with undetermined boundaries that may even overlap didn't make a lot of sense.
The book ends looking forward to what kind of constellations may arise, and it gets kind of sci-fi-ey. He speculates that there might be a "bleshing" (a combination of "bleeding" and "meshing", what happens when two cultures intermix) of our culture with the world of machines. He talks about how it was originally environments that defined cultures, but now it's our tools that define culture.
It was a great read, and it revealed a few more corners of history I would like to explore in the future.
June 30, 2020
A history of humanity and how inter-connectivity shaped it, this dense but insightful read takes you to humankind's beginning and travels through time calling out the narratives that have helped shaped the cultural attitudes and beliefs of today.
When it comes down to it, this book is all about how history and people are connected. What does the building of the Great Wall of China have to do with the fall of Rome? Or why did Christianity take off in Greco-Roman territories but not in India or China? Taking an extremely zoomed out view, Ansary explains how these type of events fall into larger narratives that lead to the forming of economies, empires, nations, religions, and philosophies.
I really enjoyed this book and Ansary is a funny and conversational style writer, however it was very dense and at times hard to keep history straight. The book tries to keep time flowing chronologically, however it also attempts to keep themes together so I found myself constantly going back to previous chapters to check dates and keep events in context. Luckily an index at the back helps but a timeline might have been nice.
Also, while certainly trying to remain factual and unbiased, Ansary does lean heavily on traditional European views and power dynamics. The Middle World and China are focused heavily through the eras of Empires, Europe takes over in the Middle Ages, and America doesn't pop up until post Columbus. Other territories are certainly included and strung throughout, but don't look to this book if you're hoping for examples of rewriting history a la "Shakespeare didn't actually write his own plays". On the whole, I'd strongly recommend if you appreciate reading non-fiction and history.
When it comes down to it, this book is all about how history and people are connected. What does the building of the Great Wall of China have to do with the fall of Rome? Or why did Christianity take off in Greco-Roman territories but not in India or China? Taking an extremely zoomed out view, Ansary explains how these type of events fall into larger narratives that lead to the forming of economies, empires, nations, religions, and philosophies.
I really enjoyed this book and Ansary is a funny and conversational style writer, however it was very dense and at times hard to keep history straight. The book tries to keep time flowing chronologically, however it also attempts to keep themes together so I found myself constantly going back to previous chapters to check dates and keep events in context. Luckily an index at the back helps but a timeline might have been nice.
Also, while certainly trying to remain factual and unbiased, Ansary does lean heavily on traditional European views and power dynamics. The Middle World and China are focused heavily through the eras of Empires, Europe takes over in the Middle Ages, and America doesn't pop up until post Columbus. Other territories are certainly included and strung throughout, but don't look to this book if you're hoping for examples of rewriting history a la "Shakespeare didn't actually write his own plays". On the whole, I'd strongly recommend if you appreciate reading non-fiction and history.
June 3, 2024
I really found this fascinating and ended up really enjoying myself.
This book is more of a brief summary of a lot of different points of interest in human history, ultimately feeding into one greater... or general concept of interest rather than anything exact. That may not end up being for everyone.
That being said this book takes on a lot and I find it somewhat funny some people have looked at this book which from start to finish covers 50 000 years of human history in about 400 ish pages.... And then complains that it's not exact or detailed enough.... I just don't quite get why you'd look at a book like this and expect that but hey we each have our own ideas and preferences when we go to read a book and that's entirely fine to me. What's strange to me may or may not be for someone else.
If youre interested in history as a whole this is probably an absolutely great book for you. Even if a lot of the parts are breif the author mentions a lot of people and things that also typically escape the very eurocentric imperialism and colonization was great narrative taht far too many historians still seem to cling to. So of you're wanting to broaden your horizons a bit more when it comes to history spmethjng in this will ljkley bee of great interest to you as a jumping off point.
Would totally recommend this. Got this book as a gift from a very thoughtful person in my life and had a great time.
This book is more of a brief summary of a lot of different points of interest in human history, ultimately feeding into one greater... or general concept of interest rather than anything exact. That may not end up being for everyone.
That being said this book takes on a lot and I find it somewhat funny some people have looked at this book which from start to finish covers 50 000 years of human history in about 400 ish pages.... And then complains that it's not exact or detailed enough.... I just don't quite get why you'd look at a book like this and expect that but hey we each have our own ideas and preferences when we go to read a book and that's entirely fine to me. What's strange to me may or may not be for someone else.
If youre interested in history as a whole this is probably an absolutely great book for you. Even if a lot of the parts are breif the author mentions a lot of people and things that also typically escape the very eurocentric imperialism and colonization was great narrative taht far too many historians still seem to cling to. So of you're wanting to broaden your horizons a bit more when it comes to history spmethjng in this will ljkley bee of great interest to you as a jumping off point.
Would totally recommend this. Got this book as a gift from a very thoughtful person in my life and had a great time.
September 30, 2020
Big history is awesome, Tamim Ansary is a master storyteller and even better narrator. Compressing 50,000 years of history in under 500 pages is both boon and bane of the book. At times the book is simplistic and obvious. If you are interested in world history you would already know most of it but the some of information about China & Islamic world is interesting. Also as expected the book is not Eurocentric.
It was my first audiobook and I guess I prefer reading books on my own considering my restless mind.
It was my first audiobook and I guess I prefer reading books on my own considering my restless mind.
February 18, 2020
Brilliant and empathetic.
I don't think this is the kind of book you could sit down and read for hours. It's so comprehensive, it almost gets in its own way. Having said that, I've been dipping in and out of this book for fifteen to twenty minute stretches for the last three months, and it's been really great. I love how non-western centric it is.
Humorous, informative, and eye-opening, but probably not for the casual non-fiction reader.
I don't think this is the kind of book you could sit down and read for hours. It's so comprehensive, it almost gets in its own way. Having said that, I've been dipping in and out of this book for fifteen to twenty minute stretches for the last three months, and it's been really great. I love how non-western centric it is.
Humorous, informative, and eye-opening, but probably not for the casual non-fiction reader.
July 31, 2023
This was a fascinating take on history, and how interconnected we humans are. I love the thematic ride that he takes the reader on: essentially, how tools, land, and narratives/communication shape humans and history. I give it 4 instead of 5 because I hoped for his take on colonizing the Americas to be more critical.
March 6, 2022
There are many flaws in Ansary’s grand story, but I found it fascinating nonetheless. It gave me some fresh perspectives on what I have learned about our human past, and kept me well entertained in the process.
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