Benchmarks of Civilization
An Account of the Development, Migration and Kinship of the World’s Peoples and Cultures
News and Discoveries
English Teenager Finds Bronze Age Ax Using a Metal Detector
In the United States, when metal detectors hit it big, it’s usually by finding familiar riches: lost engagement rings, expensive jewelry or coins of untold value. In Britain, the biggest successes often involve discoveries of treasures from ancient eras — like the...
The Economist: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas
That VIKINGS crossed the Atlantic long before Christopher Columbus is well established. Their sagas told of expeditions to the coast of today’s Canada: to Helluland, which scholars have identified as Baffin Island or Labrador; Markland (Labrador or Newfoundland) and...
GetPocket: The College Student Who Decoded the Data Hidden in Inca Knots
There are many ways a college student might spend spring break. Making an archaeological breakthrough is not usually one of them. In his first year at Harvard, Manny Medrano did just that. “There’s something in me, I can’t explain where it came from, but I love the...
About Benchmarks of Civilization
This Benchmarks of Civilization book and its accompanying poster provide brief and illustrated resources about the development, migration and kinship of theworld’s peoples and cultures.
Historically, there have been numerous and vigorous academic disagreements about the timelines and events of most civilizations, particularly prehistoric.
However, recent scientific techniques for evidence dating and genetic tracing have provided new insights into past civilizations and cultures. That historic and genetic evidence demonstrates the kinship between all people of all civilizations and cultures over the millennia of human history.
The Benchmarks of Civilization poster provides an overview, and geographical reference and timeline for each major civilization and culture within each region of the world. Each timeline represents a cultural wave, with a beginning and end, some just a few centuries, and others for millennia.
The Benchmarks of Civilization poster helps to visualize the migration of populations. Each new civilization was the result of a population migration sometimes over a relatively short period. The poster exposes fascinating issues about the kinship between cultures: why and how did a population group break away and migrate, and how was a new culture born? Often plague or famine were the source of the death of a culture and impetus for migration as people sought new food and resources. Religion was also often a power for birth when a group fled or was forced away.
Waves out of Africa
