Humanities: Journeys from the Paleolithic to Postmodernism: Early Humanities to 1600

Humanities: Journeys from the Paleolithic to Postmodernism: Early Humanities to 1600 by Ralph Monday. misc_supplies edition. ISBN: 9781524963224.

This is a college-level book about humanities, a journey that begins in the Old Stone Age and concludes with the 14th-century European Renaissance. To discuss human civilization from such a vast time frame covering over 12,000 years was not an easy task, especially in the attempt to condense each chapter into a suitable format for the reader that still conveys the essential humanistic concepts for each particular time period. As such, I was challenged to, hopefully, convey to the reader in an engaging manner the human journey from the end of the last ice age to the beginning of recorded civilization, and from there to the roots of Western culture originating with the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, the power of the church in the Middle Ages, and the rise of science and humanism in the Renaissance. The book was composed with student readability, interest, and education in mind. The hope is that the work will inspire students to go further than just this text, to plumb the mysteries of the human condition, and find within the book human tales that are also their stories, the archetypal human journey, a path that all of us walk. My hope is that students who encounter this text will come away with the realization that “we know what we are, but know not what we may be.”