Brian M. Fagan

This course deserves a high rating for the quality of the instructor, but it has some serious flaws which reduces my rating to (a perhaps generous) 3***.

• It's roughly twenty years old and isn't really up-to-date on Neanderthals. More recent research contradicts the instructor's assertion that Home Sapiens Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens Sapiens could not interbreed. In fact, current DNA research indicates that all human races share some small percentage of Neanderthal genes (with the exception of sub-Saharan Africans, since Neanderthals developed outside of the African continent). Additionally, Neanderthals (despite this instructor's now-dated assertion) were in fact artistic and apparently had some form of spirituality.
• The instructor's assertion (and granted, he's an archaeologist, not a linguist) that Indo-Aryan more likely developed in India rather than being imported to the subcontinent by migrants is, to say the least, a minority view – one that I tend to associate with the Hindutva movement.
• His contrast between Brahmanism and Buddhism in India ignores the important role of folk religions, especially among pre-Aryan inhabitants of the subcontinent.
• Although this isn't entirely a "talking head" video and there are some illustrations, there could have been more.
• The close captioning is often sloppy, not coordinating well with the spoken word.

All told, 3***; and I'd recommend paging through the Great Courses library for more current versions of this topic.… (más)

True name should've been History of Plumbing and Irrigation. Of which 2/3 of the book is dedicated to ancient civilizations. Too conversationalist for a thesis, but too detailed, specific and wearisome for a general audience non-fiction. The book is an unlucky cross between the two genres. Thus they only readership cohort for this book is graduate students and some geeks of the topic.

***
Ah, found a book that resembles this one: www.goodreads.com/book/show/18497345-water-engineering-in-ancient-civilizations
Tellingly, it has virtually no readers. I for one was drawn to Elixir by Fagan's name. I wouldn't never have lifted "Water Engineering in Ancient Civilizations: 5,000 Years of History", it's Siamese twin...… (más)