The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World

Recommended by Michael McCormick, Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

“The Making of the Middle Sea” about the rise of Mediterranean civilizations.

I frequently commend to friends and colleagues Cyprian Broodbank’s “Making of the Middle Sea” (OUP, 2013; soon to be reissued with an extended new preface). I picked it up to learn more about “prehistory” when the Science of the Human Past was launching the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center to construct a new history of Mediterranean humans and disease from ancient DNA. I could not put it down, and it is hefty! Beautifully structured, written, and illustrated, it brings to archaeological life the origins of Mediterranean civilization from our first migrations out of Africa down to the eve of Classical Greece. Broodbank takes the “pre-” out of “pre-history”: it is real history from archaeology. Soon after I read it, I first met Cyprian for a quick lunch. It turned into a three-hour conversation that spilled over the next few days. I hope he will rewrite it to take into account the amazing new discoveries from Harvard and Max Planck labs that are adding so much to his brilliant portrait!