THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION

Folio, hardcover, pages browning and cover has some discoloration else interior VG in grey cloth boards with gilt lettering. No dj. Heavy book of 404 pages, 940 illustrations with 172 in color. Foxing end papers; illustrations bright and clear. Maps and Genealogical Charts. Between the end of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe, western civilization passed through the most serious crisis of which we have historical record. The effect of the barbarian invasions can only be compared with that of an atomic war on the modern world. It was more gradual but no less catastrophic. No full-scale illustrated survey of this period, from 500 to 1000 A. D has been done before this book. For those five centuries are called the 'Dark Ages'----dark to the men and women who lived through them. Modern research, especially in archaeology, had virtually no records from which to piece together the complex story of those times. Includes newspaper clippings: " after 23 centuries, Philip II's archeological treasure chest" and "no one disturbed this tomb for 23 centuries".