List of tables, Acknowledgements, Preface; Part I. Early Prehistory: 1. Evolution of man as an organism; 2. Environmental change; 3. Palaeolithic hunters and foragers; Part II. Beginnings of Civilization in South-West Asia: 4. Background; 5. The transition: 9000-6000 BC; 6. Neolithic/Charcolithic settlement; 7. Emergence of civilization in south Mesopotamia; 8. Civilizations of the Highlands; Part III. Foundations of European Civilization: The Stone Age: 9. Upper Palaeolithic hunters and artists; 10. Mesolithic hunter-fishers; 11. Late Stone Age farmers; 12. Farmers and hunter-fishers; Part IV. Europe: From Metallurgy to Civilization: 13. Early metallurgy; 14. Minoan-Mycenaean civilization; 15. The Bronze Age in temperate Europe; 16. Antecedents of classical Greece; 17. The barbarian world in the pre-roman Iron Age; 18. Antecendents and expansion of Roman civilization; 19. The Iron Age in northern Europe; 20. Christianity and the end of European prehistory; Part V. The African Achievement: 21. The Stone Age; 22. Ancient Egyptian civilization; 23. The opening up of sub-Saharan Africa; Part VI. The Indian Sub-Continent: 24. Early prehistory; 25. Later prehistory; 26. Protohistory; Part VII. East Asia: 27. China; 28. Japan; 29. South-east Asia; Part VIII. North and Middle America: 30. Late Pleistocene settlement; 31. Middle American sequence; Part IX. North America: 32. Temperate zone; 33. Arctic zone; Part X. South America: 34. The first settlers: Andean zone; 35. Intermediate zone: marginal territories; Part XI. Australia and Oceania: 36. Australia; 37. Oceania; Index.