Connectivity in Antiquity: Globalization as a Long-Term Historical Process

Today's political minds assure us that the more 'connected' societies are, the less danger they pose to global stablity--but is this a 'new' idea or one that is as old as history itself? Trade networks that began as far back as human prehistory were responsible for exchanges of ideas as well as goods and the 'ripple effects' of these networks were the expansionist compulsions of hstorical states and empires. These papers tell us that the civillizations of the ancient past may have had more in common with modern global enterprises than was ever before imagined. Two concepts that have great mmediacy and have now become the current watchwords for the media as well as for academia, globalization and long-term historical processes, are brought together in this interdisciplinary volume of papers based upon Manuel Castells' massive work "The Network Society.