Brings alive the ideas, events and people of earlier cultures whose achievements have laid the foundations of our present-day world. The book covers the earliest days of human settlement to the civilizations of the New World overthrown by the Spanish Conquistadors. Following a chronological path, the book focuses on the world's key civilizations in each time period, beginning with the primary civilizations in Mesopotamia, India, Eygpt, China, Greece, and Rome and culminating in America.