Mar 01, 2018
Historian Simon Schama claims art is an essential part of civilization in general and each one's identity. A retired Iraqi archaeology director preferring decapitation by ISIS to betraying where he hid unique treasures at Palmyra in Syria. Then he takes us to several early sparks of Ancient civilizations, like the possibly earliest cave paintings in Spain and France. We know the Nabataeans, an Arab desert people, settled to establish the fabulously wealthy city Petra in Jordan, having seized a monopoly on frankincense, and for lack of writings its architecture is ...