The focus of this book is the Mediterranean, the Middle Sea of the title, which has of course been treated before, especially by F. Braudel in The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II and by P. Horden and N. Purcell in The Corrupting Sea: a Study of Mediterranean History. Where B.’s equally magisterial study differs from these predecessors is that it considers the prehistory of the Mediterranean, from the earliest recognisable human activity 1.8 million years ago. The end point is a matter of choice but 500 b.c. seems sensible, given that we are on the cusp of an even more interconnected maritime world.

It is impossible to do justice to the detailed presentation of the chronological chapters which make up most of this book but each of these very diverse areas is given equal treatment. Consequently we learn to compare developments in Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia, the Aegean, Italy and Iberia. B. also does his best with North Africa but highlights the lack of fieldwork in much of the southern Mediterranean, apart from Egypt, which is a pointer for the future. The latest research is presented and often questioned in an easily readable way, almost colloquial in style. I particularly liked the humorous quotes at the head of each chapter. As one would expect from Thames and Hudson there are many illustrations and these inevitably enhance the text.

Certain themes recur throughout and I would like to concentrate on these rather than trying to give a synopsis of each chapter. A definition of the Mediterranean is a contentious topic but a pragmatic approach is suggested here. It is good to be reminded how rare in worldwide terms this particular ecological combination is. That the Mediterranean is a geologically unstable zone is a point which we should also bear in mind. But I was struck by the impact that climate has had. The fact that sea levels were much lower at the last glacial maximum, with steppe conditions in much of the basin and species which were more tolerant of the cold, is no surprise. We should also consider the effect of the return of a much colder climate for a thousand years around the start of the Holocene era, another cold event around 6200 b.c. and the drier conditions especially towards the end of the third millennium, as well as the fact that it became wetter and cooler around 800 b.c. Climate is not put forward as the main driver but these are seminal moments, particularly when seen from the broad geographical perspective propounded here.

A critical development was the gradual realisation that the Mediterranean could be a means of communication. The first human settlers had what can only be described as a distrust of the sea. They were certainly not frogs around a pond but travelled by land. There are hints that some Neanderthals took to the water but it was late in the Palaeolithic period when humans were certainly engaged in seafaring. Our evidence does not come directly from the discovery of their boats or illustrations but from journeys which presuppose that some open water had to be crossed, for example in the case of Cyprus, or raw materials acquired from certain islands, such as obsidian. Knowledge of the sea was probably much greater than we suppose but the dangers should not be underestimated. At the start of the Holocene, in the Mesolithic period, seafaring evidently increased and by the Neolithic we begin to see how it brought adjacent areas into contact. The late fourth and third millennia is the period when real changes occur, however. At the start of this period there were large canoes which could make longer voyages and by the end ships with sails first appear in the Levant and Egypt. This made it possible to travel to distant regions, a situation which was exploited by the palace societies of the second millennium. But they had no monopoly on what became a trade and in the first millennium we see the rise of merchants, in particular the people collectively known as the Phoenicians, who could sail the length of the Mediterranean and beyond. Interconnectedness was guaranteed.

What did this bring? The most fundamental change was the adoption of agriculture, firstly in the Levant in the ninth millennium, though it was a very protracted process. B. believes that the gradual spread of this new technology was due to population movement. He considers whether there could have been some local hunter-gatherers who were converted into farmers and does not rule this out completely, but by and large he believes that it was the people who moved. Eventually, by the sixth millennium, farmers had reached coastal Iberia, though there were hunter-gatherers inland. The great advantage of the domestication of plants and animals was that it allowed for much higher population levels, but we are reminded that an often monotonous diet led to ill-health and these communities experienced stresses. What is known as the secondary products revolution, whereby animals were used for more than their meat, as well as the domestication of the vine and the olive, led to settlement in agriculturally more marginal environments. B. suggests that the move was because of over-population but this is debatable. There must have been social choices as well as pragmatic responses. What is undeniable is the boost that this must have given to seafaring and also the development of networks, because settlements were often too small to be viable and independent. Eventually agricultural goods were moved over considerable distances, but the importance of the trade in grain lay in the future.

Initially it was metal that made the world go around. Copper metallurgy was firmly established in the Mediterranean by the fourth millennium. The copper was then alloyed with arsenic and eventually with tin to produce bronze. However, there were no sources of tin in the Mediterranean, so it must have been imported from a distance and is thus a good illustration of the extent to which trade had developed. Texts underline the demand for metals and the Ulu Burun ship had ten tons of copper and a ton of tin ingots when it went down off the southern coast of Turkey at the end of the fourteenth century. Silver had become a medium for exchange and was consequently needed as effectively an early form of currency. The commodification of trade was obviously well advanced by this stage. When iron replaced bronze in the first millennium, it could be argued that this was a more democratic metal since it was widely available. It was nevertheless a metal which was sought after and, as such, provided another stimulus to trade which was now firmly in the hands of individuals.

There is so much more that could be covered, especially about the growth of social complexity. Suffice it to say that the sweep of this book, chronologically and geographically, is astounding. It should certainly be on the shelf of anyone who is at all interested in the Mediterranean.