The Human Journey Library  »  Ideas that Shaped Our Modern World

Ideas that Shaped Our Modern World

Paleolithic Beginnings

Recommended
The Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art
Paul G. Bahn
Recommended
Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods
Jean Bottéro
Recommended
Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia
Jean Bottéro
Recommended
1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed
Eric H. Cline
Recommended
The Shamans of Prehistory
Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams
Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others
Stephanie Dalley
Secret Societies
Arkon Daraul
Recommended
The End of the Bronze Age
Robert Drews
Recommended
The Wind Is My Mother: The Life and Teachings of a Native American Shaman
Bear Heart
Recommended
The Leopard’s Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Çatalhöyük
Ian Hodder
Recommended
The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion
Thorkild Jacobsen
Babylonian Wisdom Literature
W. G. Lambert
Recommended
Nyae Nyae !Kung Beliefs and Rites
Lorna J. Marshall
Research in Anthropological Topics
Alicia Meza
Recommended
Art and Human Development
Constance Milbrath and Cynthis Lightfoot
Recommended
Thoughtful Foragers: A Study of Prehistoric Decision Making
Steven J. Mithen
Recommended
The Great Courses: Religions of the Axial Age: An Approach to the World’s Religions
Prof. Mark W. Muesse
Ancient Indian Historical Tradition
F. E. Pargiter
Stonehenge: Making Sense of a Prehistoric Mystery
Mike Parker Pearson et al.
Harappan Civilization
Gregory L. Possehl
Dawn and Devolution of the Indus Civilization
S. R. Rao
The World’s Last Mysteries
Reader's Digest
Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology
Mary Settegast
Recommended
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
James Suzman
Secrets of the Sands: The Revelations of Egypt
Harry Thurston
Recommended
The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art
David Lewis Williams
Recommended
Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos and the Realm of the Gods
David Lewis-Williams & David Pearce
Recommended
Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos and the Realm of the Gods
David Lewis-Williams & David Pearce
Recommended
The Evolution of God
Robert Wright

Connecting with the Gods

Recommended
The Case for God
Karen Armstrong
Recommended
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions
Karen Armstrong
The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture
Jacques Cauvin
The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation
Alexander Heidel
Man and his Gods
Homer W. Smith

Axial Age Thought

Recommended
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions
Karen Armstrong
Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices
Mary Boyce
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts
Israel Finkelstein & Neil Asher Silberman
The Upanishads
Hindu Texts
Recommended
The Odyssey
Homer
Recommended
Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus: From The Great Philosophers, Vol. 1
Karl Jaspers
The Origin and Goal of History
Karl Jaspers
Recommended
The Great Courses: Religions of the Axial Age: An Approach to the World’s Religions
Prof. Mark W. Muesse
Recommended
Ancient China Simplified
Edward Harper Parker
Recommended
Religious Evolution and the Axial Age: From Shamans to Priests to Prophets
Stephen K. Sanderson
Featured
Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras
John Strohmeier & Peter Westbrook
Ancient Judaism
Max Weber
Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission
Harvey Whitehouse
Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing
Michael Winkelman
The Dawn And Twilight Of Zoroastrianism
R.C. Zaehner

Origins of Christianity

Recommended
Jesus and the Zealots: A Study of the Political Factor in Primitive Christianity
S.G.F. Brandon
The Keys of Saint Peter; Or, the House of Rechab: Connected with the History of Symbolism and Idolatry
Ernest de Bunsen
Recommended
Our Pagan Christmas
R.J. Condon
Myth, Magic, and Morals
Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare
Bible Myths And Their Parallels In Other Religions
Thomas Doane
Birth of a Worldview: Early Christianity in its Jewish and Pagan Context
Robert Doran
The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World
Bart D. Ehrman
How Jesus Became God : the Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
Bart D. Ehrman
The Pagan Background of Early Christianity
W.R. Halliday
Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology)
John Hick et al.
Pagan Saviours: Pagan Elements in Christian Ritual and Doctrine
Institute for Cultural Research
Recommended
The Marketing of Christianity: The Evolution of Early Christian Doctrine
Institute for Cultural Research
Antiquities of the Jews
Josephus
Saint Irenaeus of Lyons: Against Heresies
Saint Irenaeus of Lyons
Recommended
The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books about Jesus of Nazareth
Marvin Meyer
Recommended
The Secret Teachings of Jesus: Four Gnostic Gospels
Marvin Meyer
The Gospel of Thomas
Dr. A. Nyland
Recommended
The Gnostic Gospels
Elaine Pagels
The Letters of the Younger Pliny
Younger Pliny
Recommended
Religious Evolution and the Axial Age: From Shamans to Priests to Prophets
Stephen K. Sanderson
Featured
Recommended
Judaism and Christian Beginnings
Samuel Sandmel
Recommended
Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing – How Evangelists, Psychiatrists, Politicians, and Medicine Men Can Change Your Beliefs and Behavior
William Sargant
Jewish Christianity: Factional disputes in the early church
Hans Joachim Schoeps
Recommended
The Passover Plot
Hugh J. Schonfield
Recommended
The Way of the Sufi
Idries Shah
The Principles of Sociology (Volume I)
Herbert Spencer
Recommended
The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic
John Shelby Spong
The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion
Rodney Stark
The Oxford Study Bible: Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha
M. Jack Suggs et al., eds.
Annals of Imperial Rome
Tacitus
Recommended
The Nativity: History and Legend
Geza Vermes
Recommended
Jesus the Jew
Geza Vermes
Recommended
Jesus: Nativity-Passion-Resurrection
Geza Vermes
Jesus: A Life
A.N. Wilson
How Jesus Became Christian
Barrie Wilson, Ph.D.

Origins of Islam

Recommended
The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy
Peter Adamson & Richard C. Taylor
The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims
Mustafa Akyol
Recommended
Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time
Karen Armstrong
Recommended
No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam
Reza Aslan
Social Origins Of Islam: Mind, Economy, Discourse
Mohammed A. Bamyeh
Recommended
Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing
Fred Donner
Recommended
Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam
Fred McGraw Donner
The Life of Muhammad
A. Guillaume
The Qur’an
M. A. S. Abdel Haleem
Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology)
John Hick et al.
Recommended
Muhammad, the World-Changer
Mohamad Jebara
Christ in Islam and Christianity
Neal Robinson
Recommended
The Prophet Muhammad: A Biography
Barnaby Rogerson
Jewish Christianity: Factional disputes in the early church
Hans Joachim Schoeps
Recommended
The Sufis
Idries Shah
Recommended
Tales of the Dervishes
Idries Shah
Recommended
Caravan of Dreams
Idries Shah
Selections from the Koran
Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah
The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh through the Tenth Centuries
Paul Wheatley

The Journey of Classical Greek Knowledge to the Western World

The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance
Jim Al-Khalili
Pathfinders: The Golden Age Of Arabic Science
Jim Al-Khalili
The Civilization of the Middle Ages
Norman F. Cantor
Philosophical Foundations of Education: Connecting Philosophy to Theory and Practice
Sheila G. Dunn
Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasaid Society
Dimitri Gutas
The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization
Arthur Herman
The Guide for the Perplexed
Moses Maimonides
The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
María Rosa Menocal
Granada: A Pomegranate in the Hand of God
Steven Nightingale
Aristotle’s Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages
Richard E. Rubenstein
Recommended
The Sufis
Idries Shah
The Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe
W. Montgomery Watt

Stories and Storytelling

Sacred Nature
Karen Armstrong
Featured
Louder than Words
Benjamin K. Bergen
Recommended
How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures
Robin Dunbar
How Language Began
Daniel L. Everett
Wonderworks
Angus Fletcher
Recommended
God 4.0: On the Nature of Higher Consciousness and the Experience Called “God“
Robert Ornstein with Sally M. Ornstein
Featured
Recommended
Religious Evolution and the Axial Age: From Shamans to Priests to Prophets
Stephen K. Sanderson
Featured
Recommended
Caravan of Dreams
Idries Shah
Recommended
The Sufis
Idries Shah
Recommended
Tales of the Dervishes
Idries Shah
World Tales
Idries Shah
The Science of Storytelling
Will Storr

Additional Titles in This Section

Myths and myth-makers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology
John Fiske.
The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community; with a Retrospective Essay
William H. McNeill.
The Psychology of Consciousness
Robert Ornstein.
The Evolution of Consciousness: The Origins of the Way We Think
Robert Ornstein.
The Commanding Self
Idries Shah.