Kurt A. Raaflaub is the David Herlihy University Professor & Professor of Classics and History Emeritus at Brown University. His previous works include The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece (2004), War and Peace in the Ancient World (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (with J. Ober and R. W. Wallace, 2007), Geography and Ethnography: Perceptions of the World in Pre-Modern Societies (with R. J. A. Talbert, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), and The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy: A Politico-cultural Transformation and Its Interpretations (with J. Arnason and P. Wagner, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013). His numerous publications include authorship or editorship of 20 scholarly books, in addition to more than 120 articles in journals and essay collections.

The Adventure of the Human Intellect presents the latest scholarship on the beginnings of intellectual history on a broad scope, encompassing ten eminent ancient or early civilizations from both the Old and New Worlds.
* Borrows themes from The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (1946), updating an old topic with a new approach and up-to-date theoretical underpinning, evidence, and scholarship
* Provides a broad scope of studies, including discussion of highly developed ancient or early civilizations in China, India, West Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Americas
* Examines the world view of ten ancient or early societies, reconstructed from their own texts, concerning the place of human beings in society and state, in nature and cosmos, in space and time, in life and death, and in relation to those in power and the world of the divine
* Considers a diversity of sources representing a wide array of particular responses to differing environments, circumstances, and intellectual challenges
* Reflects a more inclusive and nuanced historiographical attitude with respect to non-elites, gender, and local variations
* Brings together leading specialists in the field, and is edited by an internationally renowned scholar

Notes on Contributors vii
Series Editor's Preface xi
Preface and Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
Francesca Rochberg and Kurt A. Raaflaub
1 A Critique of the Cognitive-historical Thesis of The Intellectual Adventure 16
Francesca Rochberg
2 The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: Revisiting a Classic 29
Peter Machinist
3 The World of Ancient Egyptian Thought 73
James P. Allen
4 On Speculative Thought in Ancient Mesopotamia 89
Benjamin R. Foster
5 Self, Substance, and Social Metaphysics: The Intellectual Adventures of Israel and Judah 105
Ryan Byrne
6 Ancient Greece: Man the Measure of All Things 127
Kurt A. Raaflaub
7 The Thought-World of Ancient Rome: A Delicate Balancing Act 149
Robert A. Kaster and David Konstan
8 Self, Cosmos, and Agency in Early China 167
Lisa Raphals
9 Vedic India: Thinking and Doing 185
Stephanie W. Jamison
10 "Chronosophy" in Classic Maya Thought 198
Stephen Houston
11 The Word, Sacrifice, and Divination: Aztec Man in the Realm of the Gods 216
Guilhem Olivier
12 Night Thoughts and Spiritual Adventures: Native North America 239
Peter Nabokov
Index 000