Sounds interesting

A book noted at Nature:

Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World

Philip Matyszak Thames & Hudson (2020)

Western ideas on antiquity are dominated by Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Greeks and Romans, with other cultures often reduced to stereotypes. Historian Philip Matyszak asks: were the Philistines philistines and the Vandals vandals? His stimulating encyclopaedia of 40 “forgotten peoples” begins with the Akkadians around 2330 bc and ends with the Hephthalites (‘White Huns’) in the fifth century ad. Illustrations include a Roman-style Vandal mosaic; far from vilifying Roman culture, the Vandals respected it, say current historians.

On a sort of related topic:  following a recent post I wrote about how India sent Buddhist monks West before the time of Christ, it did make me think about how we all carry images in our minds of what Greek, Roman, Babylonian and Egyptian civilisation looked like around that time, but for Indian civilisation we (OK, maybe just me) just don't have much mental image.   Is it that the archaeological sites there just aren't all that well preserved?  Or that it has been glossed over in Western education due to a type of educational bias.  (God knows I have no sympathy for the current Right wing Hindu nationalism, but I guess I do feel they have the right to feel their ancient history is overlooked.)

Update:  for example, have a look at this video of the Buddhist Stupa and surroundings at Sanchi in the middle of India, from around 300 BC.  The whole landscape is also a little surprising because it looks vast and pretty empty.   Not exactly the mental image I have of India - I kind of imagine a village every few kilometres or so:



 Update 2:  this guy's explanation of the Southern Indian Vijayanagar empire is interesting too, and the ruins are impressive - but the place only dates from 14th century CE - even though I would have guessed much older: