What Makes Civilization?: The Ancient Near East and the Future of the West

This is the story of Ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Egypt: the 'birthplace of civilization', where the foundations of our own societies were laid, including everything from farming, writing, and the birth of cities to familiar ways of cooking food and keeping our homes and bodies clean. But why have these ancient cultures, where so many features of modern life originated, come to symbolize the remote and the exotic? And are the sacrifices we now make in the name of 'our' civilization really so different from those once made by the peoples of Mesopotamia and Egypt on the altars of the gods?