| Sumario: | In this extended essay, Jack Goody summarizes his long-standing intellectual effort to develop a comparative historical anthropology that would challenge the widely held perceptions about the supremacy of the West in the context of world history. Throughout the essay, Goody focuses on the similarities existing in all Eurasian cultures to turn much of European history and historiography on its head. The essay documents the unity across Eurasia as an interconnected landmass, the legacies of the common Bronze Age of the Ancient Near East, its associated plough agriculture, and the traditions of writing and use of metals in order to reassess the primacy of material resource endowments in shaping human history. Goody presents a series of characteristics conventionally cited in the West as evidence of the uniqueness of Europe and shows that, in each and every case, equivalents can be found in Asia, and notably in China.
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