Trying to understand the past of my island has always fascinated me and this is the main reason why, when I have time, I deepen my knowledge of archeology.
Civilizations buried is certainly not a university text, but it is one of the most famous texts of scientific divulgation on the subject.
But let's start with order: who is the author, CW Ceram?
Ceram does not exist! Or, better to say, it is the acronym of (Kurt Wilhelm) Marek.
Kurt Wilhelm Marek, a German journalist and writer, was born in Berlin in the 1915.
Journalist and easy to write, during the Second World War he worked as a propagandist of the III Reich. Taken prisoner during the Italian war in Monte Cassino, he spent time in jail reading everything he had available, in particular archeology magazines and excavation reports.
On his return to Germany, after the war, he decided to put his readings to good use and thus was born, in the 1949, self-financed Gotter, Graber und Gelehrte. The book was immediately a huge success because, for the first time, it presented the archeology to the public in a popular way.
Published in Italy in the 1952 with the title Civiltà buried, it also had great success here.
In its wake, other authors began to write highly successful popular texts, but that's another story!
Ceram presents the discoveries and the men who were the protagonists to the public in a divulgative form.
Scholars of ancient languages, enthusiasts, military expeditions in Egypt, mummies, thieves of finds, improvised lucky archaeologists and desktop scholars all become characters of that great novel that is ancient history.
The known civilizations thanks to Homer become reality thanks to Schliemann, Champollion, linguistic genius, brings us to the Egypt of the hieroglyphs, A young assistant of the Gottingen State School, Georg Friedrich Grotefend, for a bet, deciphers the cuneiform writing ...
This and much more Marek / Ceram presents us in his book, ancient civilizations.
Happy reading.
Alessandro Rugolo
