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Books

Civilisation’s watery superhighway

A review of Lincoln Paine’s The Sea and Civilization. A learned and deeply researched global view of maritime history

29 March 2014

9:00 AM

29 March 2014

9:00 AM

The Sea and Civilization Lincoln Paine

Atlantic Books, pp.744, £30, ISBN: 9781400044092

The clue is in the title: this is not about the blue-grey-green wet stuff that covers 70 per cent of our planet’s surface. Rather, it’s about how the sea and our use of it have influenced us economically, culturally, religiously and politically:

Much of human history has been shaped by people’s access, or lack of it, to navigable water ….

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