(Selena Wisnom, Allen Lane, £30)

Below is the review I wrote for Teach Secondary. There's a really interesting section in this book about how ceramic storage of data and information is probably the most likely medium to stand the test of time. That would be handy: Like many people I suspect, I have data stored on tape I can no longer read, and a few diskettes in an unknown format – and I have tried really hard to future-proof myself!

A fascinating account of the daily lives lived by people thousands of years ago. How do we know such details? The library housing their accumulated wisdom was set on fire, but the ‘books’ in said library were clay tablets. The fire’s heat hardened those tablets into ceramic, thereby ensuring their preservation for millennia. Thus, we learn how writing was first invented, and the eerie similarities between some stories of the time and those recorded (much later) in The Bible.

Some achievements seem remarkable, such as the discovery of Pythagoras’ theorem a thousand years before Pythagoras was born. Other practices seem utterly alien to modern eyes – divination using a sheep’s entrails, anyone?

We also hear about the work being done to preserve ceramic microfilm for tomorrow’s historians.

This book was first reviewed in Teach Secondary magazine.