Ancient Greece and Rome are considered the parents of Western civilisation. But the ancient world was much more interconnected than we realise – a place of constant exchange, commerce and theft, sex, war and enslavement.

Journeying from the Levant of 2500 BC to the dawn of the Age of Exploration, Josephine Quinn argues that the roots of the West can be found in everything from Indian mathematics to the chariots of the Steppe, from Arabic poetry to the Phoenician art of sailing. The result is an epic and revelatory history of our shared past.