Lines: A Brief History

What do walking, weaving, observing, singing, storytelling, drawing, and writing have in common? The answer lies in the fact that all these processes occur along lines. In this unusual book, British anthropologist Tim Ingold imagines a world where everything consists of intertwined or interconnected lines, laying the foundations for a new discipline: comparative anthropology of lines. Ingold's study takes readers from the music of Ancient Greece to the music of modern Japan, from the Siberian labyrinths to the weaving of Native Americans, from the song paths of Australian Aborigines to Roman roads, and from Chinese calligraphy to the printed alphabet, paving the way between antiquity and modernity. Drawing on a multitude of disciplines – archaeology, classical philology, art history, linguistics, psychology, musicology, philosophy, and many others – and including more than seventy illustrations, this work sends us on an exciting intellectual journey that will change our view of the world and how we live in it.