Preface: How culture works

Introduction: Inside the Chauvet Cave, 35,000 BCE

Queen Nefertiti and her faceless god

Plato burns his tragedy and invents a history

King Ashoka sends a message to the future

A south Asian goddess in Pompeii

A Buddhist pilgrim in search of ancient traces

The Pillow Book and some perils of cultural diplomacy

When Baghdad became a storehouse of wisdom

The Queen of Ethiopia welcomes the raiders of the ark

One Christian mystic and the three revivals of Europe

The Aztec capital faces its European enemies and admirers

A Portuguese sailor writes a global epic

Enlightenment in Saint-Domingue and in a Parisian salon

George Eliot promotes the science of the past

A Japanese wave takes the world by storm

The drama of Nigerian independence

Epilogue: Will there be a library in 2114 CE?