This enormous project is based on the premise that civilizations are the product of their environment.

With that, Fernandez-Arnesto looks at cultures of the desert, the tundra and ice, then to the more obvious civilizations of alluvial flood plains, the highlands, maritime civilizations and finally civilizations of travel, migration and expansion. This is a work of massive cross referencing juxtaposing the maritime civilizations of Japan and Northern Africa or the mountain civilizations of New Guinea and Tibet. The effect is to suggest that civilization can happen anywhere - that no one environment is uniquely conducive, or that no one race or people are more productive than another.