The World of Ancient Art is an innovative exploration of the arts of antiquity, beginning with the earliest European cave paintings and continuing right up to the coming of Christianity and Buddhism in the Old World, and to the arrival of the Spaniards in the New World. Dividing the ancient world into three broad climatic categories the northern nomadic, the temperate farmers and city-dwellers, and the tropical Boardman focuses on common solutions that Man the artist has devised for the problems posed by his environment, a factor that also determined the nature of his society and its arts.