Science and Civilization in China, Vols 1-3
by Joseph Needham. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1954.
Links between Sumeria and China. 

Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China is a monumental piece of scholarship which breaks new ground in presenting to the Western reader a detailed and coherent account of the development of science, technology and medicine in China from the earliest times until the advent of the Jesuits and the beginnings of modern science in the late seventeenth century. It is a vast work, necessarily more suited to the scholar and research worker than the general reader. This paperback version, abridged and re-written by Colin Ronan, makes this extremely important study accessible to a wider public. The present book covers the material treated in volumes I and II of Dr Needham's original work. The reader is introduced to the country of China, its history, geography and language, and an account is given of how scientific knowledge travelled between China and Europe. The major part of the book is then devoted to the history of scientific thought in China itself. Beginning with ancient times, it describes the milieu in which arose the schools of the Confucians, Taoists, Mohists, Logicians and Legalists. We are thus brought on to the fundamental ideas which dominated scientific thinking in the Chinese Middle Ages, to the doctrines of the Two Forces (Yin and Yang) and the Five Elements (wu hsing), to the impact of the sceptical tradition and Buddhist and Neo-Confucian thought.

Privatization in the Ancient Near East and Classical World
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University, 1996, by Michael Hudson and Baruch A. Levine.

Secrets of the Great Pyramids
by Peter Tomkins and Lvio Catullo Stecchini, 1971.

Probes the mystery of the construction and significance of the Great Pyramids Cheops, suggesting that it enshrines the scientific data of an advanced Egyptian civilization.

The Works of Proculus
by Thomas Taylor.

Ancient History
by Charles Rollin (Six volumes).

Early Mesopotamia
by Professor J.N. Postgate.

Old World civilisation began in the Near East, in the Nile Valley and in Mesopotamia, where two very different cultures prospered. Egypt, isolated as it was within the Nile Valley, largely failed to export its culture. Early Mesopotamia, however, exerted its influence throughout the Near Eastern world. Postgate's book assesses the influence of this fascinating culture, examining modern scholarship in the light of archaeological discovery. Early Mesopotamia has left us with an abundance of inscribed clay tablets from a wide variety of sources, from government institutions and diplomatic correspondence, to legal proceedings and private correspondence. With the help of illustrations and quotations from these documents, Postgate reveals the organisation of the world's first urban society. Surprisingly modern at times, this ancient culture was technologically and socially innovative, as well as acutely self-analytical and dominated by bureaucracy and commerce. One of the strengths of this book is the integration of historical and archaeological data which until now has been largely scattered in specialist literature.

Atra Hasis
tr. W.G. Lambert and A.R.Millard (Oxford 1969).

The Holocene
by Niel Roberts.

By comprehensively covering the interaction between the human and natural environment over the last 11,500 years, Neil Roberts has provided a stimulating and entertaining overview of an important topic which will prove useful to the lay-person as well as the experienced geographer.