Forty-eight thirty minute lectures explore the essential contours of the human experience in what has come to be called "Western civilization," from its humble beginnings in the ancient Near East to the dawn of the modern world, ranging from about 3000 B.C. to A.D. 1600. The lectures begin by asking just what "Western civilization" actually is, or what it has been thought to be. Throughout the lectures, there are reflections on where Western civilization finds its primary locus at any given moment - beginning in the ancient Near East and moving to Greece, then to Rome; exploring the shape and impact of large ancient empires, including the Persian, Alexander the Great's, and Rome's; then moving on to Western Europe, and witnessing Europe's gradual physical and cultural expansion, into finally the globalization of Western civilization with the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of exploration and discovery.