Hi Edward, Thank you for your comment, which is thoughtful as always. There is definitely a shift in my profession towards a more comparative approach to history, and that is certainly to the good. And thanks for recommending Wilson's book! I will look it up. What's interesting to me --and maybe one reason why I am interested in the deep past as much as I am in the present and recent past -- is that in earlier eras there was not such a prevalent Western sense of superiority. The 12th century French monk Abelard dreamed dreams of seeking the intellectual freedom that was denied to to him in Europe among the Muslims of Spain. So the hierarchies that we take for granted today did not really apply in previous eras. Thanks as always for reading!