SOMEONE HAD TO INVENT CIVILIZATION.
IT JUST WASN'T GOING TO BE PRETTY.

A cave girl whose ideas are dismissed by elders...
until the elders need saving.
A girl who sneaks into a forbidden temple to watch a mummification.
A boy with an obsidian knife who makes an impossible choice
about a human sacrifice.
None of them set out to invent civilization.
They just couldn't help themselves.
We Invented Civilization?
is a twisted ancient history co-piloted by Peaby: a fuzzy orange alien
who has shadowed humanity for 20,000 years and has strong opinions.
He’s watching where this is heading and he has popcorn.
CIVILIZATION’S NOT GOING TO INVENT ITSELF.

What do you get when a history nerd, a craft beer obsessive, and a malfunctioning CPAP machine fly into Europe?
Apparently, a near-arrest at the Louvre, a near-death experience in Amsterdam, and the best night of your life watching the sun set through Stonehenge.
Scott Edwin Williams has spent years writing about history from the comfort of his study. He knows where Caesar was cremated, who built the Pantheon, and exactly why Pompeii never stood a chance. What he doesn't know—until now—is what any of it actually feels like.
So he books a ticket. And then his best friend CJ invites himself along.
What follows is five weeks of historical pilgrimage, accidental misadventure, and the kind of travel that no guidebook prepares you for: a budget coach tour populated almost entirely by septuagenarians and one woman who makes Cruella de Vil look easygoing; a houseboat with a strict no-shitting policy; a Venetian grappa bar that may or may not have saved the friendship; and a Pompeii guide who looks like he survived a bender and dressed accordingly—and turns out to be the most compelling person on the trip.
Scott gets his history. He stands where Caesar fell. He touches a sarsen stone at Stonehenge as the sun sets between the trilithons. He weeps—quietly, and with some dignity—in front of the Pieta. He gets entirely too close to the Mona Lisa.
He also walks an inhuman number of kilometers, drinks a heroic quantity of beer, loses his backpack in Venice, nearly gets flattened by a bus, and discovers that the best stories are almost never the ones you planned.
Unearthed is part travelogue, part comedy, part love letter to the places where the past refuses to stay buried. It's about what happens when you finally stop reading about history and go looking for it—and find, somewhere between the plague pits of Smithfield and the sun-drenched terraces of Positano, that it was never quite what you imagined. Richer, stranger, more human, and considerably more chaotic.
It's also about what you unearth when you're not looking: the friendships that survive forty years and three weeks of 24/7 proximity; the family connections that outlast decades of distance; and the quiet, bus-dodging epiphany that it might finally be time to start living in the present tense.
For anyone who has ever stood in front of something ancient and felt the centuries compress. For anyone who has ever ordered the wrong beer in the wrong country and considered it a triumph. For anyone who knows that the best travel companion is the one who will mock you just enough to stop you taking yourself too seriously.
Unearthed is for you.

Big Ideas. Bad Decisions. Brilliant Mistakes.
From the invention of stone tools to the roar of the Colosseum, humans have stumbled forward powered by big ideas—with even bigger consequences.
In this smart, irreverent, and unexpectedly hopeful tour of the ancient world, Scott Edwin Williams traces the sparks that lit the fuse of civilization.
Along the way, he calls out conspiracy theorists, pokes fun at paleo-hippies, and explores the messy miracle of collective learning.
This isn’t a textbook. It’s a guided wander through the best (and worst) ideas our species ever had—from tool-making and storytelling to bureaucracy, religion, war, and philosophy (but thankfully, no social media).
Some ideas propelled us forward. Others exploded mid-launch.
Many somehow managed to do both.
Welcome to the history of progress, pratfalls, and lightbulb moments.
BUCKLE IN. LIGHT THE FUSE. LET’S GO.

Big Ideas. Bizarre Beliefs. Blunders & Breakthroughs.
From medieval monks to Renaissance rebels, humanity kept the flame of knowledge alive—sometimes by candlelight, sometimes by bonfire.
In this smart, irreverent, and unexpectedly optimistic sequel to
From Cave to Colosseum, Scott Edwin Williams charts our uneven crawl out of the so-called Dark Ages. Meet the polymaths, philosophers, poets, plague victims, and pious priests who collectively rebooted civilization.
Along the way, you’ll encounter bumbling crusaders, overzealous inquisitors, rebellious peasants, and Cedric, the very unlucky plague doctor.
This isn’t a textbook: It’s a sideways look at the big ideas—scientific, spiritual, educational, and cultural—that shaped a thousand years of history.
SOME MOVED US FORWARD. SOME DRAGGED US BACK.
AND SOME, INEXPLICABLY, DID BOTH.
LIGHT THE CANDLE. ILLUMINATE THE WORLD.