When we refer back to "the wisdom of the ancients," a logical follow-up is "which ancients?" There were many influential cultures in the world millennia ago.
And despite the way they tend to be taught, they had some awareness of each other, even some interaction. That explains the plural in the title of historian Michael Scott's book Ancient Worlds: A Global History of Antiquity.
The book focuses on a period 2500 years ago when things began to turn in the direction of the civilization we know today. We revisit our interview from 2017 here.