Chapter 2

THE AGES BEFORE HISTORY

1. THE STUDY OF HISTORY

SUBJECT MATTER OF HISTORY

History is the narrative of what civilized man has done. It deals with those social groups called states and nations. Just as biography describes the life of individuals, so history relates the rise, progress, and decline of human societies.

MANUSCRIPTS AND BOOKS

History cannot go back of written records. These alone will preserve a full and accurate account of man's achievements. Manuscripts and books form one class of written records. The old Babylonians used tablets of soft clay, on which signs were impressed with a metal instrument. The tablets were then baked hard in an oven. The Egyptians made a kind of paper out of the papyrus, a plant native to the Nile valley. The Greeks and Romans at first used papyrus, but later they employed the more lasting parchment prepared from sheepskin. Paper seems to have been a Chinese invention. It was introduced into Europe by the Arabs during the twelfth century of our era.

INSCRIPTIONS AND REMAINS

A second class of written records consists of inscriptions. These are usually cut in stone, but sometimes we find them painted over the surface of a wall, stamped on coins, or impressed upon metal tablets. The historian also makes use of remains, such as statues, ornaments, weapons, tools, and utensils. Monuments of various sorts, including palaces, tombs, fortresses, bridges, temples, and churches, form a very important class of remains.

BEGINNINGS OF HISTORY

History, based on written records, begins in different countries at varying dates. A few manuscripts and inscriptions found in Egypt date back three or four thousand years before Christ. The annals of Babylonia are scarcely less ancient. Trustworthy records in China and India do not extend beyond 1000 B.C. For the Greeks and Romans the commencement of the historic period must be placed about 750 B.C. The inhabitants of northern Europe did not come into the light of history until about the opening of the Christian era.

2. PREHISTORIC PEOPLES

THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD

In studying the historic period our chief concern is with those peoples whose ideas or whose deeds have aided human progress and the spread of civilization. Six-sevenths of the earth's inhabitants now belong to civilized countries, and these countries include the best and largest regions of the globe. At the beginning of historic times, however, civilization was confined within a narrow area--the river valleys of western Asia and Egypt. The uncounted centuries before the dawn of history make up the prehistoric period, when savagery and barbarism prevailed throughout the world. Our knowledge of it is derived from the examination of the objects found in caves, refuse mounds, graves, and other sites. Various European countries, including England, France, Denmark, Switzerland, and Italy, are particularly rich in prehistoric remains.

THE TWO AGES

The prehistoric period is commonly divided, according to the character of the materials used for tools and weapons, into the Age of Stone and the Age of Metals. The one is the age of savagery; the other is the age of barbarism or semicivilization.

THE STONE AGE

Man's earliest implements were those that lay ready to his hand. A branch from a tree served as a spear; a thick stick in his strong arms became a powerful club. Later, perhaps, came the use of a hard stone such as flint, which could be chipped into the forms of arrowheads, axes, and spear tips. The first stone implements were so rude in shape that it is difficult to believe them of human workmanship. They may have been made several hundred thousand years ago. After countless centuries of slow advance, savages learned to fasten wooden handles to their stone tools and weapons and also to use such materials as jade and granite, which could be ground and polished into a variety of forms. Stone implements continued to be made during the greater part of the prehistoric period. Every region of the world has had a Stone Age. [1] Its length is reckoned, not by centuries, but by milleniums.

THE AGE OF METALS

The Age of Metals, compared with its predecessor, covers a brief expanse of time. The use of metals came in not much before the dawn of history. The earliest civilized peoples, the Babylonians and Egyptians, when we first become acquainted with them, appear to be passing from the use of stone implements to those of metal.

COPPER

Copper was the first metal in common use. The credit for the invention of copper tools seems to belong to the Egyptians. At a very early date they were working the copper mines on the peninsula of Sinai. The Babylonians probably obtained their copper from the same region. Another source of this metal was the island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean. The Greek name of the island means "copper."

BRONZE

But copper tools were soft and would not keep an edge. Some ancient smith, more ingenious than his fellows, discovered that the addition of a small part of tin to the copper produced a new metal--bronze--harder than the old, yet capable of being molded into a variety of forms. At least as early as 3000 B.C. we find bronze taking the place of copper in both Egypt and Babylonia. Somewhat later bronze was introduced into the island of Crete, then along the eastern coast of Greece, and afterwards into other European countries.

IRON

The introduction of iron occurred in comparatively recent times. At first it was a scarce, and therefore a very precious, metal. The Egyptians seem to have made little use of iron before 1500 B.C. They called it "the metal of heaven," as if they obtained it from meteorites. In the Greek Homeric poems, composed about 900 B.C. or later, we find iron considered so valuable that a lump of it is one of the chief prizes at athletic games. In the first five books of the Bible iron is mentioned only thirteen times, though copper and bronze are referred to forty-four times. Iron is more difficult to work than either copper or bronze, but it is vastly superior to those metals in hardness and durability. Hence it gradually displaced them throughout the greater part of the Old World. [2]

FIRST STEPS TOWARD CIVILIZATION

During the prehistoric period early man came to be widely scattered throughout the world. Here and there, slowly, and with utmost difficulty, he began to take the first steps toward civilization. The tools and weapons which he left behind him afford some evidence of his advance. We may now single out some of his other great achievements and follow their development to the dawn of history.

3. DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS

HUNTING AND FISHING STAGE

Prehistoric man lived at first chiefly on wild berries, nuts, roots, and herbs. As his implements improved and his skill increased, he became hunter, trapper, and fisher. A tribe of hunters, however, requires an extensive territory and a constant supply of game. When the wild animals are all killed or seriously reduced in number, privation and hardship result. It was a forward step, therefore, when man began to tame animals as well as to kill them.

DOMESTICATION OF THE DOG

The dog was man's first conquest over the animal kingdom. As early as the Age of Metals various breeds appear, such as deerhounds, sheep dogs, and mastiffs. The dog soon showed how useful he could be. He tracked game, guarded the camp, and later, in the pastoral stage, protected flocks and herds against their enemies.

THE COW

The cow also was domesticated at a remote period. No other animal has been more useful to mankind. The cow's flesh and milk supply food: the skin provides clothing; the sinews, bones, and horns yield materials for implements. The ox was early trained to bear the yoke and draw the plow, as we may learn from ancient Egyptian paintings. [3] Cattle have also been commonly used as a kind of money. The early Greeks, whose wealth consisted chiefly of their herds, priced a slave at twenty oxen, a suit of armor at one hundred oxen, and so on. The early Romans reckoned values in cattle (one ox being equivalent to ten sheep). Our English word "pecuniary" goes back to the Latin _pecus_, or "herd" of cattle.

THE HORSE

The domestication of the horse came much later than that of the cow. In the early Stone Age the horse ran wild over western Europe and formed an important source of food for primitive men. This prehistoric horse, as some ancient drawings show, [4] was a small animal with a shaggy mane and tail. It resembled the wild pony still found on the steppes of Mongolia. The domesticated horse does not appear in Egypt and western Asia much before 1500 B.C. For a long time after the horse was tamed, the more manageable ox continued to be used as the beast of burden. The horse was kept for chariots of war, as among the Egyptians, or ridden bareback in races, as by the early Greeks.

OTHER ANIMALS DOMESTICATED

At the close of prehistoric times in the Old World nearly all the domestic animals of to-day were known. Besides those just mentioned, the goat, sheep, ass, and hog had become man's useful servants. [5]

PASTORAL STAGE

The domestication of animals made possible an advance from the hunting and fishing stage to the pastoral stage. Herds of cattle and sheep would now furnish more certain and abundant supplies of food than the chase could ever yield. We find in some parts of the world, as on the great Asiatic plains, the herdsman succeeding the hunter and fisher. But even in this stage much land for grazing is required. With the exhaustion of the pasturage the sheep or cattle must be driven to new fields. Hence pastoral peoples, as well as hunting and fishing folk, remained nomads without fixed homes. Before permanent settlements were possible, another onward step became necessary. This was the domestication of plants.

AGRICULTURAL STAGE

The domestication of plants marked almost as wonderful an advance as the domestication of animals. When wild seedgrasses and plants had been transformed into the great cereals--wheat, oats, barley, and rice--people could raise them for food, and so could pass from the life of wandering hunters or shepherds to the life of settled farmers. There is evidence that during the Stone Age some of the inhabitants of Europe were familiar with various cultivated plants, but agriculture on a large scale seems to have begun in the fertile regions of Egypt and western Asia. [6] Here first arose populous communities with leisure to develop the arts of life. Here, as has been already seen, [7] we must look for the beginnings of history.

4. WRITING AND THE ALPHABET

PICTURE WRITING

Though history is always based on written records, the first steps toward writing are prehistoric. We start with the pictures or rough drawings which have been found among the remains of the early Stone Age. [8] Primitive man, however, could not rest satisfied with portraying objects.

He wanted to record thoughts and actions, and so his pictures tended to become symbols of ideas. The figure of an arrow might be made to represent, not a real object, but the idea of an "enemy." A "fight" could then be shown simply by drawing two arrows directed against each other. Many uncivilized tribes still employ picture writing of this sort. The American Indians developed it in most elaborate fashion. On rolls of birch bark or the skins of animals they wrote messages, hunting stories, and songs, and even preserved tribal annals extending over a century.

SOUND WRITING; THE REBUS

A new stage in the development of writing was reached when the picture represented, not an actual object or an idea, but a sound of the human voice. This difficult but all-important step appears to have been taken through the use of the rebus, that is, writing words by pictures of objects which stand for sounds. Such rebuses are found in prehistoric Egyptian writing; for example, the Egyptian words for "sun" and "goose" were so nearly alike that the royal title, "Son of the Sun," could be suggested by grouping the pictures of the sun and a goose. Rebus making is still a common game among children, but to primitive men it must have been a serious occupation.

WORDS AND SYLLABLES

In the simplest form of sound writing each separate picture or symbol stands for the sound of an entire word. This method was employed by the Chinese, who have never given it up. A more developed form of sound writing occurs when signs are used for the sounds, not of entire words, but of separate syllables. Since the number of different syllables which the voice can utter is limited, it now becomes possible to write all the words of a language with a few hundred signs. The Japanese, who borrowed some of the Chinese symbols, used them to denote syllables, instead of entire words. The Babylonians possessed, in their cuneiform [9] characters, signs for about five hundred syllables. The prehistoric inhabitants of Crete appear to have been acquainted with a somewhat similar system. [10]

LETTERS

The final step in the development of writing is taken when the separate sounds of the voice are analyzed and each is represented by a single sign or letter. With alphabets of a few score letters every word in a language may easily be written.

EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS

The Egyptians early developed such an alphabet. Unfortunately they never gave up their older methods of writing and learned to rely upon alphabetic signs alone. Egyptian hieroglyphics [11] are a curious jumble of object- pictures, symbols of ideas, and signs for entire words, separate syllables, and letters. The writing is a museum of all the steps in the development from the picture to the letter.

PHOENICIAN ALPHABET

As early, apparently, as the tenth century B.C. we find the Phoenicians of western Asia in possession of an alphabet. It consisted of twenty-two letters, each representing a consonant. The Phoenicians do not seem to have invented their alphabetic signs. It is generally believed that they borrowed them from the Egyptians, but recent discoveries in Crete perhaps point to that island as the source of the Phoenician alphabet.

DIFFUSION OF THE PHOENICIAN ALPHABET

If they did not originate the alphabet now in use, the Phoenicians did most to spread a knowledge of it in other lands. They were bold sailors and traders who bought and sold throughout the Mediterranean. Wherever they went, they took their alphabet. From the Phoenicians the Greeks learned their letters. Then the Greeks taught them to the Romans, from whom other European peoples borrowed them. [12]

5. PRIMITIVE SCIENCE AND ART

FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE

We have already seen that prehistoric men in their struggle for existence had gathered an extensive fund of information. They could make useful and artistic implements of stone. They could work many metals into a variety of tools and weapons. They were practical botanists, able to distinguish different plants and to cultivate them for food. They were close students of animal life and expert hunters and fishers. They knew how to produce fire and preserve it, how to cook, how to fashion pottery and baskets, how to spin and weave, how to build boats and houses. After writing came into general use, all this knowledge served as the foundation of science.

COUNTING AND MEASURING

We can still distinguish some of the first steps in scientific knowledge. Thus, counting began with calculations on one's fingers, a method still familiar to children. Finger counting explains the origin of the decimal system. The simplest, and probably the earliest, measures of length are those based on various parts of the body. Some of our Indian tribes, for instance, employed the double arm's length, the single arm's length, the hand width, and the finger width. Old English standards, such as the span, the ell, and the hand, go back to this very obvious method of measuring on the body.

CALCULATION OF TIME; THE CALENDAR

It is interesting to trace the beginnings of time reckoning and of that most important institution, the calendar. Most primitive tribes reckon time by the lunar month, the interval between two new moons (about twenty- nine days, twelve hours). Twelve lunar months give us the lunar year of about three hundred and fifty-four days. In order to adapt such a year to the different seasons, the practice arose of inserting a thirteenth month from time to time. Such awkward calendars were used in antiquity by the Babylonians, Jews, and Greeks; in modern times by the Arabs and Chinese. The Egyptians were the only people in the Old World to frame a solar year. From the Egyptians it has come down, through the Romans, to us. [13]

EARLY DRAWING AND PAINTING

The study of prehistoric art takes us back to the early Stone Age. The men of that age in western Europe lived among animals such as the mammoth, cave bear, and woolly-haired rhinoceros, which have since disappeared, and among many others, such as the lion and hippopotamus, which now exist only in warmer climates. Armed with clubs, flint axes, and horn daggers, primitive hunters killed these fierce beasts and on fragments of their bones, or on cavern walls, drew pictures of them. Some of these earliest works of art are remarkably lifelike.

EARLY ARCHITECTURE

A still later period of the Stone Age witnessed the beginnings of architecture. Men had begun to raise huge dolmens which are found in various parts of the Old World from England to India. They also erected enormous stone pillars, known as menhirs. Carved in the semblance of a human face and figure, the menhir became a statue, perhaps the first ever made.

As we approach historic times, we note a steady improvement in the various forms of art. Recent discoveries in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and other lands indicate that their early inhabitants were able architects, often building on a colossal scale.

SIGNIFICANCE OF PREHISTORIC ART

Their paintings and sculptures prepared the way for the work of later artists. Our survey of the origins of art shows us that in this field, as elsewhere, we must start with the things accomplished by prehistoric men.

6. HISTORIC PEOPLES

RACES OF MAN

At the dawn of history the various regions of the world were already in the possession of many different peoples. Such physical characteristics as the shape of the skull, the features, stature, or complexion may serve to distinguish one people from another. Other grounds for distinction are found in language, customs beliefs, and general intelligence.

CLASSIFICATION OF RACES

If we take complexion or color as the basis of classification, it is possible to distinguish a few large racial groups. Each of these groups occupies, roughly speaking, its separate area of the globe. The most familiar classification is that which recognizes the Black or Negro race dwelling in Africa, the Yellow or Mongolian race whose home is in central and eastern Asia, and the White or Caucasian race of western Asia and Europe. Sometimes two additional divisions are made by including, as the Red race, the American Indians, and as the Brown race, the natives of the Pacific islands.

THE WHITE RACE

These separate racial groups have made very unequal progress in culture. The peoples belonging to the Black, Red, and Brown races are still either savages or barbarians, as were the men of prehistoric times. The Chinese and Japanese are the only representatives of the Yellow race that have been able to form civilized states. In the present, as in the past, it is chiefly the members of the White race who are developing civilization and making history.

INDO-EUROPEANS AND SEMITES

Because of differences in language, scholars have divided the White or Caucasian race into two main groups, called Indo-Europeans and Semites. [14] This classification is often helpful, but the student should remember that Indo-European and Semitic peoples are not always to be sharply distinguished because they have different types of language. There is no very clear distinction in physical characteristics between the two groups. A clear skin, an oval face, wavy or curly hair, and regular features separate them from both the Negro and the Mongolian.

PRINCIPAL INDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES

The Indo-Europeans in antiquity included the Hindus of India, the Medes and Persians dwelling on the plateau of Iran, the Greeks and Italians, and most of the inhabitants of central and western Europe. All these peoples spoke related languages which are believed to be offshoots from one common tongue. Likeness in language does not imply that all Indo-Europeans were closely related in blood. Men often adopt a foreign tongue and pass it on to their children.

PRINCIPAL SEMITIC PEOPLES

The various Semitic nations dwelling in western Asia and Arabia were more closely connected with one another. They spoke much the same type of language, and in physical traits and habits of life they appear to have been akin. The Semites in antiquity included the Babylonians and Assyrians, the Hebrews, Phoenicians, and Arabs.