HISTORY AND THE RECORDS
HISTORY
=Legends.=--The most ancient records of people and their doings are
transmitted by oral tradition. They are recited long before they are
written down and are much mixed with fable. The Greeks told how their
heroes of the oldest times had exterminated monsters, fought with
giants, and battled against the gods. The Romans had Romulus nourished
by a wolf and raised to heaven. Almost all peoples relate such stories
of their infancy. But no confidence is to be placed in these legends.
=History.=--History has its true beginning only with authentic
accounts, that is to say, accounts written by men who were well
informed. This moment is not the same with all peoples. The history of
Egypt commences more than 3,000 years before Christ; that of the
Greeks ascends scarcely to 800 years before Christ; Germany has had a
history only since the first century of our era; Russia dates back
only to the ninth century; certain savage tribes even yet have no
history.
=Great Divisions of History.=--The history of civilization begins with
the oldest civilized people and continues to the present time.
Antiquity is the most remote period, Modern Times the era in which we
live.
=Ancient History.=--Ancient History begins with the oldest known
nations, the Egyptians and Chaldeans (about 3,000 years before our
era), and surveys the peoples of the Orient, the Hindoos, Persians,
Phoenicians, Jews, Greeks, and last of all the Romans. It terminates
about the fifth century A.D., when the Roman empire of the west is
extinguished.
=Modern History.=--Modern History starts with the end of the fifteenth
century, with the invention of printing, the discovery of America and
of the Indies, the Renaissance of the sciences and arts. It concerns
itself especially with peoples of the West, of Spain, Italy, France,
Germany, Russia, and America.
=The Middle Age.=--Between Antiquity and Modern Times about ten
centuries elapse which belong neither to ancient times (for the
civilization of Antiquity has perished) nor to modern (since modern
civilization does not yet exist). This period we call the Middle Age.
SOURCES OF INFORMATION FOR THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT PEOPLES
=The Sources.=--The Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans are no longer with
us; all the peoples of antiquity have passed away. To know their
religion, their customs, and arts we have to seek for instruction in
the remains they have left us. These are books, monuments,
inscriptions, and languages, and these are our means for the study of
ancient civilizations. We term these _sources_ because we draw our
knowledge from them. Ancient History flows from these sources.
=Books.=--Ancient peoples have left written records behind them. Some
of these peoples had sacred books--for example, the Hindoos, the
Persians, and the Jews; the Greeks and Romans have handed down to us
histories, poems, speeches, philosophical treatises. But books are
very far from furnishing all the information that we require. We do
not possess a single Assyrian or Phoenician book. Other peoples have
transmitted very few books to us. The ancients wrote less than we, and
so they had a smaller literature to leave behind them; and as it was
necessary to transcribe all of this by hand, there was but a small
number of copies of books. Further, most of these manuscripts have
been destroyed or have been lost, and those which remain to us are
difficult to read. The art of deciphering them is called Palaeography.
=The Monuments.=--Ancient peoples, like ourselves, built monuments of
different sorts: palaces for their kings, tombs for the dead,
fortresses, bridges, aqueducts, triumphal arches. Of these monuments
many have fallen into ruin, have been razed, shattered by the enemy or
by the people themselves. But some of them survive, either because
there was no desire to destroy them, or because men could not. They
still stand in ruins like the old castles, for repairs are no longer
made; but enough is preserved to enable us to comprehend their former
condition. Some of them are still above ground, like the pyramids, the
temples of Thebes and of the island of Philae, the palace of Persepolis
in Persia, the Parthenon in Greece, the Colosseum in Rome, and the
Maison Carree and Pont du Gard in France. Like any modern monument,
these are visible to the traveller. But the majority of these
monuments have been recovered from the earth, from sand, from river
deposits, and from debris. One must disengage them from this thick
covering, and excavate the soil, often to a great depth. Assyrian
palaces may be reached only by cutting into the hills. A trench of
forty feet is necessary to penetrate to the tombs of the kings of
Mycenae. Time is not the only agency for covering these ruins; men have
aided it. When the ancients wished to build, they did not, as we do,
take the trouble to level off the space, nor to clear the site.
Instead of removing the debris, they heaped it together and built
above it. The new edifice in turn fell into ruins and its debris was
added to that of more remote time; thus there were formed several
strata of remains. When Schliemann excavated the site of Troy, he had
passed through five beds of debris; these were five ruined villages
one above another, the oldest at a depth of fifty feet.
By accident one town has been preserved to us in its entirety. In 79
A.D. the volcano of Vesuvius belched forth a torrent of liquid lava
and a rain of ashes, and two Roman cities were suddenly buried,
Herculaneum by lava, and Pompeii by ashes; the lava burnt the objects
it touched, while the ashes enveloped them, preserving them from the
air and keeping them intact. As we remove the ashes, Pompeii reappears
to us just as it was eighteen centuries ago. One still sees the
wheel-ruts in the pavement, the designs traced on the walls with
charcoal; in the houses, the pictures, the utensils, the furniture,
even the bread, the nuts, and olives, and here and there the skeleton
of an inhabitant surprised by the catastrophe. Monuments teach us
much about the ancient peoples. The science of monuments is called
Archaeology.
=Inscriptions.=--By inscriptions one means all writings other than
books. Inscriptions are for the most part cut in stone, but some are
on plates of bronze. At Pompeii they have been found traced on the
walls in colors or with charcoal. Some have the character of
commemorative inscriptions just as these are now attached to our
statues and edifices; thus in the monument of Ancyra the emperor
Augustus publishes the story of his life.
The greatest number of inscriptions are epitaphs graven on tombs.
Certain others fill the function of our placards, containing, as they
do, a law or a regulation that was to be made public. The science of
inscriptions is called Epigraphy.
=Languages.=--The languages also which ancient peoples spoke throw
light on their history. Comparing the words of two different
languages, we perceive that the two have a common origin--an evidence
that the peoples who spoke them were descended from the same stock.
The science of languages is called Linguistics.
=Lacunae.=--It is not to be supposed that books, monuments,
inscriptions, and languages are sufficient to give complete knowledge
of the history of antiquity. They present many details which we could
well afford to lose, but often what we care most to know escapes us.
Scholars continue to dig and to decipher; each year new discoveries of
inscriptions and monuments are made; but there remain still many gaps
in our knowledge and probably some of these will always exist.
RACES AND PEOPLES
=Anthropology.=--The men who people the earth do not possess exact
resemblances, some differing from others in stature, the form of the
limbs and the head, the features of the face, the color of the hair and
eyes. Other differences are found in language, intelligence, and
sentiments. These variations permit us to separate the inhabitants of
the earth into several groups which we call races. A _race_ is the
aggregate of those men who resemble one another and are distinguished from
all others. The common traits of a race--its characteristics--constitute
the type of the race. For example, the type of the negro race is marked
by black skin, frizzly hair, white teeth, flat nose, projecting lips, and
prominent jaw. That part of Anthropology which concerns itself with races
and their sub-divisions is called Ethnology.[3] This science is yet in
its early development on account of its complete novelty, and is very
complex since types of men are very numerous and often very difficult to
differentiate.
=The Races.=--The principal races are:
1.--The White race, which inhabits Europe, the north of Africa,
and western Asia.
2.--The Yellow race in eastern Asia to which belong the Chinese,
the Mongols, Turks, and Hungarians, who invaded Europe as
conquerors. They have yellow skin, small regular eyes, prominent
cheek-bones, and thin beard.
3.--The Black race, in central Africa. These are the Negroes, of
black skin, flat nose, woolly hair.
4.--The Red race, in America. These are the Indians, with
copper-colored skin and flat heads.
=Civilized Peoples.=--Almost all civilized peoples belong to the white
race. The peoples of the other races have remained savage or
barbarian, like the men of prehistoric times.[4]
It is within the limits of Asia and Africa that the first civilized
peoples had their development--the Egyptians in the Nile valley, the
Chaldeans in the plain of the Euphrates. They were peoples of
sedentary and peaceful pursuits. Their skin was dark, the hair short
and thick, the lips strong. Nobody knows their origin with exactness
and scholars are not agreed on the name to give them (some terming
them Cushites, others Hamites). Later, between the twentieth and
twenty-fifth centuries B.C. came bands of martial shepherds who had
spread over all Europe and the west of Asia--the Aryans and the
Semites.
=The Aryans and the Semites.=--There is no clearly marked external
difference between the Aryans and the Semites. Both are of the white
race, having the oval face, regular features, clear skin, abundant
hair, large eyes, thin lips, and straight nose. Both peoples were
originally nomad shepherds, fond of war. We do not know whence they
came, nor is there agreement whether the Aryans came from the mountain
region in the northwest of the Himalayas or from the plains of
Russia. What distinguishes them is their spiritual bent and especially
their language, sometimes also their religion. Scholars by common
consent call those peoples Aryan who speak an Aryan language: in Asia,
the Hindoos and Persians; in Europe, the Greeks, Italians, Spaniards,
Germans, Scandinavians, Slavs (Russians, Poles, Serfs), and Celts.[5]
Similarly, we call Semites those peoples who speak a Semitic language:
Arabs, Jews and Syrians. But a people may speak an Aryan or a Semitic
language and yet not be of Aryan or Semitic race; a negro may speak
English without being of English stock. Many of the Europeans whom we
classify among the Aryans are perhaps the descendants of an ancient
race conquered by the Aryans and who have adopted their language, just
as the Egyptians received the language of the Arabs, their conquerors.
These two names (Aryan and Semite), then, signify today rather two
groups of peoples than two distinct races. But even if we use the
terms in this sense, one may say that all the greater peoples of the
world have been Semites or Aryans. The Semitic family included the
Phoenicians, the people of commerce; the Jews, the people of religion;
the Arabs, the people of war. The Aryans, some finding their homes in
India, others in Europe, have produced the nations which have been,
and still are, foremost in the world--in antiquity, the Hindoos, a
people of great philosophical and religious ideas; the Greeks,
creators of art and of science; the Persians and Romans, the
founders, the former in the East, the latter in the West, of the
greatest empires of antiquity; in modern times, the Italians, French,
Germans, Dutch, Russians, English and Americans.
The history of civilization begins with the Egyptians and the
Chaldeans; but from the fifteenth century before our era, history
concerns itself only with the Aryan and Semitic peoples.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Ethnography is the study of races from the point of view of their
objects and customs.
[4] The Chinese only of the yellow race have elaborated among themselves
an industry, a regular government, a polite society. But placed at the
extremity of Asia they have had no influence on other civilized peoples.
[The Japanese should be included.--ED.]
[5] The English and French are mixtures of Celtic and German blood.