We are the children of a practical age.
We travel from place to place in our own little locomotives which we
call automobiles.
When we wish to speak to a friend whose home is a thousand miles away,
we say "Hello" into a rubber tube and ask for a certain telephone number
in Chicago.
At night when the room grows dark we push a button and there is light.
If we happen to be cold we push another button and the electric stove
spreads its pleasant glow through our study.
On the other hand in summer when it is hot the same electric current
will start a small artificial storm (an electric fan) which keeps us
cool and comfortable.
We seem to be the masters of all the forces of nature and we make them
work for us as if they were our very obedient slaves.
But do not forget one thing when you pride yourself upon our splendid
achievements.
We have constructed the edifice of our modern civilization upon the
fundament of wisdom that had been built at great pains by the people of
the ancient world.
Do not be afraid of their strange names which you will meet upon every
page of the coming chapters.
Babylonians and Egyptians and Chaldeans and Sumerians are all dead and
gone, but they continue to influence our own lives in everything we do,
in the letters we write, in the language we use, in the complicated
mathematical problems which we must solve before we can build a bridge
or a skyscraper.
And they deserve our grateful respect as long as our planet continues to
race through the wide space of the high heavens.
These ancient people of whom I shall now tell you lived in three
definite spots.
Two of these were found along the banks of vast rivers.
The third was situated on the shores of the Mediterranean.
The oldest center of civilization developed in the valley of the Nile,
in a country which was called Egypt.
The second was located in the fertile plains between two big rivers of
western Asia, to which the ancients gave the name of Mesopotamia.
The third one which you will find along the shore of the Mediterranean,
was inhabited by the Phoenicians, the earliest of all colonizers and by
the Jews who bestowed upon the rest of the world the main principles of
their moral laws.
This third center of civilization is known by its ancient Babylonian
name of Suri, or as we pronounce it, Syria.
The history of the people who lived in these regions covers more than
five thousand years.
It is a very, very complicated story.