So far, the story of ancient man has been the record of a wonderful
achievement. Along the banks of the river Nile, in Mesopotamia and on
the shores of the Mediterranean, people had accomplished great things
and wise rulers had performed mighty deeds. There, for the first time in
history, man had ceased to be a roving animal. He had built himself
houses and villages and vast cities.
He had formed states.
He had learned the art of constructing and navigating swift-sailing
boats.
He had explored the heavens and within his own soul he had discovered
certain great moral laws which made him akin to the divinities which he
worshipped. He had laid the foundations for all our further knowledge
and our science and our art and those things that tend to make life
sublime beyond the mere grubbing for food and lodging.
Most important of all he had devised a system of recording sound which
gave unto his children and unto his children's children the benefit of
their ancestors' experience and allowed them to accumulate such a store
of information that they could make themselves the masters of the forces
of nature.
But together with these many virtues, ancient man had one great failing.
He was too much a slave of tradition.
He did not ask enough questions.
He reasoned "My father did such and such a thing before me and my
grandfather did it before my father and they both fared well and
therefore this thing ought to be good for me too and I must not change
it." He forgot that this patient acceptance of facts would never have
lifted us above the common herd of animals.
Once upon a time there must have been a man of genius who refused any
longer to swing from tree to tree with the help of his long, curly tail
(as all his people had done before him) and who began to walk on
his feet.
But ancient man had lost sight of this fact and continued to use the
wooden plow of his earliest ancestors and continued to believe in the
same gods that had been worshipped ten thousand years before and taught
his children to do likewise.
Instead of going forward he stood still and this was fatal.
For a new and more energetic race appeared upon the horizon and the
ancient world was doomed.
We call these new people the Indo-Europeans. They were white men like
you and me, and they spoke a language which was the common ancestor of
all our European languages with the exception of Hungarian, Finnish and
the Basque of Northern Spain.
When we first hear of them they had for many centuries made their home
along the banks of the Caspian Sea. But one day (for reasons which are
totally unknown to us) they packed their belongings on the backs of the
horses which they had trained and they gathered their cows and dogs and
goats and began to wander in search of distant happiness and food. Some
of them moved into the mountains of central Asia and for a long time
they lived amidst the peaks of the plateau of Iran, whence they are
called the Iranians or Aryans. Others slowly followed the setting sun
and took possession of the vast plains of western Europe.
They were almost as uncivilized as those prehistoric men who made their
appearance within the first pages of this book. But they were a hardy
race and good fighters and without difficulty they seem to have occupied
the hunting grounds and the pastures of the men of the stone age.
They were as yet quite ignorant but thanks to a happy Fate they were
curious. The wisdom of the ancient world, which was carried to them by
the traders of the Mediterranean, they very soon made their own.
But the age-old learning of Egypt and Babylonia and Chaldea they merely
used as a stepping-stone to something higher and better. For
"tradition," as such, meant nothing to them and they considered that the
Universe was theirs to explore and to exploit as they saw fit and that
it was their duty to submit all experience to the acid test of human
intelligence.
[Illustration: A COLONY.]
Soon therefore they passed beyond those boundaries which the ancient
world had accepted as impassable barriers--a sort of spiritual Mountains
of the Moon. Then they turned against their former masters and within a
short time a new and vigorous civilization replaced the out-worn
structure of the ancient Asiatic world.
But of these Indo-Europeans and their adventures I give you a detailed
account in "The Story of Mankind," which tells you about the Greeks and
the Romans and all the other races in the world.