A CHILD’S HISTORY
OF THE WORLD
By V. M. HILLYER
A CHILD’S GEOGRAPHY OF THE WORLD
A CHILD’S HISTORY OF THE WORLD
CHILD TRAINING
THE DARK SECRET
With EDWARD G. HUEY
A CHILD’S HISTORY OF ART
[Illustration]
A CHILD’S HISTORY
OF THE WORLD
BY
V. M. HILLYER
HEAD MASTER OF CALVERT SCHOOL
AUTHOR OF “CHILD TRAINING,” “KINDERGARTEN
AT HOME,” ETC.
_With Many Illustrations by_
CARLE MICHEL BOOG
AND
M. S. WRIGHT
[Illustration]
D. APPLETON-CENTURY COMPANY
INCORPORATED
NEW YORK LONDON
1934
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY
THE CENTURY CO.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any
form without permission of the publisher.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
LIST OF STORIES
STORY PAGE
1 HOW THINGS STARTED 3
2 UMFA-UMFA AND ITCHY-SCRATCHY 10
3 FIRE! FIRE!! FIRE!!! 16
4 FROM AN AIRPLANE 20
5 REAL HISTORY BEGINS 24
6 THE PUZZLE-WRITERS 30
7 THE TOMB-BUILDERS 36
8 A RICH LAND WHERE THERE WAS NO MONEY 42
9 THE WANDERING JEWS 49
10 FAIRY-TALE GODS 56
11 A FAIRY-TALE WAR 64
12 THE KINGS OF THE JEWS 70
13 THE PEOPLE WHO MADE OUR A B C’S 74
14 HARD AS NAILS 79
15 THE CROWN OF LEAVES 84
16 A BAD BEGINNING 89
17 KINGS WITH CORKSCREW CURLS 94
18 A CITY OF WONDER AND WICKEDNESS 99
19 A SURPRISE PARTY 103
20 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD 109
21 RICH MAN, POOR MAN 114
22 ROME KICKS OUT HER KINGS 119
23 GREECE VS. PERSIA 124
24 FIGHTING MAD 132
25 ONE AGAINST A THOUSAND 137
26 THE GOLDEN AGE 143
27 WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK 151
28 WISE MEN AND OTHERWISE 156
29 A BOY KING 162
30 PICKING A FIGHT 168
31 THE BOOT KICKS AND STAMPS 173
32 THE NEW CHAMPION OF THE WORLD 177
33 THE NOBLEST ROMAN OF THEM ALL 184
34 AN EMPEROR WHO WAS MADE A GOD! 191
35 “THINE IS THE KINGDOM, THE POWER, AND THE
GLORY” 197
36 BLOOD AND THUNDER 203
37 A GOOD EMPEROR AND A BAD SON 210
38 I -- H -- -- S -- -- -- -- V -- -- -- -- -- 215
39 OUR TOUGH ANCESTORS 219
40 WHITE TOUGHS AND YELLOW TOUGHS MEET THE
CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD 225
41 NIGHTFALL 231
42 BEING GOOD 236
43 A CAMEL-DRIVER 242
44 ARABIAN DAYS 250
45 A LIGHT IN THE DARK AGES 257
46 GETTING A START 264
47 THE END OF THE WORLD 269
48 REAL CASTLES 272
49 KNIGHTS AND DAYS OF CHIVALRY 278
50 A PIRATE’S GREAT GRANDSON 284
51 A GREAT ADVENTURE 292
52 TIT-TAT-TO; THREE KINGS IN A ROW 297
53 BIBLES MADE OF STONE AND GLASS 304
54 JOHN, WHOM NOBODY LOVED 311
55 A GREAT STORY-TELLER 316
56 “THING-A-MA-JIGGER” AND “WHAT-CHER-MA-CALL-IT”;
OR, A MAGIC NEEDLE AND A MAGIC
POWDER 322
57 THELON GEST WART HATE VERWAS 327
58 OFF WITH THE OLD, ON WITH THE NEW 333
59 A SAILOR WHO FOUND A NEW WORLD 337
60 FORTUNE-HUNTERS 346
61 THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT; OR, THE SEARCH
FOR GOLD AND ADVENTURE 354
62 BORN AGAIN 359
63 CHRISTIANS QUARREL 365
64 KING ELIZABETH 372
65 THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 378
66 JAMES THE SERVANT; OR, WHAT’S IN A NAME? 384
67 A KING WHO LOST HIS HEAD 390
68 RED CAP AND RED HEELS 395
69 A SELF-MADE MAN 402
70 A PRINCE WHO RAN AWAY 407
71 AMERICA GETS RID OF HER KING 412
72 UPSIDE DOWN 420
73 A LITTLE GIANT 428
74 FROM PAN AND HIS PIPES TO THE PHONOGRAPH 435
75 THE DAILY PAPERS OF 1854-1865 443
76 THREE NEW POSTAGE STAMPS 449
77 THE AGE OF MIRACLES 454
78 GERMANY FIGHTS THE WORLD 460
79 YESTERDAY, TO-DAY, AND TO-MORROW 465
This page is not for you, boys and girls.
It is for that old man or woman--twenty,
thirty, or forty years old, who may peek
into this book; and is what they would
call the
PREFACE
To give the child some idea of what has gone on in the world before he
arrived;
To take him out of his little self-centered, shut-in life, which looms
so large because it is so close to his eyes;
To extend his horizon, broaden his view, and open up the vista down the
ages past;
To acquaint him with some of the big events and great names and fix
these in time and space as a basis for detailed study in the future;
To give him a chronological file with main guides, into which he can
fit in its proper place all his further historical study--
Is the purpose of this first SURVEY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY.
This part is not for you, either. It is for
your father, mother, or teacher, and is
what they would call the
INTRODUCTION
In common with all children of my age, I was brought up on American
History and given no other history but American, year in and year out,
year after year for eight or more years.
So far as I knew 1492 was the beginning of the world. Any events or
characters before that time, reference to which I encountered by any
chance, were put down in my mind in the same category with fairy-tales.
Christ and His times, of which I heard only in Sunday-school, were to
me mere fiction without reality. They were not mentioned in any history
that I knew and therefore, so I thought, must belong _not_ to a realm
in time and space, but to a spiritual realm.
To give an American child only American History is as provincial as
to teach a Texas child only Texas History. Patriotism is usually
given as the reason for such history teaching. It only promotes a
narrow-mindedness and an absurd conceit, based on utter ignorance of
any other peoples and any other times--an intolerant egotism without
foundation in fact. Since the World War it has become increasingly more
and more important that American children should have a knowledge of
other countries and other peoples in order that their attitude may be
intelligent and unprejudiced.
As young as nine years of age, a child is eagerly inquisitive as to
what has taken place in the ages past and readily grasps a concept of
World History. Therefore, for many years Calvert School nine-year-old
pupils have been taught World History in spite of academic and
parental skepticism and antagonism. But I have watched the gradual
drift toward adoption of this plan of history teaching, and with it an
ever-increasing demand for a text-book of general history for young
children. I have found, however, that all existing text-books have to
be largely abridged and also supplemented by a running explanation and
comment, to make them intelligible to the young child.
The recent momentous studies into the native intelligence of children
show us what the average child at different ages can understand and
what he cannot understand--what dates, figures of speech, vocabulary,
generalities, and abstractions he can comprehend and what he cannot
comprehend--and in the future all text-books will have to be written
with constant regard for these intelligence norms. Otherwise, such
texts are very likely to be “over the child’s head.” They will be
trying to teach him some things at least that, in the nature of the
case, are beyond him.
In spite of the fact that the writer has been in constant contact with
the child mind for a great many years, he has found that whatever
was written in his study had to be revised and rewritten each time
after the lesson had been tried out in the class-room. Even though
the first writing was in what he considered the simplest language,
he has found that each and every word and expression has had to be
subjected again and again to this class-room test to determine what
meaning is conveyed. The slightest inverted phraseology or possibility
of double meaning has oftentimes been misconstrued or found confusing.
For instance, the statement that “Rome was _on_ the Tiber River” has
quite commonly been taken to mean that the city was literally built
_on top_ of the river, and the child has had some sort of fantastic
vision of houses built on piles in the river. A child of nine is still
very young--he may still believe in Santa Claus--younger in ideas, in
vocabulary and in understanding than most adults appreciate--even
though they be parents or teachers--and new information can hardly be
put too simply.
So the topics selected have not always been the most important--but the
most important that can be understood and appreciated by a child. Most
political, sociological, economic, or religious generalities are beyond
a child’s comprehension, no matter how simply told. After all, this
History is only a preliminary story.
Excellent biographies and stories from general history have been
written. But biographies from history do not give an historic outline.
They do not give any outline at all for future filling in; and, indeed,
unless they themselves are fitted into such a general historical
scheme, they are nothing more than so many disconnected tales floating
about in the child’s mind with no associations of time or space.
The treatment of the subject in this book is, therefore,
chronological--telling the story of what has happened century by
century and epoch by epoch, not by nations. The story of one nation is
interrupted to take up that of another as different plots in a novel
are brought forward simultaneously. This is in line with the purpose,
which is to give the pupil a continuous view or panorama of the ages,
rather than Greek History from start to finish, then, retracing the
steps of time, Roman History, and so on. The object is to sketch the
whole picture in outline, leaving the details to be gradually filled
in by later study, as the artist sketches the general scheme of his
picture before filling in the details. Such a scheme is as necessary to
orderly classification of historical knowledge as is a filing system in
any office that can function properly or even at all.
The Staircase of Time is to give a visual idea of the extent of time
and the progressive steps in the History of the World. Each “flight”
represents a thousand years, and each “step” a hundred--a century. If
you have a spare wall, either in the play-room, attic, or barn such
a Staircase of Time on a large scale may be drawn upon it from floor
to reaching height and made a feature if elaborated with pictures or
drawings of people and events. If the wall faces the child’s bed so
much the better, for when lying awake in the morning or at any other
time, instead of imagining fantastic designs on the wall-paper, he may
picture the crowded events on the Staircase of Time. At any rate, the
child should constantly refer either to such a Staircase of Time or to
the Time Table as each event is studied, until he has a mental image of
the Ages past.
At first a child does not appreciate time values represented by numbers
or the relative position of dates on a time line and will wildly say
twenty-five hundred B. C. or twenty-five thousand B. C. or twenty-five
million B. C. indiscriminately. Only by constantly referring dates to
position on the Staircase of Time or the Time Table can a child come
to visualize dates. You may be _amused_, but do not be _amazed_, if a
child gives 776 thousand years A.D. as the date for the First Olympiad,
or says that Italy is located in Athens, or that Abraham was a hero of
the Trojan War.
If you have ever been introduced to a roomful of strangers at one
time, you know how futile it is to attempt even to remember their
names to say nothing of connecting names and faces. It is necessary
to hear something interesting about each one before you can begin to
recall names and faces. Likewise an introduction to World History, the
characters and places in which are utterly unknown strangers to the
child, must be something more than a mere name introduction, and there
must be very few introductions given at a time or both names and faces
will be instantly forgotten. It is also necessary to repeat new names
constantly in order that the pupil may gradually become familiarized
with them, for so many strange people and places are bewildering.
In order to serve the purpose of a basal outline, which in the future
is to be filled in, it is necessary that the Time Table be made a
permanent possession of the pupil. This Time Table, therefore, should
be studied like the multiplication tables until it is known one
hundred per cent and for “keeps,” and until the topic connected with
each date can be elaborated as much as desired. The aim should be to
have the pupil able to start with Primitive Man and give a summary of
World History to the present time, with dates and chief events without
prompting, questioning, hesitation, or mistake. Does this seem too much
to expect? It is not as difficult as it may sound, if suggestions given
in the text for connecting the various events into a sequence and for
passing names and events in a condensed review are followed. Hundreds
of Calvert children each year are successfully required to do this very
thing.
The attitude, however, usually assumed by teachers, that “even if the
pupil forgets it all, there will be left a valuable impression,” is too
often an apology for superficial teaching and superficial learning.
History may be made just as much a “mental discipline” as some other
studies, but only if difficulties of dates and other abstractions are
squarely met and overcome by hard study and learned to be remembered,
not merely to be forgotten after the recitation. The story part the
child will easily remember, but it is the “who and when and where and
why” that are important, and this part is the serious study. Instead
of, “A man, once upon a time,” he should say, “King John in 1215 at
Runnymede because--”
This book, therefore, is not a supplementary reader but a basal history
study. Just enough narrative is told to give the skeleton flesh and
blood and make it living. The idea is not how much but how little can
be told; to cut down one thousand pages to less than half of that
number without leaving only dry bones.
No matter how the subject is presented it is necessary that the child
do his part and put his own brain to work; and for this purpose he
_should be required to retell each story after he has read it_ and
should be repeatedly questioned on names and dates as well as stories,
to make sure he is retaining and assimilating what he hears.
I recall how once upon a time a young chap, just out of college, taught
his first class in history. With all the enthusiasm of a full-back who
has just kicked a goal from field, he talked, he sang; he drew maps
on the blackboard, on the floor, on the field; he drew pictures, he
vaulted desks, and even stood on his head to illustrate points. His
pupils attended spellbound, with their eyes wide open, their ears wide
open, and their mouths wide open. They missed nothing. They drank in
his flow of words with thirst unquenched; but, like Baron Munchausen,
he had failed to look at the other end of the drinking horse that had
been cut in half. At the end of a month his kindly principal suggested
a test, and he gave it with perfect confidence.
There were only three questions:
(1) Tell all you can about Columbus.
(2) “ “ “ “ “ Jamestown.
(3) “ “ “ “ “ Plymouth.
And here are the three answers of one of the most interested pupils:
(1) He was a _grate_ man.
(2) “ “ “ “ “
(3) “ “ “ “ “ _to_.
Here is the
STAIRCASE OF TIME
It starts far, far, below the bottom of the pages and rises up, UP, UP
to where we are NOW--each step a hundred years, each flight of steps a
thousand. It will keep on up until it reaches high heaven. From where
we are NOW let us look down the flights below us and listen to the
Story of what has happened in the long years gone by.
[Illustration]
TIME TABLE
with
DATES AND OTHER FOOD FOR THOUGHT
_Don’t devour these dates all at once, or they’ll make you sick, and
you’ll never want to see one again._
_Take them piecemeal, only one or two at a time after each story, and
be sure to digest them thoroughly._
PAGE
Beginning of the Earth 3
First Rain-storm 7
Plants 7
Mites 8
Insects 8
Fish 8
Frogs 8
Snakes 8
Birds 8
Animals 8
Monkeys 8
People 8
4000 B.C. Bronze Age Begins 16
3400 B.C. Menes 28
2900 B.C. Cheops 38
2300 B.C. Chaldean Eclipse 46
1900 B.C. Abraham Leaves Ur 49
1700 B.C. Israelites go to Egypt 51
1300 B.C. Exodus; Iron Age Begins 54
1200 B.C. Trojan War 64
1100 B.C. Samuel; Saul 70
1000 B.C. Homer; Solomon; Hiram 68, 71, 76
900 B.C. Lycurgus 79
776 B.C. First Olympiad 87
753 B.C. Founding of Rome 89
700 B.C. Nineveh at Top 96
612 B.C. Fall of Nineveh 98
Draco; Solon 114-115
538 B.C. Fall of Babylon 108
509 B.C. End of Kings at Rome 119
500 B.C. Brahmanism 111
Buddhism 112
Confucius 113
490 B.C. Marathon 127
480 B.C. Thermopylæ; 137
Salamis 140
480 B.C. Golden Age 143
430 B.C. Peloponnesian War 151
336 B.C. }
323 B.C. } Alexander the Great 159, 162
202 B.C. Zama 175
100 B.C. Birth of Julius Cæsar 184
55 B.C. }
54 B.C. } Conquest of Britain 186
44 B.C. Death of Julius Cæsar 190
27 B.C. Augustus and the Empire 191
4 B.C. Birth of Christ 197
Nero 203
Titus 206
79 A.D. Pompeii destroyed 208
179 A.D. Marcus Aurelius 210
323 A.D. Constantine 215
476 A.D. Downfall of Rome 227
622 A.D. The Hegira 244
732 A.D. Tours 249
800 A.D. Charlemagne 257
900 A.D. King Alfred the Great 264
1000 A.D. First Discovery of America 269
1066 A.D. William the Conqueror 286
1100 A.D. The Crusades 292
1215 A.D. King John; Magna Charta 311
1300 A.D. Marco Polo 318
1338 A.D. Beginning of One Hundred
Years’ War; Crécy; Black
Death; Joan of Arc 327
1440 A.D. Invention of Printing 333
1453 A.D. Fall of Constantinople 335
1492 A.D. Columbus; Discovery of
America 337
1497 A.D. Vasco da Gama 348
1500 A.D. The Renaissance 359
The Reformation 365
Charles V 367
King Henry VIII 369
Elizabeth 372
1588 A.D. Spanish Armada 375
1600 A.D. Shakspere 380
1640 A.D. Charles I and Oliver Cromwell 390
Cardinal Richelieu 395
Louis XIV 397
1700 A.D. Peter the Great 402
1750 A.D. Frederick the Great 407
1776 A.D. American Revolution 412
1789 A.D. French Revolution 420
1800 A.D. Napoleon 428
1861 A.D. Civil War 447
1914 A.D. }
1918 A.D. } The Great War 460
A CHILD’S HISTORY
OF THE WORLD
BEGINS HERE
1
How Things Started
Once upon a time there was a boy--
Just like me.
He had to stay in bed in the morning until seven o’clock until his
father and mother were ready to get up;
So did I.
As he was always awake long before this time, he used to lie there and
think about all sorts of curious things;
So did I.
One thing he used to wonder was this:
What would the world be like if there were--
No fathers and mothers,
No uncles and aunts,
No cousins or other children to play with,
_No people at all, except himself_ in the whole world!
Perhaps you have wondered the same thing;
So did I.
At last he used to get so lonely, just from thinking how dreadful such
a world would be, that he could stand it no longer and would run
to his mother’s room and jump into bed by her side just to get this
terrible thought out of his mind;
So did I--for _I was the boy_.
Well, there _was_ a time long, long, long ago when there were no men
or women or children, _NO PEOPLE_ of any kind in the whole world. Of
course there were no houses, for there was no one to build them or to
live in them, no towns or cities--nothing that people make. There were
just wild animals--bears and wolves, birds and butterflies, frogs and
snakes, turtles and fish. Can you think of such a world as that?
Then,
long, long, long
before that, there was a time when there were _NO PEOPLE_ and _NO
ANIMALS_ of any sort in the whole world; there were just growing
plants, trees and bushes, grass and flowers. Can you think of such a
world as that?
Then,
long, long, long,
long, long, long
before that, there was a time when there were _NO PEOPLE, NO ANIMALS,
NO PLANTS_, in the whole world; there was just bare rock and water
everywhere. Can you think of such a world as that?
Then,
long, long, long
long, long, long--you might
keep on saying--
“long, long, long,” all day, and
to-morrow, and all
next week, and next
month, and next
year, and it would
not be long enough--
before this, there was a time when there was
_NO WORLD AT ALL!_
There were only the Stars
Nothing else!
Now, real Stars are not things with points like those in the corner of
a flag or the gold ones you put on a Christmas tree. The real stars in
the sky have no points. They are huge burning coals of fire--coals of
fire. Each star, however, is so huge that there is nothing in the world
now anywhere nearly as big. One little bit, one little scrap of a star
is bigger than our whole world--than our whole world.
One of these stars is our Sun--yes, our Sun. The other stars would
look the same as the Sun if we could get as close to them. But at that
time, so long, long ago, our Sun was not just a big, round, white,
hot ball as we see it in the sky to-day. It was then more like the
fireworks you may have seen on the Fourth of July. It was whirling and
sputtering and throwing off sparks.
[Illustration: The sun sputtering and throwing off sparks.]
One of these sparks which the Sun threw far off got cool just as a
spark from the crackling log in the fireplace gets cool, and this
cooled-off spark was--
What do you suppose?
See if you can guess--
It was our World!--yes, the World
on which we now live.
At first, however, our World or Earth was nothing but a ball of rock.
This ball of rock was wrapped around with steam, like a heavy fog.
Then the steam turned to rain and it rained on the World,
a a a
n n n
d d d
i i i
t t t
r r r
a a a
i i i
n n n
e e e
d d d
until it had filled up the hollows and made enormously big puddles.
These puddles were the oceans. The dry places were bare _rock_.
Then, after this, came the first living things--_tiny plants_ that you
could only have seen under a microscope. At first they grew only in
the water, then along the water’s edge, then out on the rock.
Then dirt or soil, as people call it, formed all over the rock and made
the rock into land, and the plants grew larger and spread farther over
the land.
Then, after this, came the first _tiny animals_ in the water. They were
wee _Mites_ like drops of jelly.
Then, after this, came things like _Insects_, some that live _in_ the
water, some _on_ the water, some _on_ the land, and some _in_ the air.
Then, after this, came _Fish_, that live only in the water.
Then, after this, came _Frogs_, that live in the water and on the land,
too.
Then, after this, came _Snakes_ and huge _lizards_ bigger than
alligators, more like dragons; and they grew so big that at last they
could not move and died because they could not get enough food to eat.
Then, after this, came _Birds_ that lay eggs and those _Animals_ like
foxes and elephants and cows that nurse their babies when they are born.
Then, after this, came _Monkeys_.
Then, last of all, came--what do you suppose? Yes--_People_--men,
women, and children.
Here are the steps; see if you can take them:
STAR, SUN;
SUN, SPARK;
SPARK, WORLD;
WORLD, STEAM;
STEAM, RAIN;
RAIN, OCEANS.
OCEANS, PLANTS;
PLANTS, MITES;
MITES, INSECTS;
INSECTS, FISH;
FISH, FROGS;
FROGS, SNAKES.
SNAKES, BIRDS;
BIRDS, ANIMALS;
ANIMALS, MONKEYS;
MONKEYS, PEOPLE;
And here we are!
What do you suppose will be next?
2
Umfa-Umfa and Itchy-Scratchy
How do you suppose I know about all these things that took place so
long ago?
I don’t.
I’m only guessing about them.
But there are different kinds of guesses. If I hold out my two closed
hands and ask you to guess which one has the penny in it, that is one
kind of a guess. Your guess might be right or it might be wrong. It
would be just luck.
But there is another kind of a guess. When there is snow on the ground
and I see tracks of a boot in the snow, I guess that a man must have
passed by, for boots don’t usually walk without some one in them. That
kind of a guess is not just luck but common sense.
And so we can guess about a great many things that have taken place
long ago, even though there was no one there at the time to see them or
tell about them.
Men have dug down deep under the ground in different parts of the world
and have found there--what do you suppose?
I don’t believe you would ever guess.
They have found the heads of arrows and spears and hatchets.
The peculiar thing about these arrows and spears and hatchets is that
they are not made of iron or steel, as you might expect, but of stone.
Now, we are sure that only men could have made and used such things,
for birds and fish or other animals do not use hatchets or spears.
We are also sure that these men must have lived long, long years ago
before iron and steel were known, because it must have taken long, long
years for these things to have become covered up so deep by dust and
dirt. We have also found the bones of the people themselves, who must
have died thousands upon thousands of years ago, long before any one
began to write down history. So we know that the people who were living
on the earth then were working and playing, eating and fighting--doing
many of the same things we are to-day--especially the fighting.
This time in the pre-history of the world, when people used such things
made of stone, is therefore called THE STONE AGE.
These First Stone Age People we call _Primitive_, which simply means
First as a Primer means First Reader. Primitive People were wild
animals. Unlike other wild animals, however, they walked on their hind
legs.
These First People had hair growing, not just on their heads, but all
over their bodies, like some shaggy dogs. They had no houses of any
sort in which to live. They simply lay down on the ground when night
came. Later, when the earth became cold, they found caves in the rocks
or in the hillsides where they could get away from the cold and storms
and other wild animals. So men, women, and children of this time were
called _Cave People_.
They spent their days hunting some animals and running and hiding from
others. They caught animals by trapping them in a pit covered over with
bushes, or they killed them with a club or a rock if they had a chance,
or with stone-headed arrows or hatchets. They even drew pictures of
these animals on the walls of their caves, scratching the picture with
a pointed stone, and some of these pictures we can still see to-day.
They lived on berries and nuts and grass-seeds. They robbed the nests
of birds for the eggs, which they ate raw, for they had no fire to cook
with. They were blood-thirsty; they liked to drink the warm blood of
animals they killed, as you would a glass of milk.
They talked to each other by some sort of grunts--
“Umfa, umfa, glug, glug.”
They made clothes of skins of animals they killed, for there was no
such thing as cloth. And yet, although they were real men, they lived
so much like wild animals that we call such people _savages_.
Primitive Men were not pleasant people. They were fearful and cruel
creatures, who beat and killed and robbed whenever they had a chance.
A cave man got his wife by stealing a girl away from her own cave home,
knocking her senseless, and dragging her off by her hair, if necessary.
The men were fighters but not brave. They would kill other animals and
other men if the others were weaker or if they could sneak upon them
and catch them off their guard, but if others were stronger they would
run and hide.
Their only rule of life was hurt and kill what you can, and run from
what you can’t. This is what we call the first law of nature--every man
for himself. They knew if they didn’t kill they would be killed, for
there were no laws nor police to protect them.
These primitive cave people are our ancestors, and we get from them
many of their wild ways. In spite of our religion and manners and
education, there are many men still living who act in the same way when
they get a chance.
Jails are made for such men.
Suppose you had been a boy or a girl in the Stone Age, with a name
like Itchy-Scratchy. I wonder how you would have liked the life.
When you woke up in the morning, you would not have bathed or even
washed your hands and face or brushed your teeth or combed your hair.
You ate with your fingers, for there were no knives or forks or spoons
or cups or saucers, only one bowl--which your mother had made out of
mud and dried in the sun to hold water to drink--no dishes to wash and
put away, no chairs, no tables, no table manners.
There were no books, no paper, no pencils.
There was no Saturday or Sunday, January or July. Except that one day
was warm and sunny or another cold and rainy, they were all alike.
There was no school to go to. Every day was a holiday.
There was nothing to do all day long but make mud pies or pick berries
or play tag with your brothers and sisters.
I wonder how you would like that kind of life!
“Fine!” do you think?--“a great life--just like camping out?”
But I have only told you part of the story.
The cave would have been cold and damp and dark, with only the bare
ground or a pile of leaves for a bed. There would probably have been
bats and big spiders sharing the cave with you.
You might have had on the skin of some animal your father had killed
but as this only covered part of your body and as there was no fire,
you would have felt cold in winter, and when it got very cold you might
have frozen to death.
For breakfast you might have had some dried berries or grass-seed or a
piece of raw meat, for dinner the same thing, for supper still the same
thing.
You would never have had any bread or milk or griddle-cakes with syrup,
or oatmeal with sugar on it, or apple pie or ice-cream.
There was nothing to do all day long but watch out for wild
animals--bears and tigers; for there was no door with lock and key, and
a tiger, if he found you out, could go wherever you went and “get you”
even in your cave.
And then some day your father, who had left the cave in the morning to
go hunting, would not return, and you would know he had been torn to
pieces by some wild beast, and you would wonder how long before your
turn would come next.
Do you think you would like to have lived then?
3
Fire! Fire!! Fire!!!
The first things are usually the most interesting--the first baby, the
first tooth, the first step, the first word, the first spanking. This
book will be chiefly the story of first things; those that came second
or third or fourth or fifth you can read about and study later.
Primitive People did not at first know what fire was. They had no
matches nor any way of making a light or a fire. They had no light
at night. They had no fire to warm themselves by. They had no fire
with which to cook their food. Somewhere and sometime, we do not know
exactly when or how, they found out how to make and use fire.
If you rub your hands together rapidly, they become warm. Try it. If
you rub them together still more rapidly, they become hot. If you rub
two sticks together rapidly, they become warm. If you rub two sticks
together very, very, very rapidly, they become hot and at last, if you
keep it up long enough and fast enough, are set on fire. The Indians
and boy scouts do this and make a fire by twisting one stick against
another.
This was one of the first inventions, and this invention was as
remarkable for them at that time as the invention of electric light in
our own times.
People of the Stone Age had hair and beards that were never cut,
because they had nothing to cut them with, even had they wanted them
short, which they probably didn’t.
Their finger-nails grew like claws until they broke off.
They had no clothes made of cloth, for they had no cloth and nothing
with which to cut and sew cloth if they had.
They had no saws to cut boards, no hammer or nails to fasten them
together to make houses or furniture.
They had no forks nor spoons; no pots nor pans; no buckets nor shovels;
no needles nor pins.
The People of the Stone Age had never seen or heard of such a thing as
iron or steel or tin or brass or anything made of these metals. For
thousands and thousands of years Primitive People got along without any
of the things that are made of metal.
Then one day a Stone Age Man found out something by accident; a
“discovery” we call it.
He was making a fire; and a fire, which is to us such a common,
every-day thing, was still to him very wonderful. Round his fire he
placed some rock to make a sort of camp-fire stove. Now, it happened
that this particular rock was not ordinary rock but what we now call
“ore,” for it had copper in it. The heat of the fire melted some of the
copper out of the rock, and it ran out on the ground.
What were those bright, shining drops?
He examined them.
How pretty they were!
He heated some more of the same rock and got some more copper.
[Illustration: A cave man discovering copper.]
Thus was the first metal discovered.
At first people used the copper for beads and ornaments, it was so
bright and shiny. But they soon found out that copper could be pounded
into sharp blades and points, which were much better than the stone
knives and arrow-heads they had used before.
But notice that it was not iron they discovered first, it was copper.
We think people next discovered tin in somewhat the same way. Then,
after that, they found out that tin when mixed with copper made a
still harder and better metal than either alone. This metal, made of
tin and copper together, we now call bronze; and for two or three
thousand years people made their tools and weapons out of bronze. And
so we call the time when men used bronze tools, and bronze weapons for
hunting and fighting, the Bronze Age.
At last some man discovered iron, and he soon saw that iron was better
for most useful things than either copper or bronze. The Iron Age
started with the discovery of iron, and we are still in the Iron Age.
As people who lived in the Bronze and Iron Ages were able, after the
discovery of metal, to do many things they could not possibly have done
before with only stone, and as they lived much more as we do now, we
call people of the Bronze and Iron Ages “civilized.”
You may have heard in your mythology or fairy tales of a Golden Age
also, but by this is meant something quite different. The Golden Age
means a time when everything was beautiful and lovely and everybody
wise and good. There have been times in the World’s History which have
been called the Golden Age for this reason.
But I am afraid there never has been really a golden age--only in
fairy-tales.
4
From an Airplane
People of the Bronze and Iron Ages thought the world was flat, and they
knew only a little bit of the world, the small part where they lived;
and they thought that if you went too far the world came to an end
where you would
TU
M
B
L
E
O
F
F
The far-away land which nobody knew they called the Ultima Thule. This
is a nice name to say--Ultima Thule, Ultima Thule--far-away Ultima
Thule.
If we should go up in an airplane and look down on the world at the
place where the first civilized people once lived, we should see two
rivers, a sea and a gulf, and from so high up in the air they would
look something like this:
[Illustration: Map of Mesopotamia and Mediterranean.]
Now, you probably have never even heard of these rivers and seas, and
yet they have been known longer than any other places in the world. One
of these lines is the Tigris River, and the other is the Euphrates.
They run along getting closer and closer together until at last they
join each other and flow into what is called the Persian Gulf.
You might make these two rivers in the ground of your yard or garden or
draw them on the floor if your mother will let you. Just for fun you
might name your drinking-cup “Tigris” and your glass “Euphrates.” Then
you might call your mouth, into which they both empty, the “Persian
Gulf,” for you will hear a great many new names by and by, and as
grown-up people give names to their houses and boats, to their horses
and dogs, why shouldn’t you give names to things that belong to you?
For instance, you might call your chair, your bed, your table, your
comb and brush, even your hat and shoes, after these strange names.
Then, if we flew in our airplane to the west, we should see a country
called Egypt, another river, the Nile, and a sea now named the
Mediterranean. Mediterranean simply means “between the land,” for this
sea is surrounded by land. It is, indeed, almost like a big lake. It
is supposed that long, long ago in the Stone Age, there was no water
at all where this sea now is, only a dry valley, and that people once
lived there.
Along the Nile in Egypt and the Tigris and Euphrates were the only
civilized nations living in the Bronze Age. The rest of the World
people knew nothing about. There may have been Cave Men living in other
parts of the World, but it is only of the people in these two places
that we have any written history until after the Iron Age began.
All of the people who lived in the country of the Tigris and Euphrates
were white. We don’t know how nor when nor where colored people first
lived, though it is interesting to guess. There were, we think, just
three different white families and from these three families all the
white people in the world are descended. Yes, your family came from
here, ’way, ’way, ’way, ’way, back. So you will want to know the names
of these three families and which one was your own. They were:
The Indo-Europeans, often called Aryans,
The Semites, and
The Hamites.
Most of us belong to the Aryan family, some are Semites, but very few
in this part of the World are Hamites.
If your name is Henry or Charles or William, you are probably an Aryan.
If it is Moses or Solomon, you are probably a Semite.
If it is Shufu or Rameses, you are probably a Hamite.
The Aryans came from higher up on the map than the other two families,
we think. They were the first people to tame wild horses and to use
them for riding and drawing carts. They also had tamed cows which they
used for milk, and sheep for their wool.
5
Real History Begins or ’Way ’Way Back to the Time of the Gipsies
You can remember the big things that have happened in your own lifetime.
And you have of course heard your father tell about things that
happened in his own life--how he fought the Germans in the Great War,
perhaps.
And if your grandfather is still living, he can tell you still other
stories of things that took place when he was a boy before even your
father was born.
Perhaps your
great,
great,
grandfather
may have been living when Washington was
President, and _his_
great,
great,
great,
great,
grandfather
may have been living when there were only wild Indians in this country.
Although these ancestors, as they are called, are dead long since, the
story of what did happen in all their lifetimes ’way, ’way back has
been written down in books and this story is history--“his story” one
boy named it.
Christ was living in the Year 1--no, not the first year of the world,
of course.
Do you know how many years ago that was?
You can tell if you know what year this is now.
If Christ were living to-day, how old would He be?
Nineteen hundred and more years may seem a long time. But perhaps you
have seen or heard of a man or a woman who was a hundred years old.
Have you?
Well, in nineteen hundred years only nineteen men each a hundred years
old might have lived one after the other--nineteen men one after the
other since the time of Christ--and that doesn’t seem so long after all!
Everything that happened _before_ Christ was born is called B.C., which
you can guess are the initials of Before Christ, so B.C. stands for
Before Christ. So much is easy.
Everything that has happened in the world _since_ the time of Christ is
called A.D. This is not so easy for though A. might stand for After,
we know D. is not the initial of Christ. As a matter of fact, A. D.
are the initials of two Latin words, “Anno Domini.” Anno means “in the
year,” Domini “of the Lord”; so that Anno Domini is “in the year, of
the Lord,” which in ordinary, every-day language means of course “since
the time of Christ.”
The things I have told you that I have had to guess at we call
Before-History, or _Pre-History_--which means the same thing. But the
things that have happened in the lifetime of people, who have written
them down--the stories I don’t have to guess at--we call _History_.
The first history that we feel fairly sure is really true begins with
the Hamite family. The Hamites, you remember, were one of the three
families of the white race I have already told you about who lived by
the Tigris and Euphrates. We think that they moved away from the Tigris
and Euphrates Rivers and went down to Egypt long before history began.
Of course they didn’t pack all their furniture on a big wagon and
move to Egypt, as you might move from the house where you now live to
another. They lived in tents then and not in houses at all, and they
only moved along a day’s journey at a time as campers or Gipsies might
do. In fact, Gipsy is short for Egyptian. When they got tired of one
place or had eaten up everything there was near-by, they rolled up
their tents, packed them on camels, and moved a little farther along
to a new place. And so camping here for a while, then gradually moving
farther along to the next good place and camping there, they at last
got as far off as the land we now call Egypt. When they finally reached
Egypt they found it such a fine country in which to live that there
they stayed for good and were called Egyptians.
Why do you suppose they found Egypt such a fine country in which to
live? It was chiefly on account of a habit of the river Nile--a bad
habit you might at first think it--a habit of flooding the country once
every year.
It rains so hard in the spring that the water fills up the river Nile,
overflows its banks, and spreads far out over the land, but not very
deep. It is as if you had left a water-spigot turned on and the water
running, or had begun to water your garden with a hose, and then you
had gone off and forgotten it.
But the people know when the overflow is coming and they are glad for
it to come, so they put banks around some of it so that it is stored
up for watering the land during the rest of the year when there is no
rain. After most of the water has dried up, it has left a layer of
rich, dark, moist earth over the whole country. In this earth it is
easy to grow dates, wheat, and other things which are good for food.
If it were not for this yearly overflow of the Nile, the country of
Egypt would be a sandy desert in which no plant or living thing would
grow--for all plants as well as animals must have water and will die
without it. Egypt, without water, would be like the great Sahara
Desert, which is not far away. It is the Nile, therefore, that makes
the land so rich and Egypt such an easy and cheap country to live
in, for food grows with little or no labor and costs almost nothing.
Besides this, the climate is so warm that people need little clothing
and do not have to buy coal or make fires to heat their houses. So it
was to this country that the Hamites at last came, finally settled
down, and were thereafter called Egyptians.
[Illustration: Menes, 3400 B. C.]
The first Egyptian king whose name we know was Menes, but we do not
know much about him. We believe he built some kind of waterworks
so that the people might better use the water of the Nile, and he
probably lived about 3400 B. C. He may have lived either earlier or
later, but as this is an easy date to remember, we shall take it for
a starting-point. You might remember it by supposing it is a telephone
number of a person you wanted to call up:
Menes, First Egyptian king . . 3400 B.C.
[Illustration]
6
The Puzzle-Writers
People of the Stone Age had learned how to talk to each other, but they
could not write, for there was no such thing as an alphabet or written
words, and so they could not send notes or messages to one another or
write stories. The Egyptians were the first people to think of a way to
write what they wanted to say.
The Egyptians did not write with letters like ours, however, but with
signs that looked like little pictures, a lion, a spear, a bird, a
whip. This picture-writing was called hieroglyphics--see if you can say
“Hi-e-ro-glyph-ics.” Perhaps you have seen, in the puzzle sections of
a newspaper, stories written in pictures for you to guess the meaning.
Well, hieroglyphics were something like that.
Here is the name of an Egyptian queen, whom you will hear about
later--written in hieroglyphics; her name you would never guess from
this funny writing. It is “Cleopatra.”
A king’s or queen’s name always had a line drawn around it, like the
one you see around the above name in order to mark it more prominently
and give it more importance. It was something like the square or circle
your mother may put around her initials or monogram on her letter-paper.
But there was no paper in those days and so the Egyptians wrote on the
leaves of a plant called papyrus that grew in the water. It is from
this name “papyrus” that we get the name “paper.” Can you see that
“paper” and “papyrus” look and sound something alike? The Egyptians’
books were written by hand, of course, but they had no pencils nor pens
nor ink to write with. For a pen they used a reed, split at the end,
and for ink a mixture of water and soot.
[Illustration: Cleopatra in hieroglyphic writing.]
Their books were not made of separate pages like our books, but from
a long sheet of papyrus-leaves pasted together. This was rolled up to
form what was called a scroll, something like a roll of wall-paper, and
was read as it was unrolled.
Stories of their kings and battles and great events in their history
they used to write on the walls of their buildings and monuments. This
writing they carved into the stone, so that it would last much longer
than that on the papyrus-leaves.
All the old Egyptians, who wrote in hieroglyphics and knew how to read
this writing, had died long since, and for a great many years no one
knew what such writing meant. But a little over a hundred years ago a
man found out by accident how to read and understand hieroglyphics once
again. This is the way he happened to do so.
The Nile separates into different streams before it flows into the
Mediterranean Sea. These separate streams are called mouths and one of
these mouths has been given the name “Rosetta.”
One day a man was digging nearby this Rosetta Mouth when he dug up a
stone something like a tombstone with several kinds of writing on it.
The top writing was in pictures which we now call hieroglyphics, and no
one understood what it meant. Below this was written what was supposed
to be the same story in the Greek language, and a great many people do
understand Greek. All one had to do, therefore, to find out the meaning
of the hieroglyphics, was to compare the two writings. It was like
reading secret writing when we know what the letters stand for. You may
have tried to solve a puzzle in the back of your magazine, and this
was just such an interesting puzzle, only there was no one to tell the
answer in the next number.
The puzzle was not so easy as it sounds, however, for it took a man
almost twenty years to solve it. That is a long time for any one to
spend in trying to solve a puzzle, isn’t it? But after this “key” to
the puzzle was found, men were able to read all of the hieroglyphics
in Egypt and so to find out what happened in that country long before
Christ was born.
This stone is called the Rosetta Stone, from the Rosetta Mouth of the
Nile where it was found. It is now in the great British Museum in
London and is very famous, because from it we were able to learn so
much history which we otherwise would not have known.
Egypt was ruled over by a king who was called a Pharaoh. When he died
his son became the Pharaoh and so on. All the other people were divided
into classes, and the children in each class usually became just what
their fathers had been. It was very unusual for an Egyptian to start at
the bottom and work up to the top, as a poor boy in this country may
do, though once in a great while this happened even in Egypt, as we
shall see by and by.
The highest class of people were called priests. They were not like
priests or ministers of the church nowadays, however, for there was
no church at that time. The priests made the religion and rules, which
every one had to obey as everybody does the laws of our land.
But the priests were not only priests; they were doctors and lawyers
and engineers, as well. They were the best-educated class, and they
were the only people who knew how to read and write, for it was very
difficult, as you might suppose, to learn how to read and write
hieroglyphics.
The next highest class to the priests were the soldiers, and below
these were the lower classes--farmers, shepherds, shopkeepers,
merchants, mechanics, and last of all the swineherds.
The Egyptians did not worship one God as we do. They believed in
hundreds of gods and goddesses, and they had a special god for every
sort of thing, who ruled over and had charge of that thing--a god of
the farm, a god of the home, and so on. Some of their gods were good
and some were bad, but the Egyptians prayed to them all.
Osiris was the chief god, and Isis was his wife. Osiris was the god of
farming and judge of the dead. Their son Horus had the head of a hawk.
Many of their gods had bodies of men with heads of animals. Animals
they thought sacred. The dog and the cat were sacred animals. The
ibis, which was a bird like a stork, was another. Then there was the
beetle, which was called a scarab. If any one killed a sacred animal
he was put to death, for the Egyptians thought it much worse to kill a
sacred and holy creature than to kill even a human being.
[Illustration]
7
The Tomb-Builders
[Illustration: Tu-tank-amen’s tomb showing foods preserved.]