Ancient Man Part 17

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 wors.h.i.+pped. 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 acc.u.mulate 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 G.o.ds that had been wors.h.i.+pped 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A COLONY.]

Soon therefore they pa.s.sed beyond those boundaries which the ancient world had accepted as impa.s.sable 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.

A FEW DATES CONNECTED WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

I can not give you any positive dates connected with Prehistoric Man.

The early Europeans who appear in the first chapters of this book began their career about fifty thousand years ago.

THE EGYPTIANS

The earliest civilization in the Nile Valley developed forty centuries before the birth of Christ.

3400 B.C. The Old Egyptian Empire is founded. Memphis is the capital.

2800--2700 B.C. The Pyramids are built.

2000 B.C. The Old Empire is destroyed by the Arab shepherds, called the "Hyksos."

1800 B.C. Thebes delivers Egypt from the Hyksos and becomes the center of the New Egyptian Empire.

1350 B.C. King Rameses conquers Eastern Asia.

1300 B.C. The Jews leave Egypt.

1000 B.C. Egypt begins to decline.

700 B.C. Egypt becomes an a.s.syrian province.

650 B.C. Egypt regains her independence and a new State is founded with Sais in the Delta as its capital.

Foreigners, especially Greeks, begin to dominate the country.

525 B.C. Egypt becomes a Persian province.

300 B.C. Egypt becomes an independent Kingdom ruled by one of Alexander the Great's generals, called Ptolemy.

30 B.C. Cleopatra, the last princess of the Ptolemy dynasty, kills herself and Egypt becomes part of the Roman Empire.

THE JEWS

2000 B.C. Abraham moves away from the land of Ur in eastern Babylonia and looks for a new home in the western part of Asia.

1550 B.C. The Jews occupy the land of Goshen in Egypt.

1300 B.C. Moses leads the Jews out of Egypt and gives them the Law.

1250 B.C. The Jews have crossed the river Jordan and have occupied Palestine.

1055 B.C. Saul is King of the Jews.

1025 B.C. David is King of a powerful Jewish state.

1000 B.C. Solomon builds the Great Temple of Jerusalem.

950 B.C. The Jewish state divided into two Kingdoms, that of Judah and that of Israel.

900-600 B.C. The age of the great Prophets.