0,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In "History of Ancient Civilization," Charles Seignobos presents a meticulous examination of the foundations of human society, tracing the evolution of civilizations from the earliest communities to the complex societies that shaped the ancient world. Seignobos employs a clear, engaging literary style that marries rigorous academic scholarship with accessible prose, making it suitable for both scholars and general readers. Through a thematic approach, he explores interconnected aspects of culture, governance, and economic structures, contextualizing them within the broader narrative of humanity's progress and interaction over millennia. Charles Seignobos (1854-1942) was a distinguished French historian whose academic journey was characterized by a commitment to innovative historical methodologies. His extensive education and expertise in history and sociology, combined with an interest in the socio-political dynamics of civilizations, fueled his passion for understanding the complexities of ancient societies. Seignobos' scholarly background and insights into the philosophical implications of historical development inform his narrative, making it a rich resource for comprehending the past. I highly recommend "History of Ancient Civilization" for anyone seeking a comprehensive and insightful exploration of ancient societies. Whether you are a student, historian, or a curious reader, Seignobos' work will deepen your appreciation for the intricate tapestry of human civilization. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
Ähnliche
History Of Ancient Civilization
Table of Contents
Introduction
At its core, this book examines how early societies forged order from chaos and turned memory into enduring institutions. History of Ancient Civilization by Charles Seignobos offers a guided journey through the earliest known communities to the great cultures of classical antiquity. Rather than dramatizing events, it presents a reasoned account of how peoples organized power, belief, work, and knowledge. Seignobos writes with steady clarity, inviting readers to consider how customs harden into laws and how collective life takes shape in cities and empires. The result is a lucid doorway into antiquity, framed by questions that remain recognizably human.
This work is a non-fiction historical survey, composed by the French historian Charles Seignobos and situated within the broad movement that sought a disciplined, evidence-based study of the past. Written around the turn of the twentieth century and made available in English in the early 1900s, it reflects the pedagogical and scholarly aims of its time. The setting is the ancient world—the Near East and the Mediterranean above all—approached not as a string of heroic episodes but as an unfolding of social forms. Readers encounter a scholarly synthesis that emphasizes intelligible structure over anecdote.
Seignobos offers a spoiler-safe premise for a history book: he traces the emergence and development of civilizations without hinging the narrative on surprises. The experience is one of careful exposition and comparative perspective, moving from early riverine societies to the cultures that shaped classical antiquity. The voice is measured and instructive, designed to guide rather than dazzle. The style favors clear definitions, chronological scaffolding, and an insistence on what the available evidence can support. The mood is reflective, sometimes austere, always geared toward helping readers see patterns that connect institutions, beliefs, and material conditions across time.
Key themes recur with deliberate emphasis. Seignobos is attentive to the creation of political order—kingship, assemblies, and the city-state—and to the ways law and custom discipline collective life. Religion appears as both personal devotion and public framework, shaping calendars, authority, and art. Economic organization—land, labor, trade—grounds the narrative in everyday realities, while intellectual and artistic achievements signal shifts in how people explain the world. Continuity and change, contact and conflict, center and periphery: these dynamics structure the account. The book asks readers to watch how different societies solve similar problems and to note the legacies such solutions leave behind.
Methodologically, the book exemplifies a methodical, source-conscious approach associated with Seignobos’s era of French historiography. It privileges institutions, social organization, and the interplay between material conditions and ideas, aiming to explain rather than merely describe. The author underscores causation where evidence permits and withholds judgment where it does not, modeling the restraint that historical inquiry requires. The narrative does not assume progress is inevitable; instead, it observes how structures emerge, adapt, or collapse under pressure. This disciplined stance makes the work a tool for learning how historians think, as much as a guide to the ancient world itself.
For contemporary readers, the book matters because the questions it poses—about power, citizenship, law, belief, and cultural exchange—remain urgent. It encourages reflection on the foundations of civic life and on the costs and possibilities of empire. Equally important, it offers a window into the practice of history at the time it was written, reminding us that every account is shaped by its sources and its era’s assumptions. Reading it alongside current scholarship invites productive dialogue: how have interpretations changed, what evidence has expanded, and which frameworks endure? The book thus serves both as content and as historiographical case study.
Approached in this spirit, History of Ancient Civilization rewards patient, curious reading. It provides orientation before detail, argument before flourish, and concepts sturdy enough to support further exploration. Students will find a map of major problems and developments; general readers will find an accessible path into a vast subject. The prose asks for engagement rather than passive consumption, inviting note-taking, comparison, and return visits to earlier chapters. As an introduction or a companion to more specialized works, it equips readers to ask better questions of the ancient record—and to recognize, in distant ages, the lineaments of our own shared concerns.
Synopsis
Charles Seignobos presents a survey of ancient civilization from the earliest Near Eastern societies to the classical world of Greece and Rome. He outlines his method through attention to institutions, social life, economy, religion, and art rather than isolated events. Beginning with material remains and written sources, he emphasizes how geography and resources shaped forms of government and daily existence. The narrative follows a chronological and regional progression, showing how innovations circulated across cultures. The book aims to trace the formation of enduring political and cultural patterns, highlighting the transmission of ideas and practices that later nourished European development.
The account opens with Egypt, where the Nile environment favored a centralized monarchy, an organized bureaucracy, and a religion centered on cosmic order and the afterlife. Seignobos describes the stability of Egyptian society, the role of scribes, and monumental art governed by strict conventions. Agriculture and irrigation structured work and taxation, while temples anchored community life. Royal authority appeared as a sacred institution, sustaining the state through cycles of prosperity and crisis. By examining crafts, trade routes, and funerary practices, the book shows how an ancient system achieved long continuity, leaving models of administration and symbolic expression.
Mesopotamia and neighboring peoples illustrate a contrasting trajectory of city-states and empires marked by instability and innovation. The text reviews Sumerian and Babylonian advances in writing, law, and mathematics, including codified justice exemplified by Hammurabi. Assyria demonstrates the military and administrative instruments of conquest. Seignobos then turns to Phoenician maritime commerce and the diffusion of the alphabet, and to the Hebrews, whose monotheism and ethical law shaped subsequent religious traditions. The Persian Empire appears as a synthesis of imperial organization, satrapal governance, royal roads, and pragmatic tolerance, offering a durable model of rule over diverse populations.
In the Aegean world, the narrative explores Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece, followed by decline and recovery during the so called Dark Age. The emergence of the polis marks a decisive social and political form, uniting citizens around institutions, festivals, and shared defense. Colonization across the Mediterranean and Black Sea spreads Greek language and practices, expands markets, and fosters civic experimentation. Seignobos highlights economic bases in smallholding, artisan labor, and exchange, alongside aristocratic traditions and hoplite warfare. Religion and epic poetry provide common cultural frameworks, preparing the ground for later philosophical inquiry and civic reform.
Greek development is shown through contrasting models. Sparta embodies disciplined oligarchy and communal rigor; Athens undergoes reform through Solon and Cleisthenes, establishing broader civic participation. The Persian Wars become a collective test, securing Hellenic autonomy and prestige. Afterwards, the Athenian maritime league consolidates power and resources, while Periclean leadership promotes architecture, drama, and intellectual life. Seignobos describes institutions of democracy, the citizen body, and the balance between public service and imperial tribute. The arts and thinkers flourish under stable conditions, yet tensions emerge between autonomy of poleis and the tendencies of empire.
The Peloponnesian War reveals the fragility of the city state system, exposing strains of prolonged conflict, factional politics, and shifting alliances. Postwar hegemony passes from Sparta to Thebes, without lasting settlement. Macedon, reorganized by Philip II, introduces a larger military and political framework that culminates in Alexander’s conquests. The Hellenistic kingdoms spread Greek language and urban institutions across the Near East. Seignobos notes the growth of commerce, scholarship in centers like Alexandria, advances in science and geography, and religious syncretism. City life becomes cosmopolitan, and monarchy replaces the civic primacy of the polis while preserving its cultural forms.
Turning to Rome, the book outlines the city’s legendary beginnings, the early kingship, and the establishment of the Republic with magistracies, Senate, and assemblies. The Struggle of the Orders yields written law and broader rights, integrating plebeians into public life. Military service and disciplined organization support conquest of Italy, while treaties and graded citizenship extend Roman influence. Family structures, patronage, and religious rites shape social cohesion. Seignobos emphasizes institutions as instruments of expansion, and the capacity of Rome to adapt local practices while standardizing legal and civic frameworks across allied communities.
Overseas expansion transforms Rome. The Punic Wars establish Mediterranean supremacy, followed by intervention in the Hellenistic East and the creation of provinces. Wealth, slaves, and new markets reshape the economy, favoring latifundia and destabilizing smallholders. Urban crowds and provincial grievances sharpen political conflict. Seignobos traces reform efforts of the Gracchi, military and constitutional changes under Marius and Sulla, and the concentration of power among leading commanders. Civil wars culminate in the eclipse of republican competition. The narrative highlights administrative challenges of empire and the need for a more coherent, central authority to preserve order.
The Principate under Augustus reorganizes governance, finances, and provincial administration, inaugurating a period of relative peace and economic integration. Roman law, urban networks, and infrastructure consolidate imperial cohesion. Cultural exchange intensifies as local elites adopt Roman forms while sustaining regional identities. Religious movements, including the growth of Christianity, find space within this vast framework. Later crises prompt reform and adaptation, but the institutional legacy endures. Seignobos concludes by underlining how ancient civilizations forged enduring patterns of statecraft, legal thought, social organization, and cultural expression that shaped subsequent historical development and the foundations of European civilization.
Historical Context
History of Ancient Civilization by Charles Seignobos surveys the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world from the first urban centers of the fourth millennium BCE to the transformation of the Roman world in late antiquity. Its setting stretches from the alluvial plains of Sumer and the Nile Valley to the Aegean basin, Anatolia, and the Italian peninsula, culminating in the imperial networks of Rome. The temporal frame embraces the Bronze and Iron Ages, the classical fifth and fourth centuries BCE, and the consolidation of imperial rule under Augustus. Though written in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, the narrative is anchored in antiquity’s cities, institutions, and social orders as historical environments.
The book foregrounds the birth of states and writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt. In Sumer, cities such as Uruk, Ur, and Lagash flourished by 3000 BCE with cuneiform records and temple economies; Hammurabi’s code at Babylon, circa 1754 BCE, codified law and royal authority. In Egypt, centralized kingship emerged by c. 3100 BCE, with Old, Middle, and New Kingdom phases, monumental labor organization, and Nile irrigation cycles. Seignobos relates these facts to the genesis of bureaucracy, taxation, and sacred kingship, using archaeological and epigraphic data to show how environmental management and record keeping underpinned early class structures and the division between temple, palace, and village.
Seignobos treats the Levant as a crucible of trade and religion. Phoenician city states, notably Tyre and Sidon, founded colonies such as Carthage around 814 BCE, spread alphabetic writing, and dominated maritime routes in the ninth to seventh centuries BCE. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah rose in the tenth century BCE under David and Solomon, then fell to Assyria in 722 BCE and to Babylon in 586 BCE, followed by Persian authorized returns from 538 BCE. The book connects these developments to long distance cultural diffusion and to monotheism’s ethical law, emphasizing how diasporas, pilgrimage, and scriptural traditions reshaped community and sovereignty.
The Achaemenid Persian Empire appears as antiquity’s premier model of large scale administration. Founded by Cyrus II between 559 and 530 BCE, extended by Darius I after 522 BCE, it integrated satrapies from the Indus to the Aegean, standardized tribute, and built communications such as the Royal Road from Susa to Sardis. Greek Persian conflict in 490 and 480 to 479 BCE punctuated its western frontier. Seignobos uses Persia to compare imperial governance with city state autonomy, highlighting archives, royal ideology, and tolerance toward local cults as instruments of cohesion that framed later Hellenistic and Roman practices.
The Greek polis is central for political innovation. After Cleisthenes’ reforms in 508 to 507 BCE, Athens organized citizens by demes and tribes, introduced sortition, and expanded participation under Pericles in the mid fifth century BCE. The Persian Wars, from Marathon in 490 to Salamis and Plataea in 480 to 479, catalyzed alliance networks like the Delian League. The Peloponnesian War, 431 to 404 BCE, exposed the strains of empire, plague, and factionalism. Seignobos links these events to the emergence of civic law, public debate, and historical inquiry, presenting the polis as a laboratory of institutions whose fragility matched their creativity.
Alexander’s conquests transformed the eastern Mediterranean between 334 and 323 BCE, with decisive victories at Granicus, Issus, and Gaugamela. The Hellenistic kingdoms of the Ptolemies, Seleucids, and Antigonids fostered urbanization, mixed legal systems, and the spread of Koine Greek. Centers such as Alexandria supported scholarship in mathematics and medicine, while trade corridors connected the Red Sea, Mesopotamia, and the Black Sea. Seignobos interprets this era as one of cosmopolitan synthesis, where royal patronage and city networks diffused science, cults, and commercial practices, prefiguring Roman integration by demonstrating how power and culture flowed along roads, ports, and administrative grids.
The Roman Republic’s evolution and collapse, culminating in the Principate, occupy a decisive place. After the expulsion of kings in 509 BCE, the Struggle of the Orders produced the Twelve Tables in 451 to 450 BCE, the Licinian Sextian laws in 367 BCE opening the consulship to plebeians, and the Lex Hortensia in 287 BCE giving plebiscites force of law. Expansion through the Punic Wars reshaped society: the Second Punic War, 218 to 201 BCE, saw Hannibal’s victories at Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae in 216 BCE before Scipio’s triumph at Zama in 202 BCE. Conquest generated provinces, tax farming, latifundia, and urban plebs reliant on grain doles, sharpening class conflict. Reform attempts by Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, 133 to 121 BCE, proposed agrarian redistribution and equestrian juries; violent backlash normalized political murder. Marius’ army reforms from 107 BCE professionalized legions tied to commanders, enabling Sulla’s marches and dictatorship, 82 to 79 BCE, with proscriptions that battered the constitution. Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BCE, his dictatorship, and assassination in 44 BCE, followed by the Second Triumvirate and the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BCE, prepared Augustus’ settlement of 27 BCE. The Pax Romana then stabilized rule with provincial administration, municipal self government, and legal integration. Seignobos reads this arc as a sequence where institutional adjustments, class tensions, and military patronage transformed a city state into an imperial state, illustrating how law, citizenship, and social interests underpin political durability and crisis.
By juxtaposing sacred monarchies, citizen republics, empires, and cosmopolitan marketplaces, the book functions as a critique of power, inequality, and civic responsibility. It exposes how coerced labor, slavery, and tribute sustained splendor, how oligarchies captured democratic forms, and how imperial overreach corroded republican norms. Written within the secular civic culture of France’s Third Republic, shaped by school reforms in 1881 to 1882 and a public insistence on evidence during controversies like the Dreyfus Affair, its method underscores documentary scrutiny over legend. Thus the ancient record becomes a mirror for modern society, warning against class domination, militarized politics, and the abdication of critical citizenship.
History Of Ancient Civilization
CHAPTER IToC
THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION
PREHISTORIC ARCHÆOLOGY
Prehistoric Remains.—One often finds buried in the earth, weapons, implements, human skeletons, débris of every kind left by men of whom we have no direct knowledge. These are dug up by the thousand in all the provinces of France, in Switzerland, in England, in all Europe; they are found even in Asia and Africa. It is probable that they exist in all parts of the world.
These remains are called prehistoric because they are more ancient than written history. For about fifty years men have been engaged in recovering and studying them. Today most museums have a hall, or at least, some cases filled with these relics. A museum at Saint-German-en-Laye, near Paris, is entirely given up to prehistoric remains. In Denmark is a collection of more than 30,000 objects. Every day adds to the discoveries as excavations are made, houses built, and cuts made for railroads.
These objects are not found on the surface of the ground, but ordinarily buried deeply where the earth has not been disturbed. They are recovered from a stratum of gravel or clay which has been deposited gradually and has fixed them in place safe from the air, a sure proof that they have been there for a long time.
Prehistoric Science.—Scholars have examined the débris and have asked themselves what men have left them. From their skeletons, they have tried to construct their physical appearance; from their tools, the kind of life they led. They have determined that these instruments resemble those used by certain savages today. The study of all these objects constitutes a new science, Prehistoric Archæology.[1]
The Four Ages.—Prehistoric remains come down to us from very diverse races of men; they have been deposited in the soil at widely different epochs since the time when the mammoth[1] lived in western Europe, a sort of gigantic elephant with woolly hide and curved tusks. This long lapse of time may be divided into four periods, called Ages:
1. The Rough Stone Age. 2. The Polished Stone Age. 3. The Bronze Age. 4. The Iron Age.
The periods take their names from the materials used in the manufacture of the tools—stone, bronze, iron. These epochs, however, are of very unequal length. It may be that the Rough Stone Age was ten times as long as the Age of Iron.
THE ROUGH STONE AGE
Gravel Débris.—The oldest remains of the Stone Age have been found in the gravels. A French scholar found between 1841 and 1853, in the valley of the Somme, certain sharp instruments made of flint. They were buried to a depth of six metres in gravel under three layers of clay, gravel, and marl which had never been broken up. In the same place they discovered bones of cattle, deer, and elephants. For a long time people made light of this discovery. They said that the chipping of the flints was due to chance. At last, in 1860, several scholars came to study the remains in the valley of the Somme and recognized that the flints had certainly been cut by men. Since then there have been found more than 5,000 similar flints in strata of the same order either in the valley of the Seine or in England, and some of them by the side of human bones. There is no longer any doubt that men were living at the epoch when the gravel strata were in process of formation. If the strata that cover these remains have always been deposited as slowly as they are today, these men whose bones and tools we unearth must have lived more than 200,000 years ago.
The Cave Men.—Remains are also found in caverns cut in rock, often above a river. The most noted are those on the banks of the Vézère, but they exist in many other places. Sometimes they have been used as habitations and even as graves for men. Skeletons, weapons, and tools are found here together. There are axes, knives, scrapers, lance-points of flint; arrows, harpoon-points, needles of bone like those used by certain savages to this day. The soil is strewn with the bones of animals which these men, untidy like all savages, threw into a corner after they had eaten the meat; they even split the bones to extract the marrow just as savages do now. Among the animals are found not only the hare, the deer, the ox, the horse, the salmon, but also the rhinoceros, the cave-bear, the mammoth, the elk, the bison, the reindeer, which are all extinct or have long disappeared from France. Some designs have been discovered engraved on the bone of a reindeer or on the tusk of a mammoth. One of these represents a combat of reindeer; another a mammoth with woolly hide and curved tusks. Doubtless these men were the contemporaries of the mammoth and the reindeer. They were, like the Esquimaux of our day, a race of hunters and fishermen, knowing how to work in flint and to kindle fires.
POLISHED STONE AGE
Lake Dwellings.—In 1854, Lake Zurich being very low on account of the unusual dryness of the summer, dwellers on the shore of the lake found, in the mud, wooden piles which had been much eaten away, also some rude utensils. These were the remains of an ancient village built over the water. Since this time more than 200 similar villages have been found in the lakes of Switzerland. They have been called Lake Villages. The piles on which they rest are trunks of trees, pointed and driven into the lake-bottom to a depth of several yards. Every village required 30,000 to 40,000 of these.
A wooden platform was supported by the pile work and on this were built wooden houses covered with turf. Objects found by the hundred among the piles reveal the character of the life of the former inhabitants. They ate animals killed in the chase—the deer, the boar, and the elk. But they were already acquainted with such domestic animals as the ox, the goat, the sheep, and the dog. They knew how to till the ground, to reap, and to grind their grain; for in the ruins of their villages are to be found grains of wheat and even fragments of bread, or rather unleavend cakes. They wore coarse cloths of hemp and sewed them into garments with needles of bone. They made pottery but were very awkward in its manufacture. Their vases were poorly burned, turned by hand, and adorned with but few lines. Like the cave-men, they used knives and arrows of flint; but they made their axes of a very hard stone which they had learned to polish. This is why we call their epoch the Polished Stone Age. They are much later than the cave-men, for they know neither the mammoth nor the rhinoceros, but still are acquainted with the elk and the reindeer.[2]
Megalithic Monuments.—Megalith is the name given to a monument formed of enormous blocks of rough stone. Sometimes the rock is bare, sometimes covered with a mass of earth. The buried monument is called a Tumulus on account of its resemblance to a hill. When it is opened, one finds within a chamber of rock, sometimes paved with flag-stones. The monuments whose stone is above ground are of various sorts. The Dolmen[2], or table of rock, is formed of a long stone laid flat over other stones set in the ground. The Cromlech, or stone-circle, consists of massive rocks arranged in a circle. The Menhir is a block of stone standing on its end. Frequently several menhirs are ranged in line. At Carnac in Brittany four thousand menhirs in eleven rows are still standing. Probably there were once ten thousand of these in this locality. Megalithic monuments appear by hundreds in western France, especially in Brittany; almost every hill in England has them; the Orkney Islands alone contain more than two thousand. Denmark and North Germany are studded with them; the people of the country call the tumuli the tombs of the giants.
Megalithic monuments are encountered outside of Europe—in India, and on the African coast. No one knows what people possessed the power to quarry such masses and then transport and erect them. For a long time it was believed that the people were the ancient Gauls, or Celts, whence the name Celtic Monuments. But why are like remains found in Africa and in India?
When one of these tumuli still intact is opened, one always sees a skeleton, often several, either sitting or reclining; these monuments, therefore, were used as tombs. Arms, vases, and ornaments are placed at the side of the dead. In the oldest of these tombs the weapons are axes of polished stone; the ornaments are shells, pearls, necklaces of bone or ivory; the vases are very simple, without handle or neck, decorated only with lines or with points. Calcined bones of animals lie about on the ground, the relics of a funeral repast laid in the tomb by the friends of the dead. Amidst these bones we no longer find those of the reindeer, a fact which proves that these monuments were constructed after the disappearance of this animal from western Europe, and therefore at a time subsequent to that of the lake villages.
THE AGE OF BRONZE
Bronze Age.—As soon as men learned to smelt metals, they preferred these to stone in the manufacture of weapons. The metal first to be used was copper, easier to extract because found free, and easier to manipulate since it is malleable without the application of heat. Pure copper, however, was not employed, as weapons made of it were too fragile; but a little tin was mixed with it to give it more resistance. It is this alloy of copper and tin that we call bronze.
Bronze Utensils.—Bronze was used in the manufacture of ordinary tools—knives, hammers, saws, needles, fish-hooks; in the fabrication of ornaments—bracelets, brooches, ear-rings; and especially in the making of arms—daggers, lance-points, axes, and swords. These objects are found by thousands throughout Europe in the mounds, under the more recent dolmens, in the turf-pits of Denmark, and in rock-tombs. Near these objects of bronze, ornaments of gold are often seen and, now and then, the remains of a woollen garment. It cannot be due to chance that all implements of bronze are similar and all are made according to the same alloy. Doubtless they revert to the same period of time and are anterior to the coming of the Romans into Gaul, for they are never discovered in the midst of débris of the Roman period. But what men used them? What people invented bronze? Nobody knows.
THE IRON AGE
Iron.—As iron was harder to smelt and work than bronze, it was later that men learned how to use it. As soon as it was appreciated that iron was harder and cut better than bronze, men preferred it in the manufacture of arms. In Homer's time iron is still a precious metal reserved for swords, bronze being retained for other purposes. It is for this reason that many tombs contain confused remains of utensils of bronze and weapons of iron.
Iron Weapons.—These arms are axes, swords, daggers, and bucklers. They are ordinarily found by the side of a skeleton in a coffin of stone or wood, for warriors had their arms buried with them. But they are found also scattered on ancient battle-fields or lost at the bottom of a marsh which later became a turf-pit. There were found in a turf-pit in Schleswig in one day 100 swords, 500 lances, 30 axes, 460 daggers, 80 knives, 40 stilettos—and all of iron. Not far from there in the bed of an ancient lake was discovered a great boat 66 feet long, fully equipped with axes, swords, lances, and knives.
It is impossible to enumerate the iron implements thus found. They have not been so well preserved as the bronze, as iron is rapidly eaten away by rust. At the first glance, therefore, they appear the older, but in reality are more recent.
Epoch of the Iron Age.—The inhabitants of northern Europe knew iron before the coming of the Romans, the first century before Christ. In an old cemetery near the salt mines of Hallstadt in Austria they have opened 980 tombs filled with instruments of iron and bronze without finding a single piece of Roman money. But the Iron Age continued under the Romans. Almost always iron objects are found accompanied by ornaments of gold and silver, by Roman pottery, funeral urns, inscriptions, and Roman coins bearing the effigy of the emperor. The warriors whom we find lying near their sword and their buckler lived for the most part in a period quite close to ours, many under the Merovingians, some even at the time of Charlemagne. The Iron Age is no longer a prehistoric age.
CONCLUSIONS
How the Four Ages are to be Conceived.—The inhabitants of one and the same country have successively made use of rough stone, polished stone, bronze, and iron. But all countries have not lived in the same age at the same time. Iron was employed by the Egyptians while yet the Greeks were in their bronze age and the barbarians of Denmark were using stone. The conclusion of the polished stone age in America came only with the arrival of Europeans. In our own time the savages of Australia are still in the rough stone age. In their settlements may be found only implements of bone and stone similar to those used by the cave-men. The four ages, therefore, do not mark periods in the life of humanity, but only epochs in the civilization of each country.
Uncertainties.—Prehistoric archæology is yet a very young science. We have learned something of primitive men through certain remains preserved and discovered by chance. A recent accident, a trench, a landslip, a drought may effect a new discovery any day. Who knows what is still under ground? The finds are already innumerable. But these rarely tell us what we wish to know. How long was each of the four ages? When did each begin and end in the various parts of the world? Who planned the caverns, the lake villages, the mounds, the dolmens? When a country passes from polished stone to bronze, is it the same people changing implements, or is it a new people come on the scene? When one thinks one has found the solution, a new discovery often confounds the archæologists. It was thought that the Celts originated the dolmens, but these have been found in sections which could never have been traversed by Celts.
What has been determined.—Three conclusions, however, seem certain:
1.—Man has lived long on the earth, familiar as he was with the mammoth and the cave-bear; he lived at least as early as the geological period known as the Quaternary.
2.—Man has emerged from the savage state to civilized life[1q]; he has gradually perfected his tools and his ornaments from the awkward axe of flint and the necklace of bears' teeth to iron swords and jewels of gold. The roughest instruments are the oldest.
3.—Man has made more and more rapid progress. Each age has been shorter than its predecessor.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] It originated especially with French, Swiss, and scholars.
[2] According to Lubbock (Prehistoric Times, N.Y., 1890, p. 212) the reindeer was not known to the Second Stone Age.—ED.
CHAPTER IIToC
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, Phœnicians, 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 Phœnician 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 Palæography.
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 Philæ, the palace of Persepolis in Persia, the Parthenon in Greece, the Colosseum in Rome, and the Maison Carrée 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 débris. 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 Mycenæ. 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 débris, they heaped it together and built above it. The new edifice in turn fell into ruins and its débris 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 débris; 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 Archæology.
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.
Lacunæ.—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[3] 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 Phœnicians, 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.
CHAPTER IIIToC
ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST
THE EGYPTIANS
The Land of Egypt.—Egypt is only the valley of the Nile, a narrow strip of fertile soil stretching along both banks of the stream and shut in by mountains on either side, somewhat over 700[6] miles in length and 15 in width. Where the hills fall away, the Delta begins, a vast plain cut by the arms of the Nile and by canals. As Herodotus says, Egypt is wholly the gift of the Nile[2q].
The Nile.—Every year at the summer solstice the Nile, swollen by the melted snows of Abyssinia, overflows the parched soil of Egypt. It rises to a height of twenty-six or twenty-seven feet, sometimes even to thirty-three feet.[7] The whole country becomes a lake from which the villages, built on eminences, emerge like little islands. The water recedes in September; by December it has returned to its proper channel. Everywhere has been left a fertile, alluvial bed which serves the purpose of fertilization. On the softened earth the peasant sows his crop with almost no labor. The Nile, then, brings both water and soil to Egypt; if the river should fail, Egypt would revert, like the land on either side of it, to a desert of sterile sand where the rain never falls. The Egyptians are conscious of their debt to their stream[3q]. A song in its honor runs as follows: "Greeting to thee, O Nile, who hast revealed thyself throughout the land, who comest in peace to give life to Egypt. Does it rise? The land is filled with joy, every heart exults, every being receives its food, every mouth is full. It brings bounties that are full of delight, it creates all good things, it makes the grass to spring up for the beasts."
Fertility of the Country.—Egypt is truly an oasis in the midst of the desert of Africa. It produces in abundance wheat, beans, lentils, and all leguminous foods; palms rear themselves in forests. On the pastures irrigated by the Nile graze herds of cattle and goats, and flocks of geese. With a territory hardly equal to that of Belgium, Egypt still supports 5,500,000 inhabitants. No country in Europe is so thickly populated, and Egypt in antiquity was more densely thronged than it is today.
The Accounts of Herodotus.—Egypt was better known to the Greeks than the rest of the Orient. Herodotus had visited it in the fifth century B.C. He describes in his History the inundations of the Nile, the manners, costume, and religion of the people; he recounts events of their history and tales which his guides had told him. Diodorus and Strabo also speak of Egypt. But all had seen the country in its decadence and had no knowledge of the ancient Egyptians.
