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The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik Van Loon, Ph.D.
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Title: The Story of Mankind
Author: Hendrik van Loon
Release Date: November 27, 2009 [EBook #754]
Language: English
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF MANKIND ***
Produced by Charles Keller, and David Widger
THE STORY OF MANKIND
By Hendrik Van Loon, Ph.D.
Professor of the Social Sciences in Antioch Colege.
Author of The Fal of the Dutch Republic, The Rise of
the Dutch Kingdom, The Golden Book of the Dutch
Navigators, A Short Story of Discovery, Ancient
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Man.
To JIMMIE "What is the use of a book without
pictures?" said Alice.
FOREWORD
For Hansje and Willem:
WHEN I was twelve or thirteen years old, an uncle of mine who gave me my love for
books and pictures promised to take me upon a memorable expedition. I was to go with
him to the top of the tower of Old Saint Lawrence in Rotterdam.
And so, one fine day, a sexton with a key as large as that of Saint Peter opened a
mysterious door. "Ring the bel," he said, "when you come back and want to get out," and
with a great grinding of rusty old hinges he separated us from the noise of the busy street
and locked us into a world of new and strange experiences.
For the first time in my life I was confronted by the phenomenon of audible silence. When
we had climbed the first flight of stairs, I added another discovery to my limited
knowledge of natural phenomena—that of tangible darkness. A match showed us where
the upward road continued. We went to the next floor and then to the next and the next
until I had lost count and then there came stil another floor, and suddenly we had plenty of
light. This floor was on an even height with the roof of the church, and it was used as a
storeroom. Covered with many inches of dust, there lay the abandoned symbols of a
venerable faith which had been discarded by the good people of the city many years ago.
That which had meant life and death to our ancestors was here reduced to junk and
rubbish. The industrious rat had built his nest among the carved images and the ever
watchful spider had opened up shop between the outspread arms of a kindly saint.
The next floor showed us from where we had derived our light. Enormous open windows
with heavy iron bars made the high and barren room the roosting place of hundreds of
pigeons. The wind blew through the iron bars and the air was filed with a weird and
pleasing music. It was the noise of the town below us, but a noise which had been purified
and cleansed by the distance. The rumbling of heavy carts and the clinking of horses'
hoofs, the winding of cranes and puleys, the hissing sound of the patient steam which had
been set to do the work of man in a thousand different ways—they had al been blended
into a softly rustling whisper which provided a beautiful background for the trembling
cooing of the pigeons.
Here the stairs came to an end and the ladders began. And after the first ladder (a slippery
old thing which made one feel his way with a cautious foot) there was a new and even
greater wonder, the town-clock. I saw the heart of time. I could hear the heavy pulsebeats
of the rapid seconds—one—two—three—up to sixty. Then a sudden quivering noise
when al the wheels seemed to stop and another minute had been chopped off eternity.
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Without pause it began again—one—two—three—until at last after a warning rumble and
the scraping of many wheels a thunderous voice, high above us, told the world that it was
the hour of noon.
On the next floor were the bels. The nice little bels and their terrible sisters. In the centre
the big bel, which made me turn stiff with fright when I heard it in the middle of the night
teling a story of fire or flood. In solitary grandeur it seemed to reflect upon those six
hundred years during which it had shared the joys and the sorrows of the good people of
Rotterdam. Around it, neatly arranged like the blue jars in an old-fashioned apothecary
shop, hung the little felows, who twice each week played a merry tune for the benefit of
the country-folk who had come to market to buy and sel and hear what the big world had
been doing. But in a corner—al alone and shunned by the others—a big black bel, silent
and stern, the bel of death.
Then darkness once more and other ladders, steeper and even more dangerous than those
we had climbed before, and suddenly the fresh air of the wide heavens. We had reached
the highest galery. Above us the sky. Below us the city—a little toy-town, where busy
ants were hastily crawling hither and thither, each one intent upon his or her particular
business, and beyond the jumble of stones, the wide greenness of the open country.
It was my first glimpse of the big world.
Since then, whenever I have had the opportunity, I have gone to the top of the tower and
enjoyed myself. It was hard work, but it repaid in ful the mere physical exertion of
climbing a few stairs.
Besides, I knew what my reward would be. I would see the land and the sky, and I would
listen to the stories of my kind friend the watchman, who lived in a smal shack, built in a
sheltered corner of the galery. He looked after the clock and was a father to the bels, and
he warned of fires, but he enjoyed many free hours and then he smoked a pipe and
thought his own peaceful thoughts. He had gone to school almost fifty years before and he
had rarely read a book, but he had lived on the top of his tower for so many years that he
had absorbed the wisdom of that wide world which surrounded him on al sides.
History he knew wel, for it was a living thing with him. "There," he would say, pointing to
a bend of the river, "there, my boy, do you see those trees? That is where the Prince of
Orange cut the dikes to drown the land and save Leyden." Or he would tel me the tale of
the old Meuse, until the broad river ceased to be a convenient harbour and became a
wonderful highroad, carrying the ships of De Ruyter and Tromp upon that famous last
voyage, when they gave their lives that the sea might be free to al.
Then there were the little vilages, clustering around the protecting church which once,
many years ago, had been the home of their Patron Saints. In the distance we could see
the leaning tower of Delft. Within sight of its high arches, Wiliam the Silent had been
murdered and there Grotius had learned to construe his first Latin sentences. And stil
further away, the long low body of the church of Gouda, the early home of the man whose
wit had proved mightier than the armies of many an emperor, the charity-boy whom the
world came to know as Erasmus.
Finaly the silver line of the endless sea and as a contrast, immediately below us, the
patchwork of roofs and chimneys and houses and gardens and hospitals and schools and
railways, which we caled our home. But the tower showed us the old home in a new light.
The confused commotion of the streets and the market-place, of the factories and the
workshop, became the wel-ordered expression of human energy and purpose. Best of al,
the wide view of the glorious past, which surrounded us on al sides, gave us new courage
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to face the problems of the future when we had gone back to our daily tasks.
History is the mighty Tower of Experience, which Time has built amidst the endless fields
of bygone ages. It is no easy task to reach the top of this ancient structure and get the
benefit of the ful view. There is no elevator, but young feet are strong and it can be done.
Here I give you the key that wil open the door.
When you return, you too wil understand the reason for my enthusiasm.
HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
THE STORY OF MANKIND
THE SETTING OF THE STAGE
OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS
PREHISTORIC MAN
HIEROGLYPHICS
THE NILE VALLEY
THE STORY OF EGYPT
MESOPOTAMIA
THE SUMERIANS
MOSES
THE PHOENICIANS
THE INDO-EUROPEANS
THE AEGEAN SEA
THE GREEKS
THE GREEK CITIES
GREEK SELF-GOVERNMENT
GREEK LIFE
THE GREEK THEATRE
THE PERSIAN WARS
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ATHENS vs. SPARTA
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
ROME AND CARTHAGE
THE RISE OF ROME
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
JOSHUA OF NAZARETH
THE FALL OF ROME
RISE OF THE CHURCH
MOHAMMED
CHARLEMAGNE
THE NORSEMEN
FEUDALISM
CHIVALRY
POPE vs. EMPEROR
THE CRUSADES
THE MEDIAEVAL CITY
MEDIAEVAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
THE MEDIAEVAL WORLD
MEDIAEVAL TRADE
THE RENAISSANCE
THE AGE OF EXPRESSION
THE GREAT DISCOVERIES
BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS
THE REFORMATION
RELIGIOUS WARFARE
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION
THE BALANCE OF POWER
THE RISE OF RUSSIA
RUSSIA vs. SWEDEN
THE RISE OF PRUSSIA
THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
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THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
NAPOLEON
THE HOLY ALLIANCE
THE GREAT REACTION
NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE
THE AGE OF THE ENGINE
THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION
EMANCIPATION
THE AGE OF SCIENCE
ART
COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR
A NEW WORLD
AS IT EVER SHALL BE
CONCERNING THE PICTURES
AN HISTORICAL READING LIST FOR CHILDREN
THE STORY OF MANKIND
HIGH Up in the North in the land caled Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred
miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this
rock to sharpen its beak.
When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity wil have gone by.
THE SETTING OF THE STAGE
WE live under the shadow of a gigantic question mark.
Who are we?
Where do we come from?
Whither are we bound?
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Slowly, but with persistent courage, we have been pushing this question mark further and
further towards that distant line, beyond the horizon, where we hope to find our answer.
We have not gone very far.
We stil know very little but we have reached the point where (with a fair degree of
accuracy) we can guess at many things.
In this chapter I shal tel you how (according to our best belief) the stage was set for the
first appearance of man.
If we represent the time during which it has been possible for animal life to exist upon our
planet by a line of this length, then the tiny line just below indicates the age during which
man (or a creature more or less resembling man) has lived upon this earth.
Man was the last to come but the first to use his brain for the purpose of conquering the
forces of nature. That is the reason why we are going to study him, rather than cats or
dogs or horses or any of the other animals, who, al in their own way, have a very
interesting historical development behind them.
In the beginning, the planet upon which we live was (as far as we now know) a large bal
of flaming matter, a tiny cloud of smoke in the endless ocean of space. Gradualy, in the
course of milions of years, the surface burned itself out, and was covered with a thin layer
of rocks. Upon these lifeless rocks the rain descended in endless torrents, wearing out the
hard granite and carrying the dust to the valeys that lay hidden between the high cliffs of
the steaming earth.
Finaly the hour came when the sun broke through the clouds and saw how this little planet
was covered with a few smal puddles which were to develop into the mighty oceans of
the eastern and western hemispheres.
Then one day the great wonder happened. What had been dead, gave birth to life.
The first living cel floated upon the waters of the sea.
For milions of years it drifted aimlessly with the currents. But during al that time it was
developing certain habits that it might survive more easily upon the inhospitable earth.
Some of these cels were happiest in the dark depths of the lakes and the pools. They
took root in the slimy sediments which had been carried down from the tops of the hils
and they became plants. Others preferred to move about and they grew strange jointed
legs, like scorpions and began to crawl along the bottom of the sea amidst the plants and
the pale green things that looked like jely-fishes. Stil others (covered with scales)
depended upon a swimming motion to go from place to place in their search for food, and
gradualy they populated the ocean with myriads of fishes.
Meanwhile the plants had increased in number and they had to search for new dweling
places. There was no more room for them at the bottom of the sea. Reluctantly they left
the water and made a new home in the marshes and on the mud-banks that lay at the foot
of the mountains. Twice a day the tides of the ocean covered them with their brine. For
the rest of the time, the plants made the best of their uncomfortable situation and tried to
survive in the thin air which surrounded the surface of the planet. After centuries of
training, they learned how to live as comfortably in the air as they had done in the water.
They increased in size and became shrubs and trees and at last they learned how to grow
lovely flowers which attracted the attention of the busy big bumble-bees and the birds who
carried the seeds far and wide until the whole earth had become covered with green
pastures, or lay dark under the shadow of the big trees. But some of the fishes too had
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begun to leave the sea, and they had learned how to breathe with lungs as wel as with
gils. We cal such creatures amphibious, which means that they are able to live with equal
ease on the land and in the water. The first frog who crosses your path can tel you al
about the pleasures of the double existence of the amphibian.
Once outside of the water, these animals gradualy adapted themselves more and more to
life on land. Some became reptiles (creatures who crawl like lizards) and they shared the
silence of the forests with the insects. That they might move faster through the soft soil,
they improved upon their legs and their size increased until the world was populated with
gigantic forms (which the hand-books of biology list under the names of Ichthyosaurus and
Megalosaurus and Brontosaurus) who grew to be thirty to forty feet long and who could
have played with elephants as a ful grown cat plays with her kittens.
Some of the members of this reptilian family began to live in the tops of the trees, which
were then often more than a hundred feet high. They no longer needed their legs for the
purpose of walking, but it was necessary for them to move quickly from branch to branch.
And so they changed a part of their skin into a sort of parachute, which stretched between
the sides of their bodies and the smal toes of their fore-feet, and gradualy they covered
this skinny parachute with feathers and made their tails into a steering gear and flew from
tree to tree and developed into true birds.
Then a strange thing happened. Al the gigantic reptiles died within a short time. We do not
know the reason. Perhaps it was due to a sudden change in climate. Perhaps they had
grown so large that they could neither swim nor walk nor crawl, and they starved to death
within sight but not within reach of the big ferns and trees. Whatever the cause, the milion
year old world-empire of the big reptiles was over.
The world now began to be occupied by very different creatures. They were the
descendants of the reptiles but they were quite unlike these because they fed their young
from the "mammae" or the breasts of the mother. Wherefore modern science cals these
animals "mammals." They had shed the scales of the fish. They did not adopt the feathers
of the bird, but they covered their bodies with hair. The mammals however developed
other habits which gave their race a great advantage over the other animals. The female of
the species carried the eggs of the young inside her body until they were hatched and while
al other living beings, up to that time, had left their children exposed to the dangers of cold
and heat, and the attacks of wild beasts, the mammals kept their young with them for a
long time and sheltered them while they were stil too weak to fight their enemies. In this
way the young mammals were given a much better chance to survive, because they
learned many things from their mothers, as you wil know if you have ever watched a cat
teaching her kittens to take care of themselves and how to wash their faces and how to
catch mice.
But of these mammals I need not tel you much for you know them wel. They surround
you on al sides. They are your daily companions in the streets and in your home, and you
can see your less familiar cousins behind the bars of the zoological garden.
And now we come to the parting of the ways when man suddenly leaves the endless
procession of dumbly living and dying creatures and begins to use his reason to shape the
destiny of his race.
One mammal in particular seemed to surpass al others in its ability to find food and
shelter. It had learned to use its fore-feet for the purpose of holding its prey, and by dint of
practice it had developed a hand-like claw. After innumerable attempts it had learned how
to balance the whole of the body upon the hind legs. (This is a difficult act, which every
child has to learn anew although the human race has been doing it for over a milion years.)
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This creature, half ape and half monkey but superior to both, became the most successful
hunter and could make a living in every clime. For greater safety, it usualy moved about in
groups. It learned how to make strange grunts to warn its young of approaching danger
and after many hundreds of thousands of years it began to use these throaty noises for the
purpose of talking.
This creature, though you may hardly believe it, was your first "man-like" ancestor.
OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS
WE know very little about the first "true" men. We have never seen their pictures. In the
deepest layer of clay of an ancient soil we have sometimes found pieces of their bones.
These lay buried amidst the broken skeletons of other animals that have long since
disappeared from the face of the earth. Anthropologists (learned scientists who devote
their lives to the study of man as a member of the animal kingdom) have taken these bones
and they have been able to reconstruct our earliest ancestors with a fair degree of
accuracy.
The great-great-grandfather of the human race was a very ugly and unattractive mammal.
He was quite smal, much smaler than the people of today. The heat of the sun and the
biting wind of the cold winter had coloured his skin a dark brown. His head and most of
his body, his arms and legs too, were covered with long, coarse hair. He had very thin but
strong fingers which made his hands look like those of a monkey. His forehead was low
and his jaw was like the jaw of a wild animal which uses its teeth both as fork and knife.
He wore no clothes. He had seen no fire except the flames of the rumbling volcanoes
which filed the earth with their smoke and their lava.
He lived in the damp blackness of vast forests, as the pygmies of Africa do to this very
day. When he felt the pangs of hunger he ate raw leaves and the roots of plants or he took
the eggs away from an angry bird and fed them to his own young. Once in a while, after a
long and patient chase, he would catch a sparrow or a smal wild dog or perhaps a rabbit.
These he would eat raw for he had never discovered that food tasted better when it was
cooked.
During the hours of day, this primitive human being prowled about looking for things to
eat.
When night descended upon the earth, he hid his wife and his children in a holow tree or
behind some heavy boulders, for he was surrounded on al sides by ferocious animals and
when it was dark these animals began to prowl about, looking for something to eat for
their mates and their own young, and they liked the taste of human beings. It was a world
where you must either eat or be eaten, and life was very unhappy because it was ful of
fear and misery.
In summer, man was exposed to the scorching rays of the sun, and during the winter his
children would freeze to death in his arms. When such a creature hurt itself, (and hunting
animals are forever breaking their bones or spraining their ankles) he had no one to take
care of him and he must die a horrible death.
Like many of the animals who fil the Zoo with their strange noises, early man liked to
jabber. That is to say, he endlessly repeated the same uninteligible gibberish because it
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pleased him to hear the sound of his voice. In due time he learned that he could use this
guttural noise to warn his felow beings whenever danger threatened and he gave certain
little shrieks which came to mean "there is a tiger!" or "here come five elephants." Then the
others grunted something back at him and their growl meant, "I see them," or "let us run
away and hide." And this was probably the origin of al language.
But, as I have said before, of these beginnings we know so very little. Early man had no
tools and he built himself no houses. He lived and died and left no trace of his existence
except a few colar-bones and a few pieces of his skul. These tel us that many thousands
of years ago the world was inhabited by certain mammals who were quite different from
al the other animals—who had probably developed from another unknown ape-like
animal which had learned to walk on its hind-legs and use its fore-paws as hands—and
who were most probably connected with the creatures who happen to be our own
immediate ancestors.
It is little enough we know and the rest is darkness.
PREHISTORIC MAN
PREHISTORIC MAN BEGINS TO MAKE THINGS FOR