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 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.