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Grade Level:       Type of Work           Subject/Topic is on:
 [ ]6-8                 [ ]Class Notes    [History of the World    ]
 [x]9-10                [ ]Cliff Notes    [                        ]
 [ ]11-12               [ ]Essay/Report   [                        ]
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Article printed from World Book INFORMATION FINDER.

WORLD, HISTORY OF THE (Introduction)

    WORLD, HISTORY OF THE. People have probably lived on the earth about 2
million years.  But the story of world history begins only about 5,500
years ago with the invention of writing.  The period before people began to
write is usually called prehistory.

    Archaeologists have pieced together the story of prehistory by studying
what the people left behind, including artwork, tools, ruins of buildings,
fossils, and even their own skeletons.  Such objects provide the main
evidence of what prehistoric people were like and how they lived. For a
description of life in prehistoric times, see the Information Finder
article PREHISTORIC PEOPLE.

    The first traces of writing date from about 3500 B.C. From then on,
people could record their own history.  By writing down their experiences,
they could tell future generations what they were like and how they lived.
From these documents, we can learn firsthand about the rise and fall of
civilizations and the course of other important events.  The history of the
world--from the first civilizations to the present--is based largely on
what has been written down by peoples through the ages.

    The development of agriculture about 9,000 B.C. brought about a great
revolution in human life. Prehistoric people who learned to farm no longer
had to roam in search of food.  Instead, they could settle in one place.
Some of their settlements grew to become the world's first cities.  People
in the cities learned new skills and developed specialized occupations.
Some became builders and craftworkers.  Others became merchants and
priests. Eventually, systems of writing were invented. These developments
gave rise to the first civilizations.

    For hundreds of years, the earliest civilizations had little contact
with one another and so developed independently.  The progress each
civilization made depended on the natural resources available to it and on
the inventiveness of its people.  As time passed, civilizations advanced
and spread, and the world's population rose steadily. The peoples of
various civilizations began to exchange ideas and skills.  Within each
civilization, groups of people with distinctive customs and languages
emerged.  In time, some peoples, such as the Romans, gained power over
others and built huge empires.  Some of these empires flourished for
centuries before collapsing. Great religions and later science and
scholarship developed as people wondered about the meaning of human life
and the mysteries of nature.

    About 500 years ago, one civilization--that of western Europe--started
to exert a powerful influence throughout the world.  The Europeans began to
make great advances in learning and the arts, and they came to surpass the
rest of the world in scientific and technological achievements. The nations
of Europe sent explorers and military forces to distant lands.  They set up
overseas colonies, first in the Americas and then on other continents, and
conquered other regions.  As a result, Western customs, skills, political
ideas, and religious beliefs spread across much of the world.

    Today, the many peoples of the world continue to be separated by
different cultural traditions.  But they also have more in common than ever
before. Worldwide systems of communications and transportation have broken
down barriers of time and distance and rapidly increased the exchange of
ideas and information between peoples.  However far apart people may live
from one another, they are affected more and more by the same political and
economic changes.  In some way, almost everyone can now be affected by a
war or a political crisis in a faraway land or by a rise in petroleum
prices in distant oil-producing countries.  The separate cultures of the
world seem to be blending into a common world culture.  Much of world
history is the story of the way different civilizations have come closer
together.

    For hundreds of thousands of years, prehistoric people lived by
hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants.  Even small groups of people
had to roam over large areas of land to find enough food. A group usually
stayed in one place only a few days.  The discovery of agriculture
gradually ended the nomadic way of life for many people.  After prehistoric
men and women learned to raise crops and domesticate animals, they no
longer had to wander about in search of food.  They could thus begin to
settle in villages.

    Agriculture was developed at different times in different regions of
the world.  People in the Middle East began to grow cereal grasses and
other plants about 9000 B.C. They also domesticated goats and sheep at
about that time, and they later tamed cattle.  In southeastern Asia, people
had begun raising crops by about 7000 B.C. People who lived in what is now
Mexico probably learned to grow crops about 7000 B.C.

    The invention of farming paved the way for the development of
civilization.  As prehistoric people became better farmers, they began to
produce enough food to support larger villages.  In time, some farming
villages developed into the first cities. The plentiful food supplies
enabled more and more people to give up farming for other jobs.  These
people began to develop the arts, crafts, trades, and other activities of
civilized life.

    Agriculture also stimulated technological and social changes.  Farmers
invented the hoe, sickle, and other tools to make their work easier.  The
hair of domestic animals and fibres from such plants as cotton and flax
were used to make the first textiles.  People built ovens to bake the bread
they made from cultivated grain and learned to use hotter ovens to harden
pottery.  The practice of agriculture required many people to work together
to prepare the fields for planting and to harvest the crops.  New systems
of government were developed to direct such group activities.

    The changes brought about by agriculture took thousands of years to
spread widely across the earth.  By about 3500 B.C., civilization began.
It started first in Southwest Asia.  Three other early civilizations
developed in Africa and in south and east Asia.  All these early
civilizations arose in river valleys, where fertile soil and a readily
available water supply made agriculture easier than elsewhere.  The valleys
were (1) the Tigris-Euphrates Valley in the Middle East, (2) the Nile
Valley in Egypt, (3) the Indus Valley in what is now Pakistan, and (4) the
Huang He Valley in northern China.

    While civilization was developing in the four valleys, people in most
other parts of the world were still following their old ways of life.
Little cultural progress was being made in such regions as northern and
central Europe, central and southern Africa, northern and southeastern
Asia, and most of North America.  In parts of Central and South America,
the people were developing some new ways of life.  But advanced
civilizations did not appear there until hundreds of years later.

    The Tigris-Euphrates Valley.  One of the most fertile regions of the
ancient world lay between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern
Mesopotamia (now Iraq).  Silt deposited by the rivers formed a rich topsoil
ideal for growing crops.  By the 5000's B.C., many people had settled in
villages in the lower part of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, an area later
called Sumer.

    The Sumerians lived by farming, fishing, and hunting the wild fowl of
the river marshes.  They built dikes to control the flooding of the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers and irrigation canals to carry water to their fields.
By about 3500 B.C., some Sumerian farm villages had grown into small
cities, which marked the beginning of the world's first civilization.  A
number of these cities developed into powerful city-states by about 3200
B.C.

    The Sumerians produced one of the greatest achievements in world
history.  By about 3500 B.C., they had invented the first form of writing.
It consisted of picture like symbols scratched into clay.  The symbols were
later simplified to produce cuneiform, a system of writing that used
wedge-shaped characters (see CUNEIFORM). Archaeologists have found
thousands of clay tablets with Sumerian writings.  These tablets show the
high level of development of the Sumerian culture. They include historical
and legal documents; letters; economic records; literary and religious
texts; and studies in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine.

    The Sumerians used baked bricks to build great palaces and towering
temples called ziggurats in their cities.  They believed that their gods
lived on the tops of the ziggurats.  Sumerian craftworkers produced board
games, beautifully designed jewellery, metalware, musical instruments,
decorative pottery, and stone seals engraved with pictures and
inscriptions.  The Sumerians invented the potter's wheel and were among the
first people to brew beer and make glass.  Their system of counting in
units of 60 is the basis of the 360-degree circle and the 60-minute hour.
For more information on the Sumerian civilization, see SUMER.

    The Sumerian city-states had no central government or unified army and
continually struggled among themselves for power.  As time passed, they
were increasingly threatened by neighbouring Semitic peoples, who were
attracted by the growing wealth of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.  During the
2300's B.C., a Semitic king, Sargon of Akkad, conquered Sumer.  Sargon
united all Mesopotamia under his rule, creating the world's first empire.
The Akkadians combined Sumerian civilization with their own culture.  Their
rule lasted more than 60 years. Then invaders from the northeast overran
the empire.  These invaders soon left Mesopotamia, and Sumer was once again
divided into separate city-states.  One city-state, Ur, briefly controlled
all the others.  See SARGON OF AKKAD.

    By about 2000 B.C., the Sumerians had completely lost all political
power to invading Semites. Mesopotamia then broke up into a number of small
kingdoms under various Semitic rulers.  The city of Babylon became the
center of one kingdom.  The Babylonian rulers gradually extended their
authority over all Mesopotamian peoples.  The greatest Babylonian king was
Hammurabi, who ruled from about 1792 to 1750 B.C. Hammurabi developed one
of the first law codes in history.  The famous Code of Hammurabi contained
nearly 300 legal provisions, including many Sumerian and Akkadian laws.  It
covered such matters as divorce, false accusation, land and business
regulations, and military service.  See BABYLONIA; HAMMURABI.

    The Nile Valley.  The civilization of ancient Egypt began to develop in
the valley of the Nile River about 3100 B.C. Agriculture flourished in the
valley, where the floodwaters of the Nile deposited rich soil year after
year.  Beyond the Nile Valley lay an uninhabited region of desert and rock.
Egyptian culture thus developed with little threat of invasions by
neighbouring peoples.

    During the 3000's B.C., Egypt consisted of two large kingdoms.  Lower
Egypt covered the Nile Delta.  Upper Egypt lay south of the delta on the
two banks of the river.  About 3100 B.C., according to legend, King Menes
of Upper Egypt conquered Lower Egypt and united the two kingdoms.  Menes
also founded the first Egyptian dynasty (series of rulers in the same
family).  The rulers of ancient Egypt were believed to be divine.

    The ancient Egyptians borrowed little from other cultures.  They
invented their own form of writing--an elaborate system of symbols known as
hieroglyphics (see HIEROGLYPHICS).  They also invented papyrus, a paper
like material made from the stems of reeds.  The Egyptians developed one of
the first religions to emphasize life after death. They tried to make sure
their dead enjoyed a good life in the next world.  The Egyptians built
great tombs and mummified (embalmed and dried) corpses to preserve them.
They filled the tombs with clothing, food, furnishings, and jewellery for
use in the next world.  The most famous Egyptian tombs are gigantic
pyramids in which the kings were buried. The pyramids display the
outstanding engineering and surveying skills of the Egyptians.  The
government organized thousands of workers to construct the pyramids, as
well as temples and palaces, in the Egyptian cities.  The cities served
chiefly as religious and governmental centers for the surrounding
countryside.  Most of the people lived in villages near the cities.

    Over the years, huge armies of conquering Egyptians expanded the
kingdom's boundaries far beyond the Nile Valley.  At its height in the
1400's B.C., Egypt ruled Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and part of the Sudan.
As a powerful state at the junction of Asia and Africa, Egypt played an
important role in the growth of long-distance trade.  Egyptian caravans
carried goods throughout the vast desert regions surrounding the kingdom.
Egyptian ships sailed to all the major ports of the ancient world.
