Part 1
# A Short History of the World ### By Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
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A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD
By H. G. WELLS
New York
THE MACMILLAN & COMPANY
1922
_Copyright 1922_
CONTENTS CHAPTER Page
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD I. THE WORLD IN SPACE 1 II. THE WORLD IN TIME 5 III. THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE 11 IV. THE AGE OF FISHES 16 V. THE AGE OF THE COAL SWAMPS 21 VI. THE AGE OF REPTILES 26 VII. THE FIRST BIRDS AND THE FIRST MAMMALS 31 VIII. THE AGE OF MAMMALS 37 IX. MONKEYS, APES AND SUB-MEN 43 X. THE NEANDERTHALER AND THE RHODESIAN MAN 48 XI. THE FIRST TRUE MEN 53 XII. PRIMITIVE THOUGHT 60 XIII. THE BEGINNINGS OF CULTIVATION 65 XIV. PRIMITIVE NEOLITHIC CIVILIZATIONS 71 XV. SUMERIA, EARLY EGYPT AND WRITING 77 XVI. PRIMITIVE NOMADIC PEOPLES 84 XVII. THE FIRST SEA-GOING PEOPLES 91 XVIII. EGYPT, BABYLON AND ASSYRIA 96 XIX. THE PRIMITIVE ARYANS 104 XX. THE LAST BABYLONIAN EMPIRE AND THE EMPIRE OF DARIUS I 109 XXI. THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE JEWS 115 XXII. PRIESTS AND PROPHETS IN JUDEA 122 XXIII. THE GREEKS 127 XXIV. THE WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS 134 XXV. THE SPLENDOUR OF GREECE 139 XXVI. THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 145 XXVII. THE MUSEUM AND LIBRARY AT ALEXANDRIA 150 XXVIII. THE LIFE OF GAUTAMA BUDDHA 156 XXIX. KING ASOKA 163 XXX. CONFUCIUS AND LAO TSE 167 XXXI. ROME COMES INTO HISTORY 174 XXXII. ROME AND CARTHAGE 180 XXXIII. THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 185 XXXIV. BETWEEN ROME AND CHINA 196 XXXV. THE COMMON MAN’S LIFE UNDER THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE 201 XXXVI. RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 208 XXXVII. THE TEACHING OF JESUS 214 XXXVIII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINAL CHRISTIANITY 222 XXXIX. THE BARBARIANS BREAK THE EMPIRE INTO EAST AND WEST 227 XL. THE HUNS AND THE END OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE 233 XLI. THE BYZANTINE AND SASSANID EMPIRES 238 XLII. THE DYNASTIES OF SUY AND TANG IN CHINA 245 XLIII. MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 248 XLIV. THE GREAT DAYS OF THE ARABS 253 XLV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF LATIN CHRISTENDOM 258 XLVI. THE CRUSADES AND THE AGE OF PAPAL DOMINION 267 XLVII. RECALCITRANT PRINCES AND THE GREAT SCHISM 277 XLVIII. THE MONGOL CONQUESTS 287 XLIX. THE INTELLECTUAL REVIVAL OF THE EUROPEANS 294 L. THE REFORMATION OF THE LATIN CHURCH 304 LI. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V 309 LII. THE AGE OF POLITICAL EXPERIMENTS; OF GRAND MONARCHY AND PARLIAMENTS AND REPUBLICANISM IN EUROPE 318 LIII. THE NEW EMPIRES OF THE EUROPEANS IN ASIA AND OVERSEAS 329 LIV. THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 335 LV. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE RESTORATION OF MONARCHY IN FRANCE 341 LVI. THE UNEASY PEACE IN EUROPE THAT FOLLOWED THE FALL OF NAPOLEON 349 LVII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATERIAL KNOWLEDGE 355 LVIII. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 365 LIX. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS 370 LX. THE EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES 382 LXI. THE RISE OF GERMANY TO PREDOMINANCE IN EUROPE 390 LXII. THE NEW OVERSEAS EMPIRES OF THE STEAMSHIP AND RAILWAY 393 LXIII. EUROPEAN AGGRESSION IN ASIA, AND THE RISE OF JAPAN 399 LXIV. THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN 1914 405 LXV. THE AGE OF ARMAMENT IN EUROPE, AND THE GREAT WAR OF 1914-18 409 LXVI. THE REVOLUTION AND FAMINE IN RUSSIA 415 LXVII. THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE WORLD 421 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 429 INDEX 439
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Luminous Spiral Clouds of Matter 2
Nebula seen Edge-on 3
The Great Spiral Nebula 6
A Dark Nebula 7
Another Spiral Nebula 8
Landscape before Life 9
Marine Life in the Cambrian Period 12
Fossil Trilobite 13
Early Palæozoic Fossils of various Species of Lingula 14
Fossilized Footprints of a Labyrinthodont, Cheirotherium 15
Pterichthys Milleri 17
Fossil of Cladoselache 18
Sharks and Ganoids of the Devonian Period 19
A Carboniferous Swamp 22
Skull of a Labyrinthodont, Capitosaurus 23
Skeleton of a Labyrinthodont: The Eryops 24
A Fossil Ichthyosaurus 27
A Pterodactyl 28
The Diplodocus 29
Fossil of Archeopteryx 32
Hesperornis in its Native Seas 33
The Ki-wi 34
Slab of Marl Rich in Cainozoic Fossils 35
Titanotherium Robustum 38
Skeleton of Giraffe-camel 40
Skeleton of Early Horse 40
Comparative Sizes of Brains of Rhinoceros and Dinoceras 41
A Mammoth 44
Flint Implements from Piltdown Region 45
A Pithecanthropean Man 46
The Heidelberg Man 46
The Piltdown Skull 47
A Neanderthaler 49
Europe and Western Asia 50,000 years ago
_Map_ 50
Comparison of Modern Skull and Rhodesian Skull 51
Altamira Cave Paintings 54
Later Palæolithic Carvings 55
Bust of Cro-magnon Man 57
Later Palæolithic Art 58
Relics of the Stone Age 62
Gray’s Inn Lane Flint Implement 63
Somaliland Flint Implement 63
Neolithic Flint Implement 67
Australian Spearheads 68
Neolithic Pottery 69
Relationship of Human Races _Map_ 72
A Maya Stele 73
European Neolithic Warrior 75
Babylonian Brick 78
Egyptian Cylinder Seals of First Dynasty 79
The Sakhara Pyramids 80
The Pyramid of Cheops: Scene from Summit 81
The Temple of Hathor 82
Pottery and Implements of the Lake Dwellers 85
A Lake Village 86
Flint Knives of 4500 B.C. 87
Egyptian Wall Paintings of Nomads 87
Egyptian Peasants Going to Work 88
Stele of Naram Sin 89
The Treasure House at Mycenæ 93
The Palace at Cnossos 95
Temple at Abu Simbel 97
Avenue of Sphinxes at Karnak 98
The Hypostyle Hall at Karnak 99
Frieze of Slaves 101
The Temple of Horus, Edfu 103
Archaic Amphora 105
The Mound of Nippur 107
Median and Chaldean Empires _Map_ 110
The Empire of Darius _Map_ 111
A Persian Monarch 112
The Ruins of Persepolis 113
The Great Porch of Xerxes 113
The Land of the Hebrews _Map_ 117
Nebuchadnezzar’s Mound at Babylon 118
The Ishtar Gateway, Babylon 120
Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser II 124
Captive Princes making Obeisance 125
Statue of Meleager 128
Ruins of Temple of Zeus 130
The Temple of Neptune, Pæstum 132
Greek Ships on Ancient Pottery 135
The Temple of Corinth 137
The Temple of Neptune at Cape Sunium 138
Frieze of the Parthenon, Athens 140
The Acropolis, Athens 141
Theatre at Epidauros, Greece 141
The Caryatides of the Erechtheum 142
Athene of the Parthenon 143
Alexander the Great 146
Alexander’s Victory at Issus 147
The Apollo Belvedere 148
Aristotle 152
Statuette of Maitreya 153
The Death of Buddha 154
Tibetan Buddha 158
A Burmese Buddha 159
The Dhamêkh Tower, Sarnath 160
A Chinese Buddhist Apostle 164
The Court of Asoka 165
Asoka Panel from Bharhut 165
The Pillar of Lions (Asokan) 166
Confucius 169
The Great Wall of China 171
Early Chinese Bronze Bell 172
The Dying Gaul 175
Ancient Roman Cisterns at Carthage 177
Hannibal 181
Roman Empire and its Alliances, 150 B.C. _Map_ 183
The Forum, Rome 188
Ruined Coliseum in Tunis 189
Roman Arch at Ctesiphon 190
The Column of Trajan, Rome 193
Glazed Jar of Han Dynasty 197
Vase of Han Dynasty 198
Chinese Vessel in Bronze 199
A Gladiator (contemporary representation) 202
A Street in Pompeii 204
The Coliseum, Rome 206
Interior of Coliseum 206
Mithras Sacrificing a Bull 210
Isis and Horus 211
Bust of Emperor Commodus 212
Early Portrait of Jesus Christ 216
Road from Nazareth to Tiberias 217
David’s Tower and Wall of Jerusalem 218
A Street in Jerusalem 219
The Peter and Paul Mosaic at Rome 223
Baptism of Christ (Ivory Panel) 225
Roman Empire and the Barbarians _Map_ 228
Constantine’s Pillar, Constantinople 229
The Obelisk of Theodosius, Constantinople 231
Head of Barbarian Chief 235
The Church of S. Sophia, Constantinople 239
Roof-work in S. Sophia 240
Justinian and his Court 241
The Rock-hewn Temple at Petra 242
Chinese Earthenware of Tang Dynasty 246
At Prayer in the Desert 250
Looking Across the Sea of Sand 251
Growth of Moslem Power _Map_ 254
The Moslem Empire _Map_ 254
The Mosque of Omar, Jerusalem 255
Cairo Mosques 256
Frankish Dominions of Martel _Map_ 260
Statue of Charlemagne 262
Europe at Death of Charlemagne _Map_ 264
Crusader Tombs, Exeter Cathedral 268
View of Cairo 269
The Horses of S. Mark, Venice 271
Courtyard in the Alhambra 273
Milan Cathedral (showing spires) 278
A Typical Crusader 280
Burgundian Nobility (Statuettes) 283
Burgundian Nobility (Statuettes) 284
The Empire of Jengis Khan _Map_ 288
Ottoman Empire before 1453 _Map_ 289
Tartar Horsemen 291
Ottoman Empire, 1566 _Map_ 292
An Early Printing Press 296
Ancient Bronze from Benin 299
Negro Bronze-work 300
Early Sailing Ship (Italian Engraving) 301
Portrait of Martin Luther 305
The Church Triumphant (Italian Majolica work, 1543) 307
Charles V (the Titian Portrait) 311
S. Peter’s, Rome: the High Altar 315
Cromwell Dissolves the Long Parliament 321
The Court at Versailles 323
Sack of a Village, French Revolution 325
Central Europe after Peace of Westphalia, 1648 _Map_ 326
European Territory in America, 1750 _Map_ 330
Europeans Tiger Hunting in India 331
Fall of Tippoo Sultan 332
George Washington 337
The Battle of Bunker Hill 338
The U.S.A., 1790 339
The Trial of Louis XVI 344
Execution of Marie Antoinette 346
Portrait of Napoleon 352
Europe after the Congress of Vienna _Map_ 353
Early Rolling Stock, Liverpool and Manchester Railway 356
Passenger Train in 1833 356
The Steamboat _Clermont_ 357
Eighteenth Century Spinning Wheel 361
Arkwright’s Spinning Jenny 361
An Early Weaving Machine 363
An Incident of the Slave Trade 367
Early Factory, in Colebrookdale 368
Carl Marx 372
Electric Conveyor, in Coal Mine 376
Constructional Detail, Forth Bridge 378
American River Steamer 385
Abraham Lincoln 387
Europe, 1848-71 _Map_ 391
Victoria Falls, Zambesi 395
The British Empire, 1815 _Map_ 397
Japanese Soldier, Eighteenth Century 401
A Street in Tokio 403
Overseas Empires of Europe, 1914 _Map_ 406
Gibraltar 407
Street in Hong Kong 408
British Tank in Battle 410
The Ruins of Ypres 411
Modern War: War Entanglements 412
A View in Petersburg under Bolshevik Rule 418
Passenger Aeroplane in Flight 423
A Peaceful Garden in England 426
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD
I THE WORLD IN SPACE
The story of our world is a story that is still very imperfectly known. A couple of hundred years ago men possessed the history of little more than the last three thousand years. What happened before that time was a matter of legend and speculation. Over a large part of the civilized world it was believed and taught that the world had been created suddenly in 4004 B.C., though authorities differed as to whether this had occurred in the spring or autumn of that year. This fantastically precise misconception was based upon a too literal interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, and upon rather arbitrary theological assumptions connected therewith. Such ideas have long since been abandoned by religious teachers, and it is universally recognized that the universe in which we live has to all appearances existed for an enormous period of time and possibly for endless time. Of course there may be deception in these appearances, as a room may be made to seem endless by putting mirrors facing each other at either end. But that the universe in which we live has existed only for six or seven thousand years may be regarded as an altogether exploded idea.
The earth, as everybody knows nowadays, is a spheroid, a sphere slightly compressed, orange fashion, with a diameter of nearly 8,000 miles. Its spherical shape has been known at least to a limited number of intelligent people for nearly 2,500 years, but before that time it was supposed to be flat, and various ideas which now seem fantastic were entertained about its relations to the sky and the stars and planets. We know now that it rotates upon its axis (which is about 24 miles shorter than its equatorial diameter) every twenty-four hours, and that this is the cause of the alternations of day and night, that it circles about the sun in a slightly distorted and slowly variable oval path in a year. Its distance from the sun varies between ninety-one and a half millions at its nearest and ninety-four and a half million miles.
LUMINOUS SPIRAL CLOUDS OF MATTER “LUMINOUS SPIRAL CLOUDS OF MATTER”
(Nebula photographed 1910)
_Photo: G. W. Ritchey_
About the earth circles a smaller sphere, the moon, at an average distance of 239,000 miles. Earth and moon are not the only bodies to travel round the sun. There are also the planets, Mercury and Venus, at distances of thirty-six and sixty-seven millions of miles; and beyond the circle of the earth and disregarding a belt of numerous smaller bodies, the planetoids, there are Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune at mean distances of 141, 483, 886, 1,782, and 1,793 millions of miles respectively. These figures in millions of miles are very difficult for the mind to grasp. It may help the reader’s imagination if we reduce the sun and planets to a smaller, more conceivable scale.
THE NEBULA SEEN EDGE ON THE NEBULA SEEN EDGE-ON
Note the central core which, through millions of years, is cooling to solidity
_Photo: G. W. Ritchey_
If, then, we represent our earth as a little ball of one inch diameter, the sun would be a big globe nine feet across and 323 yards away, that is about a fifth of a mile, four or five minutes’ walking. The moon would be a small pea two feet and a half from the world. Between earth and sun there would be the two inner planets, Mercury and Venus, at distances of one hundred and twenty-five and two hundred and fifty yards from the sun. All round and about these bodies there would be emptiness until you came to Mars, a hundred and seventy-five feet beyond the earth; Jupiter nearly a mile away, a foot in diameter; Saturn, a little smaller, two miles off; Uranus four miles off and Neptune six miles off. Then nothingness and nothingness except for small particles and drifting scraps of attenuated vapour for thousands of miles. The nearest star to earth on this scale would be 40,000 miles away.
These figures will serve perhaps to give one some conception of the immense emptiness of space in which the drama of life goes on.
For in all this enormous vacancy of space we know certainly of life only upon the surface of our earth. It does not penetrate much more than three miles down into the 4,000 miles that separate us from the centre of our globe, and it does not reach more than five miles above its surface. Apparently all the limitlessness of space is otherwise empty and dead.
The deepest ocean dredgings go down to five miles. The highest recorded flight of an aeroplane is little more than four miles. Men have reached to seven miles up in balloons, but at a cost of great suffering. No bird can fly so high as five miles, and small birds and insects which have been carried up by aeroplanes drop off insensible far below that level.
II THE WORLD IN TIME
In the last fifty years there has been much very fine and interesting speculation on the part of scientific men upon the age and origin of our earth. Here we cannot pretend to give even a summary of such speculations because they involve the most subtle mathematical and physical considerations. The truth is that the physical and astronomical sciences are still too undeveloped as yet to make anything of the sort more than an illustrative guesswork. The general tendency has been to make the estimated age of our globe longer and longer. It now seems probable that the earth has had an independent existence as a spinning planet flying round and round the sun for a longer period than 2,000,000,000 years. It may have been much longer than that. This is a length of time that absolutely overpowers the imagination.
Before that vast period of separate existence, the sun and earth and the other planets that circulate round the sun may have been a great swirl of diffused matter in space. The telescope reveals to us in various parts of the heavens luminous spiral clouds of matter, the spiral nebulæ, which appear to be in rotation about a centre. It is supposed by many astronomers that the sun and its planets were once such a spiral, and that their matter has undergone concentration into its present form. Through majestic æons that concentration went on until in that vast remoteness of the past for which we have given figures, the world and its moon were distinguishable. They were spinning then much faster than they are spinning now; they were at a lesser distance from the sun; they travelled round it very much faster, and they were probably incandescent or molten at the surface. The sun itself was a much greater blaze in the heavens.
THE GREAT SPIRAL NEBULA THE GREAT SPIRAL NEBULA
_Photo: G. W. Ritchey_
If we could go back through that infinitude of time and see the earth in this earlier stage of its history, we should behold a scene more like the interior of a blast furnace or the surface of a lava flow before it cools and cakes over than any other contemporary scene. No water would be visible because all the water there was would still be superheated steam in a stormy atmosphere of sulphurous and metallic vapours. Beneath this would swirl and boil an ocean of molten rock substance. Across a sky of fiery clouds the glare of the hurrying sun and moon would sweep swiftly like hot breaths of flame.
A DARK NEBULA A DARK NEBULA _Taken in 1920 with the aid of the largest telescope in the world. One of the first photographs taken by the Mount Wilson telescope._
There are dark nebulæ and bright nebulæ. Prof. Henry Norris Russell, against the British theory, holds that the dark nebulæ preceded the bright nebulæ.
_Photo: Prof. Hale_
Slowly by degrees as one million of years followed another, this fiery scene would lose its eruptive incandescence. The vapours in the sky would rain down and become less dense overhead; great slaggy cakes of solidifying rock would appear upon the surface of the molten sea, and sink under it, to be replaced by other floating masses. The sun and moon growing now each more distant and each smaller, would rush with diminishing swiftness across the heavens. The moon now, because of its smaller size, would be already cooled far below incandescence, and would be alternately obstructing and reflecting the sunlight in a series of eclipses and full moons.
ANOTHER SPIRAL NEBULA ANOTHER SPIRAL NEBULA
_Photo: G. W. Ritchey_
And so with a tremendous slowness through the vastness of time, the earth would grow more and more like the earth on which we live, until at last an age would come when, in the cooling air, steam would begin to condense into clouds, and the first rain would fall hissing upon the first rocks below. For endless millenia the greater part of the earth’s water would still be vaporized in the atmosphere, but there would now be hot streams running over the crystallizing rocks below and pools and lakes into which these streams would be carrying detritus and depositing sediment.
LANDSCAPE BEFORE LIFE LANDSCAPE BEFORE LIFE “Great lava-like masses of rock without traces of soil”
At last a condition of things must have been attained in which a man might have stood up on earth and looked about him and lived. If we could have visited the earth at that time we should have stood on great lava-like masses of rock without a trace of soil or touch of living vegetation, under a storm-rent sky. Hot and violent winds, exceeding the fiercest tornado that ever blows, and downpours of rain such as our milder, slower earth to-day knows nothing of, might have assailed us. The water of the downpour would have rushed by us, muddy with the spoils of the rocks, coming together into torrents, cutting deep gorges and canyons as they hurried past to deposit their sediment in the earliest seas. Through the clouds we should have glimpsed a great sun moving visibly across the sky, and in its wake and in the wake of the moon would have come a diurnal tide of earthquake and upheaval. And
the moon, which nowadays keeps one constant face to earth, would then have been rotating visibly and showing the side it now hides so inexorably.
The earth aged. One million years followed another, and the day lengthened, the sun grew more distant and milder, the moon’s pace in the sky slackened; the intensity of rain and storm diminished and the water in the first seas increased and ran together into the ocean garment our planet henceforth wore.
But there was no life as yet upon the earth; the seas were lifeless, and the rocks were barren.
III THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE
As everybody knows nowadays, the knowledge we possess of life before the beginnings of human memory and tradition is derived from the markings and fossils of living things in the stratified rocks. We find preserved in shale and slate, limestone, and sandstone, bones, shells, fibres, stems, fruits, footmarks, scratchings and the like, side by side with the ripple marks of the earliest tides and the pittings of the earliest rain-falls. It is by the sedulous examination of this Record of the Rocks that the past history of the earth’s life has been pieced together. That much nearly everybody knows to-day. The sedimentary rocks do not lie neatly stratum above stratum; they have been crumpled, bent, thrust about, distorted and mixed together like the leaves of a library that has been repeatedly looted and burnt, and it is only as a result of many devoted lifetimes of work that the record has been put into order and read. The whole compass of time represented by the record of the rocks is now estimated as 1,600,000,000 years.
The earliest rocks in the record are called by geologists the Azoic rocks, because they show no traces of life. Great areas of these Azoic rocks lie uncovered in North America, and they are of such a thickness that geologists consider that they represent a period of at least half of the 1,600,000,000 which they assign to the whole geological record. Let me repeat this profoundly significant fact. Half the great interval of time since land and sea were first distinguishable on earth has left us no traces of life. There are ripplings and rain marks still to be found in these rocks, but no marks nor vestiges of any living thing.
MARINE LIFE IN THE CAMBRIAN PERIOD MARINE LIFE IN THE CAMBRIAN PERIOD 1 and 8, Jellyfishes; 2, Hyolithes (swimming snail); 3, Humenocaris; 4, Protospongia; 5, Lampshells (Obolella); 6, Orthoceras; 7, Trilobite (Paradoxides) — see fossil on page 13; 9, Coral (Archæocyathus); 10, Bryograptus; 11, Trilobite (Olenellus); 12, Palesterina
Then, as we come up the record, signs of past life appear and increase. The age of the world’s history in which we find these past traces is called by geologists the Lower Palæozoic age. The first indications that life was astir are vestiges of comparatively simple and lowly things: the shells of small shellfish, the stems and flowerlike heads of zoophytes, seaweeds and the tracks and remains of sea worms and crustacea. Very early appear certain creatures rather like plant-lice, crawling creatures which could roll themselves up into balls as the plant-lice do, the trilobites. Later by a few million years or so come certain sea scorpions, more mobile and powerful creatures than the world had ever seen before.
FOSSIL TRILOBITE (SLIGHTLY MAGNIFIED) FOSSIL TRILOBITE (SLIGHTLY MAGNIFIED) _Photo: John J. Ward, F.E.S._