Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/15

 CHAPTER I PREHISTORIC HISTORY The history of man begins in one sense at the time when he first left intentional records of his doings. But in another sense mankind had a history before man began to leave . -,, . . /, °, , 1. Beginnings. a record. This is what we mean by the phrase 1 Prehistoric History ' — the history of what was going on before history was written down. Prehistoric history, then, starts from the very earliest time when men existed on this planet. Man is the only creature that has learnt to make tools, to make use of fire, The First and to employ articulate speech. We know that Men - there were men on earth so long ago as before the last Glacial Period, when the northern half of Europe was a great ice-field ; but we do not know how many tens of thousands of years may have passed since that time. It is not until we get down to somewhere about ten thousand years ago that we have traces of communities which remained in existence generation after generation continu- ously down to the time when they began to leave conscious records of their actions. This first trace of a continuous community is found in the valley of the Nile; and probably about two or three thousand years later come the second traces of a continuous community in the valley of the Euphrates. Both had begun to be recorded somewhere about six thousand years ago ; that is The First to say, before the year 4000 B.C. Both, before that Records, time, had reached an advanced stage of civilisation ; that is, they had an ordered system of government, and had acquired a great deal of knowledge and engineering skill.