Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/39

 Orient (3000 to 2000 B.C.) Early Mankind in Europe 1 5 and other communities scattered through the ^gean islands, — these eastern people have even seen those marvelous ships of the Nile with their huge spars and wide sails and have trafficked with them on the seashore. Thus at the dawn of history, barbarian Europe looked across Stone Age the Mediterranean to the great civilization of the Nile, as our own the"^civnized North American Indians fixed their wondering eyes on the first Europeans who landed in America and listened to like strange tales of great and distant peoples. But these Late Stone Age men. had now (about 2500 B.C.) reached the limit of their re- sources. Without writing (for the records of business, govern- ment, and tradition) ; without metals (save the trader's copper ax and dagger) ; without stanch ships in which to develop com- merce, — they could go no further. Perhaps the- Late Stone Age villagers recalled a dim tradition of their fathers that grain and flax, cattle and sheep, first came to them from the same wonder- land of the far East, whence now came the copper ax and the blue-glazed beads. It was after receiving such contributions as these from the Orient, that Europe went forward to the develop- ment of a higher civilization, and in order to understand the further course of European history, we must turn to the Orient whence came these things by which the life of our European ancestors entered upon a new epoch. Let us remember as we go to the Orient that the age of man's Summary prehistoric career^ lasted some fifty thousand years,. and that in the Orient he began to enter upon a high civilization in the his- to?ic epoch during the thousand years from 4000 to 3000 B.C. (in eastern Europe a thousand years later).^ Civilization is thus between five and six thousand years old. It arose in the Orient, in the eastern Mediterranean region, and civilized supremacy both in peace and war shifted slowly from the Orient west- ward. It was not till about 500 B.C. that the Greeks became the leaders in matters of civilization. They, with the rest of the 1 That is, before he began to leave any written traces of his existence. 2 In western Europe not until after 500 B.C. or even much later.