The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 01 : $b Prolegomena; Egypt, Mesopotamia
History
The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 01 : $b Prolegomena; Egypt, Mesopotamia
World history
A gigantic bound was made when man first learned to use a club
habitually, and doubtless the transition from a club to a mechanically
pointed spear constituted a journey as long and as hard as the
evolution from the spear to the modern repeating rifle. But before the
dawn of history there had been evolved from the club the battle-axe of
metal, and from the crude spear the metal-pointed javelin, the arrow,
the sword, and the dagger; the bow, too, of which the arrow was the
complement, had long been perfected, and from it had evolved various
other implements of warfare, culminating in the gigantic battering-ram.
Of implements of a more pacific character, boats of various types
furnished means of transportation on the water, and wagons with wheel
and axle, acting on precisely the same principle which is still
employed, had been perfected, both of these being used in certain
of their types for purposes of war as well as in the arts of peace.
Manufacture included necessarily the making of materials for clothing
from an early stage, and this had advanced from the crude art of
dressing skins to the weaving of woollen fabrics and fine linens that
would bear comparison with the products of the modern loom. Stones
were shaped and bricks made as materials for building. The principle
of the pulley was well understood as an aid to human strength; and the
potter’s wheel, with which various household utensils were shaped,
was absurdly like the ones that are still used for a like purpose. In
all of these arts of manufacture, indeed, a degree of perfection had
been attained upon which there was to be singularly little advance for
some thousands of years. It was not until well toward the close of the
eighteenth century that the series of great mechanical advances began
with the application of steam to the propulsion of machinery, which has
revolutionised manufacture and for the first time made a radical change
from the systems of transportation that were in vogue before the dawn
of history; and it was only a few centuries earlier that the invention
of gunpowder metamorphosed the methods of warfare that had been in
vogue for a like period.
_Fifth. The Domestication of Animals._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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