Of the more than one hundred books that H. G. Wells published in his lifetime, this is one of the most ambitious. Spanning the origins of the Earth to the outcome of World War I, A Short History of the World is an engrossing account of the evolution of life and the development of the human race. Wells brings his monumental learning and penetrating historical insight to bear on the Neolithic era, the rise of Judaism, the Golden Age of Athens, the life of Christ, the rise of Islam, the discovery of America, the Industrial Revolution, and a host of other subjects. Breathtaking in scope, this thought-provoking masterwork remains one of the most readable and rewarding of its kind.
Chapter 1 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"
(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
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.
Chapter 1 THE WORLD IN SPACE
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Chapter 2 THE WORLD IN TIME
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Chapter 3 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE
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Chapter 4 THE AGE OF FISHES
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Chapter 5 THE AGE OF THE COAL SWAMPS
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Chapter 6 THE AGE OF REPTILES
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Chapter 7 THE FIRST BIRDS AND THE FIRST MAMMALS
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Chapter 8 THE AGE OF MAMMALS
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Chapter 9 MONKEYS, APES AND SUB-MEN
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Chapter 10 THE NEANDERTHALER AND THE RHODESIAN MAN
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Chapter 11 THE FIRST TRUE MEN
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Chapter 12 PRIMITIVE THOUGHT
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Chapter 13 THE BEGINNINGS OF CULTIVATION
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Chapter 14 PRIMITIVE NEOLITHIC CIVILIZATIONS
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Chapter 15 SUMERIA, EARLY EGYPT AND WRITING
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Chapter 16 PRIMITIVE NOMADIC PEOPLES
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Chapter 17 THE FIRST SEAGOING PEOPLES
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Chapter 18 EGYPT, BABYLON AND ASSYRIA
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Chapter 19 THE PRIMITIVE ARYANS
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Chapter 20 THE LAST BABYLONIAN EMPIRE AND THE EMPIRE OF DARIUS I
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Chapter 21 THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE JEWS
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Chapter 22 PRIESTS AND PROPHETS IN JUDEA
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Chapter 23 THE GREEKS
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Chapter 24 THE WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS
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Chapter 25 THE SPLENDOUR OF GREECE
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Chapter 26 THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
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Chapter 27 THE MUSEUM AND LIBRARY AT ALEXANDRIA
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Chapter 28 THE LIFE OF GAUTAMA BUDDHA
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Chapter 29 KING ASOKA
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Chapter 30 CONFUCIUS AND LAO TSE
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Chapter 31 ROME COMES INTO HISTORY
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Chapter 32 ROME AND CARTHAGE
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Chapter 33 THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
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Chapter 34 BETWEEN ROME AND CHINA
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Chapter 35 THE COMMON MAN'S LIFE UNDER THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE
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Chapter 36 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE
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Chapter 37 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
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Chapter 38 THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINAL CHRISTIANITY
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Chapter 39 THE BARBARIANS BREAK THE EMPIRE INTO EAST AND WEST
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Chapter 40 THE HUNS AND THE END OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE
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