History of Human Society

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Frank Wilson Blackmar. History of Human Society

PREFACE

PART I. CIVILIZATION AND PROGRESS

CHAPTER I. WHAT IS CIVILIZATION?

CHAPTER II. THE ESSENTIALS OF PROGRESS

CHAPTER III. METHODS OF RECOUNTING HUMAN PROGRESS

PART II. FIRST STEPS OF PROGRESS

CHAPTER IV. PREHISTORIC MAN

CHAPTER V. THE ECONOMIC FACTORS OF PROGRESS

CHAPTER VI. PRIMITIVE SOCIAL LIFE

CHAPTER VII. LANGUAGE AND ART AS A MEANS OF CULTURE AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

PART III. THE SEATS OF EARLY CIVILIZATIONS

CHAPTER VIII. THE INFLUENCE OF PHYSICAL NATURE ON HUMAN PROGRESS

CHAPTER IX. CIVILIZATION OF THE ORIENT

CHAPTER X. THE ORIENTAL TYPE OF CIVILIZATION

CHAPTER XI. BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION IN AMERICA

PART IV. WESTERN CIVILIZATION

CHAPTER XII. THE OLD GREEK LIFE

CHAPTER XIII. GREEK PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER XIV. THE GREEK SOCIAL POLITY

CHAPTER XV. ROMAN CIVILIZATION

CHAPTER XVI. THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

CHAPTER XVII. TEUTONIC INFLUENCE ON CIVILIZATION

CHAPTER XVIII. FEUDAL SOCIETY

CHAPTER XIX. ARABIAN CONQUEST AND CULTURE

CHAPTER XX. THE CRUSADES STIR THE EUROPEAN MIND

CHAPTER XXI. ATTEMPTS AT POPULAR GOVERNMENT

CHAPTER XXII. THE INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING OF EUROPE

CHAPTER XXIII. HUMANISM AND THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING

CHAPTER XXIV. THE REFORMATION

CHAPTER XXV. CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

PART V. MODERN PROGRESS

CHAPTER XXVI. PROGRESS OF POLITICAL LIBERTY

CHAPTER XXVII. INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS

CHAPTER XXVII. SOCIAL EVOLUTION

CHAPTER XXIX. THE EVOLUTION OF SCIENCE

CHAPTER XXX. UNIVERSAL EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY

CHAPTER XXXI. WORLD ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

CHAPTER XXXII. THE TREND OF CIVILIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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The Human Trail. – The trail of human life beginning in the mists of the past, winding through the ages and stretching away toward an unknown future, is a subject of perennial interest and worthy of profound thought. No other great subject so invites the attention of the mind of man. It is a very long trail, rough and unblazed, wandering over the continents of the earth. Those who have travelled it came in contact with the mysteries of an unknown world. They faced the terrors of the shifting forms of the earth, of volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, storms, and ice fields. They witnessed the extinction of forests and animal groups, and the changing forms of lakes, rivers, and mountains, and, indeed, the boundaries of oceans.

It is the trail of human events and human endeavor on which man developed his physical powers, enlarged his brain capacity, developed and enriched his mind, and became efficient through art and industry. Through inventions and discovery he turned the forces of nature to his use, making them serve his will. In association with his fellows, man learned that mutual aid and co-operation were necessary to the survival of the race. To learn this caused him more trouble than all the terrors and mysteries of the natural world around him. Connected with the trail is a long chain of causes and effects, trial and error, success and failure, out of which has come the advancement of the race. The accumulated results of life on the trail are called civilization.

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In the second period man learned to fashion more perfectly the implements, and in some instances to polish them to a high degree. Although the divisions are very general and very imperfect, they map out the great prehistoric era of man; but they must be considered as irregular, on account of the fact that the Stone Era of man occurred at different times in different tribes. Thus the inhabitants of North America were in the Stone Age less than two centuries ago, while some of the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands are in the Stone Age during the present century. It is quite remarkable that the use of stone implements was universal to all tribes and nations at some period of their existence.

After the long use of stone, man gradually became acquainted with some of the metals, and subsequently discovered the method of combining copper with tin and other alloys to form bronze, which material, to a large extent, added to the implements already in use. The Bronze Age is the most hypothetical of all these divisions, as it does not appear to have been as universal as the Stone, on account of the difficulty of obtaining metals. The use of copper by the Indians of the Lake Superior region was a very marked epoch in their development, and corresponds to the Bronze Age of other nations, although their advancement in other particulars appears to be less than that of other tribes of European origin which used bronze freely. Bronze implements have been found in great plenty in Scandinavia and Peru, and to a limited extent in North America. They certainly mark a stage of progress in advance of that of the inhabitants of the Stone Age. Bronze was the chief metal for implements throughout the early civilization of Europe.

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