The Outline of History, Volume 1: Prehistory to the Roman Republic (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

557 Pages·2004·10.26 MB·English

by  H. G. Wells

Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE - THE EARTH IN SPACE AND TIME

CHAPTER TWO - THE RECORD OF THE ROCKS
§ 1. The First Living Things. § 2. How Old Is the World?

CHAPTER THREE - NATURAL SELECTION AND THE CHANGES OF
SPECIES

CHAPTER FOUR - THE INVASION OF THE DRY LAND BY LIFE
§ 1. Life and Water. § 2. The Earliest Animals.

CHAPTER FIVE - THE AGE OF REPTILES
§ 1. The Age of Lowland Life. § 2. Flying Dragons. § 3. The First Birds. § 4.
...

CHAPTER SIX - THE AGE OF MAMMALS
§ 1. A New Age of Life. § 2. Tradition Comes into the World. § 3. An Age of
...

CHAPTER SEVEN - THE ANCESTRY OF MAN
§ 1. Man Descended from a Walking Ape. § 2. First Traces of Manlike
Creatures. ...

CHAPTER EIGHT - THE NEANDERTHAL MEN, AN EXTINCT RACE
§ 1. The World 50,000 Years Ago. § 2. The Daily Life of the First Men.§ 3.
The ...
CHAPTER NINE - THE LATER POSTGLACIAL PALÆOLITHIC MEN, THE
FIRST TRUE MEN
(Later Palæolithic Age)

CHAPTER TEN - NEOLITHIC MAN IN EUROPE
§ 1. The Age of Cultivation Begins. § 2. Where Did the Neolithic Culture
Arise? ...

CHAPTER ELEVEN - EARLY THOUGHT
§ 1. Primitive Philosophy. § 2. The Old Man in Religion. § 3. Fear and Hope
in ...

CHAPTER TWELVE - THE RACES OF MANKIND
§ 1. Is Mankind Still Differentiating? § 2. The Main Races of Mankind. § 3.
The ...

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - THE LANGUAGES OF MANKIND
§ 1. No One Primitive Language. § 2. The Aryan Languages. § 3. The
Semitic ...

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS
§ 1. Early Cities and Early Nomads. § 2A. The Sumerians. § 2B. The Empire
of ...

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - SEA PEOPLES AND TRADING PEOPLES
§ 1. The Earliest Ships and Sailors. § 2. The Ægean Cities before History. §
3. ...

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - WRITING
§ 1. Picture-Writing. § 2. Syllable-Writing. § 3. Alphabet-Writing. § 4. The
...

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - GODS AND STARS, PRIESTS AND KINGS
§ 1. The Priest Comes into History. § 2. Priests and the Stars. § 3. Priests ...

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - SERFS, SLAVES, SOCIAL CLASSES, AND FREE
INDIVIDUALS
§ 1. The Common Man in Ancient Times. § 2. The Earliest Slaves. § 3. The
First ...

CHAPTER NINETEEN - THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES AND THE
PROPHETS
§ 1. The Place of the Israelites in History. § 2. Saul, David, and Solomon. §
...

CHAPTER TWENTY - THE ARYAN - SPEAKING PEOPLES IN
PREHISTORIC TIMES
§ 1. The Spreading of the Aryan-Speakers. § 2. Primitive Aryan Life. § 3.
Early ...

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS
§ 1. The Hellenic Peoples. § 2. Distinctive Features of Hellenic Civilization.
...

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - GREEK THOUGHT IN RELATION TO
HUMAN SOCIETY
§ 1. The Athens of Pericles. § 2. Socrates. § 3. Plato and the Academy. § 4.
...

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - THE CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE
GREAT
§ 1. Philip of Macedonia. § 2. The Murder of King Philip. § 3. Alexander’s
...

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - SCIENCE AND RELIGION AT
ALEXANDRIA
§ 1. The Science of Alexandria. § 2. Philosophy of Alexandria. § 3.
Alexandria ...

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - THE RISE AND SPREAD OF BUDDHISM
§ 1. The Story of Gautama. § 2. Teaching and Legend in Conflict. § 3. The ...
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS
§ 1. The Beginnings of the Latins. § 2. A New Sort of State. § 3. The ...

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - FROM TIBERIUS GRACCHUS TO THE
GOD EMPEROR IN ROME
§ 1. The Science of Thwarting the Common Man. § 2. Finance in the Roman
State. ...

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - THE CÆSARS BETWEEN THE SEA AND
THE GREAT PLAINS OF THE ...
§ 1. A Short Catalogue of Emperors. § 2. Roman Civilization at its Zenith. §
3. ...

ENDNOTES
INDEX
SUGGESTED READING
Look for the following titles, available now from The Barnes & Noble Library of
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Introduction and Suggested Reading © 2004 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Originally published in 1920

This 2004 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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without prior written permission from the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7607-5866-3 ISBN-10: 0-7607-5866-2
eISBN : 978-1-41142884-3

Printed and bound in the United States of America

3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION
H. G. WELLS CONFERRED UPON THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY A
SUBTITLE—”Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind”—that is probably
more indicative than the main title of what the work really is. For to call a work
of over one thousand pages and five hundred thousand words an “outline”
betrays our common notion of the term. But if “plain” means plainly or clearly
written so a general reader can understand it, and if “life and mankind” means it
is a history of the beginnings of life on Earth and the subsequent development of
the social, political, and economic history of the highest life form—then we have
a pretty fair description of Wells’ endeavor. Written over an amazingly short
period of time in 1918-1919 by a highly successful English man of letters, The
Outline of History caught on first in Britain and America and then throughout
the rest of the literate world, selling in its first decade over two million copies, to
highly enthusiastic professional reviews. Wells had started a craze that lasted
throughout the 1920s for copycat “outlines” on every conceivable subject.
Coming right after the carnage of World War I, the Outline was neither unduly
pessimistic and cynical about the human condition nor Pollyannaish about
humanity’s future. Instead, it pretended to offer an account of the development
of the world’s civilizations up to the present, trying to convince its readers that
an enlightened future depended on a clear, unprejudiced view of the past. Many
readers must have been convinced. Even twenty years after its initial publication,
when it was in its sixth edition, The Outline of History and its author were well
enough known that in the film The Maltese Falcon, Sidney Greenstreet’s
malevolent character can tell Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) that the story of the
Falcon is true, though he will not find it in “Mr. Wells’ History.”
H. G. Wells was by 1918 perhaps the best-known writer in the English-
speaking world. His name may still be the most recognizable of any author’s of
his generation, thanks mostly to his enduringly popular science-fiction novels,
such as The War of the Worlds (1898). Novelist, polemicist, scientific
popularizer, journalist, socialist, futurist, and advocate of world government,
birth control, and other “progressive” measures, H. G. Wells had raised himself
from humble beginnings to a life of international celebrity and financial success.
Born in 1866, he achieved early success with his science-fiction romances, and
by 1918 had solidified that popularity and increased his literary reputation with
such serious realistic novels as Tono-Bungay (1909). Wells was largely self-
taught though he had attended a teacher’s college where he studied under the
great T. H. Huxley, Darwin’s so-called “bulldog,” the most prominent public
apologist for the theory of evolution. Like his mentor, Wells was an unabashed
“progressive,” convinced that the world could be understood without recourse to
revelation or mythical narratives, that science ultimately could explain the
material world, and that a dispassionate “scientific” attitude toward human
endeavor was actually essential for prosperity and, as years went on, even for the
survival of the species. Occasionally Wells’ fame lapsed into infamy, for he was
something of a philanderer, fathering at least two children out of wedlock, one
by the novelist Rebecca West rather quietly, and the other not so quietly by
Amber Reeves, the young daughter of a fellow Fabian socialist. When Wells
died in 1946, there was almost universal agreement that, in the words of Dora
Russell, the philosopher Bertrand Russell’s much younger second wife, Wells
had been, along with George Bernard Shaw and her husband, one of the “great
emancipators from Victorian orthodoxy.”
Why then did Wells write The Outline of History? Certainly not because he
foresaw the immense financial bonanza it would become for him. In fact, he was
on a mission. If future conflagrations like the Great War were to be avoided, a
fundamental reordering of the political system had to be undertaken. The world
would have to adopt an international system far more radical than Woodrow
Wilson’s proposed League of Nations. And mankind could only unite in such a
system if it had a better idea of its common history. A “universal” history, as
Wells called it, would break down the old nationalistic, ethnic, and racial
divisions by plotting, from the beginnings of the planet, the human race’s
common heritage. This may sound far too utopian, but Wells’ realism should be
stressed. He did not think a “magic bullet” was found in history. Instead, he
thought of history with its progression of thought and possibility of beneficial
action as essential if humanity were to advance. In short, history will emancipate
(to use Dora Russell’s word) one from mere sectarian or local prejudices and
provide an enlightened review of humanity’s possibilities to help shape a better
future.
To further guarantee that The Outline of History would have the desired
impact, the amateur Wells enlisted many experts to help him. His biggest aid was
probably the magnificent eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a
work that remained justly famous as far superior to both its predecessor editions