Essay About World Book Information Finder And Prehistoric Times

History Of The World
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History of the World
Article printed from World Book INFORMATION FINDER.
WORLD, HISTORY OF THE (Introduction)
WORLD, HISTORY OF THE. People have probably lived on the earth about 2
million years. But the story of world history begins only about 5,500
years ago with the invention of writing. The period before people began to
write is usually called prehistory.
Archaeologists have pieced together the story of prehistory by studying
what the people left behind, including artwork, tools, ruins of buildings,
fossils, and even their own skeletons. Such objects provide the main
evidence of what prehistoric people were like and how they lived. For a
description of life in prehistoric times, see the Information Finder
article PREHISTORIC PEOPLE.
The first traces of writing date from about 3500 B.C. From then on,
people could record their own history. By writing down their experiences,
they could tell future generations what they were like and how they lived.
From these documents, we can learn firsthand about the rise and fall of
civilizations and the course of other important events. The history of the
world–from the first civilizations to the present–is based largely on
what has been written down by peoples through the ages.
The development of agriculture about 9,000 B.C. brought about a great
revolution in human life. Prehistoric people who learned to farm no longer
had to roam in search of food. Instead, they could settle in one place.
Some of their settlements grew to become the worlds first cities. People
in the cities learned new skills and developed specialized occupations.
Some became builders and craftworkers. Others became merchants and priests.
Eventually, systems of writing were invented. These developments gave rise
to the first civilizations.
For hundreds of years, the earliest civilizations had little contact
with one another and so developed independently. The progress each
civilization made depended on the natural resources available to it and on
the inventiveness of its people. As time passed, civilizations advanced
and spread, and the worlds population rose steadily. The peoples of
various civilizations began to exchange ideas and skills. Within each
civilization, groups of people with distinctive customs and languages
emerged. In time, some peoples, such as the Romans, gained power over
others and built huge empires. Some of these empires flourished for
centuries before collapsing. Great religions and later science and
scholarship developed as people wondered about the meaning of human life
and the mysteries of nature.
About 500 years ago, one civilization–that of western Europe–started
to exert a powerful influence throughout the world. The Europeans began to
make great advances in learning and the arts, and they came to surpass the
rest of the world in scientific and technological achievements. The nations
of Europe sent explorers and military forces to distant lands. They set up
overseas colonies, first in the Americas and then on other continents, and
conquered other regions. As a result, Western customs, skills, political
ideas, and religious beliefs spread across much of the world.
Today, the many peoples of the world continue to be separated by
different cultural traditions. But they also have more in common than ever
before. Worldwide systems of communications and transportation have broken
down barriers of time and distance and rapidly increased the exchange of
ideas and information between peoples. However far apart people may live
from one another, they are affected more and more by the same political and
economic changes. In some way, almost everyone can now be affected by a
war or a political crisis in a faraway land or by a rise in petroleum
prices in distant oil-producing countries. The separate cultures of the
world seem to be blending into a common world culture. Much of world
history is the story of the way different civilizations have come closer
together.
For hundreds of thousands of years, prehistoric people lived by hunting,
fishing, and gathering wild plants. Even small groups of people had to
roam over large areas of land to find enough food. A group usually stayed
in one place only a few days. The discovery of agriculture gradually ended
the nomadic way of life for many people. After prehistoric men and women
learned to raise crops and domesticate animals, they no longer had to