A General History for Colleges and High Schools | Page 3

Baltic Lands, c. 1701 21. Central Europe, 1801 22. Sketch Map of Europe showing Principal Battles of Napoleon [Footnote: For the use of this map I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. D. H. Montgomery, author of "Leading Facts of French History."] 23. Central Europe, 1810 24. Central Europe, 1815 25. South-Eastern Europe according to the Treaty of Berlin, 1878 26. Europe in 1880

GENERAL HISTORY.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION: THE RACES AND THEIR EARLY MIGRATIONS.
DIVISIONS OF HISTORY.--History is usually divided into three periods,-- Ancient, Medi?val, and Modern. Ancient History begins with the earliest nations of which we can gain any certain knowledge, and extends to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, A.D. 476. Medi?val History embraces the period, about one thousand years in length, lying between the fall of Rome and the discovery of the New World by Columbus, A.D. 1492. Modern History commences with the close of the medi?val period and extends to the present time. [Footnote: It is thought preferable by some scholars to let the beginning of the great Teutonic migration (A.D. 375) mark the end of the period of ancient history. Some also prefer to date the beginning of the modern period from the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, A.D. 1453; while still others speak of it in a general way as commencing about the close of the 15th century, at which time there were many inventions and discoveries and a great stir in the intellectual world.]
ANTIQUITY OF MAN.--We do not know when man first came into possession of the earth. We only know that, in ages vastly remote, when both the climate and the outline of Europe were very different from what they are at present, man lived on that continent with animals now extinct; and that as early as 4000 or 3000 B.C.,--when the curtain first rises on the stage of history,--in some favored regions, as in the Valley of the Nile, there were nations and civilizations already venerable with age, and possessing languages, arts, and institutions that bear evidence of slow growth through very long periods of time before written history begins. [Footnote: The investigation and study of this vast background of human life is left to such sciences as _Ethnology, Comparative Philology_, and Prehistoric Archeology.]
THE RACES OF MANKIND.--Distinctions in form, color, and physiognomy divide the human species into three chief types, or races, known as the Black (Ethiopian, or Negro), the Yellow (Turanian, or Mongolian), and the White (Caucasian). But we must not suppose each of these three types to be sharply marked off from the others; they shade into one another by insensible gradations.
There has been no perceptible change in the great types during historic times. The paintings upon the oldest Egyptian monuments show us that at the dawn of history, about five or six thousand years ago, the principal races were as distinctly marked as now, each bearing its racial badge of color and physiognomy. As early as the times of Jeremiah, the permanency of physical characteristics had passed into the proverb, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin?"
Of all the races, the White, or Caucasian, exhibits by far the most perfect type, physically, intellectually, and morally.
[Illustration: NEGRO CAPTIVES, From the Monuments of Thebes. (Illustrating the permanence of race characteristics.)]
THE BLACK RACE.--Africa is the home of the peoples of the Black Race, but we find them on all the other continents, whither they have been carried as slaves by the stronger races; for since time immemorial they have been "hewers of wood and drawers of water" for their more favored brethren.
THE YELLOW, OR TURANIAN RACE.--The term Turanian is very loosely applied by the historian to many and widely separated families and peoples. In its broadest application it is made to include the Chinese and other more or less closely allied peoples of Eastern Asia; the Ottoman Turks, the Hungarians, the Finns, the Lapps, and the Basques, in Europe; and (by some) the Esquimaux and American Indians.
The peoples of this race were, it seems, the first inhabitants of Europe and of the New World; but in these quarters, they have, in the main, either been exterminated or absorbed by later comers of the White Race. In Europe, however, two small areas of this primitive population escaped the common fate--the Basques, sheltered among the Pyrenees, and the Finns and Lapps, in the far north; [Footnote: The Hungarians and Turks are Turanian peoples that have thrust themselves into Europe during historic times] while in the New World, the Esquimaux and the Indians still represent the race that once held undisputed possession of the land.
The polished stone implements found in the caves and river-gravels of Western Europe, the shell-mounds, or kitchen-middens, upon the shores of the Baltic, the Swiss lake habitations, and the barrows, or grave-mounds, found in all parts of Europe, are