World History 101: From Ancient Mesopotamia and the Viking Conquests to NATO and WikiLeaks, an Essential Primer on World History

by Tom Head

kisses leave no traces but wounds leave scars. History is mostly about the scars.

“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me?”

The 21,000-year-old Ohalo II settlement in Israel, for example, meets most of the criteria we associate with cities: people lived there on a long-term basis, they had permanent huts, and there’s evidence to suggest that they practiced agriculture (with more than a hundred seed varieties found onsite). But the buildings weren’t very durable and the human population at Ohalo II was most likely tiny, so it’s generally called a village rather than a city. When we call an ancient settlement a city, we’re not just saying that humans lived there; we’re implying that it existed for a long enough period, and with enough stability, that it developed its own distinctive culture.

The national hero of Sumer was Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk whose quest for immortality is the subject of the world’s oldest surviving epic poem.

“Thou art born, O Horus, as one whose name is ‘Him at whom the earth quakes’ . . . No seed of a god, which belongs to him, goes to ruin; so thou who belongest to him will not go to ruin.”

“Whence all creation had its origin, he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not, he, who surveys it all from highest heaven, he knows—or maybe even he does not know.”

The case of the Indus Valley civilization is particularly hard because their language has not yet been deciphered.

The swastika, for example, was originally a common Hindu symbol often meant to indicate good luck, a blessing, or sanctuary.

The Nazis also borrowed the Sanskrit root word arya, which means “unique” or “important,” and made it an explicit racial reference with the term “Aryan.”

The Hurrian hymn to Nikkal, also known as “Hurrian Hymn No. 6,” is the oldest surviving piece of sheet music—and, therefore, the oldest melody in the world (though musicologists are still not entirely sure they’ve rendered it correctly).

Although historians often describe Akhenaten as a monotheist, that wasn’t exactly right; he believed other gods existed. They just didn’t hold a candle to Aten. Aten was something special, something fundamental to the nature of reality itself. This belief in the supremacy of one god over other gods is generally called henotheism.

Akhenaten’s insistence of having no other gods before Aten may have influenced countless other religions, including ultimately those of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The pharaoh Hatshepsut, who ruled for twenty years (ca. 1478 B.C.E. to 1458 B.C.E.), was one of the first female pharaohs. Like many women of prominence throughout history, she was subjected to a posthumous effort to erase her achievements and credit them to her male successor. It didn’t work.

But a cursory review of ancient Egyptian literature suggests that the Egyptians of three thousand years ago were already keenly aware of the insubstantial nature of human achievement. These monuments, these tombs, these mummies were not necessarily meant to escape the passage of time but rather to provide future generations with a past they could find, a past whose shadow would loom over them and offer them guidance. As archaeologists continue to study ancient Egypt thousands of years later, the pharaohs continue to guide posterity and provide humanity with permanent symbols of history, in more impressive and far-reaching ways than even they could have planned.

“I am Sennacherib, king of Assyria, the prince who reveres thee. He who erases my written name or alters this, your seal of Destinies— erase his name and his seed from the land.”

Where the Rubber Met the Road

Legends of the Ancient Giants As is a common characteristic of ancient myths, Aztec stories of the Quinametzin echo similar stories told in other parts of the world. In Genesis 6:4, its ancient Israeli writers tell us about the Nephilim, a race of giants said to have walked the earth prior to the Great Flood.

“Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut . . . ” —Isaiah 45:1

The United States of Ancient Persia While ancient Persia could be best understood as an absolute divine right monarchy, in many other respects it better conforms to the values we associate with modern liberal democracies than most of its rivals. The Persian Empire prohibited slavery, allowed women to own property, granted considerable local autonomy to conquered states, prioritized education and trade, and permitted an unprecedented level of religious freedom. In terms of basic human rights it is a far more accurate precursor to modern states than ancient Greece could ever have been.

The historian of record was Diodorus Siculus (ca. 90–30 B.C.E.), whom we mentioned in the first chapter. He was the first known author to propose (correctly, as we now know, based on radiocarbon dating of the oldest known human remains) that humanity originated in Ethiopia.

“I declare That later on, Even in an age unlike our own, Someone will remember who we are.” —Sappho of Lesbos (610–570 B.C.E.), poet

To hear some thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries say it, the people of Greece had it all figured out two millennia ago. That’s not even remotely true, but what ancient Greece did accomplish in terms of science, architecture, literature, art, and philosophy is certainly enough to explain why so many people have come away with the impression.

Athens is probably what you think of when you envision ancient Greece. The Parthenon, Socrates and Plato, most of the well-known works of Greek poetry and plays—all are the legacy of the city-state of Athens. Occupied off and on for the better part of five thousand years, Athens was a world of its own. But when educated Europeans rediscovered Greek political philosophy in the eighteenth century (as we’ll discuss later) they began to see classical Athens as a peaceful utopia. In reality, however, it was neither peaceful nor particularly utopian.

Yes, the Athenians were technically the world’s first democracy (and for nearly two centuries), but only wealthy male citizens over eighteen (about 15 percent of the population) were eligible to vote. And like most Greek city-states, they practiced slavery on a large scale—something that distinguished the Greeks from their Persian invaders, who had taken formal steps to abolish it.

That said, it’s by and large a very good thing for those of us living today that the eighteenth-century political philosophers who rediscovered the traditions of Athens thought it was a more enlightened society than it was. Because these political philosophers thought they were restoring an old system of values rather than creating a new one,

(“A tomb now suffices him for whom the world was not enough.”)

The leaders of Sparta soon learned what the leaders of Athens had discovered: that it’s much harder to keep power than it is to acquire it.

“everything that happens happens out of necessity,”

For Alexander this idea of fate seems to have raised a possibility similar to the idea of the Mandate of Heaven (which is discussed later) and Manifest Destiny (also discussed later): that if you can rule the world, it means you’re probably supposed to.

“The straightening board was created because of warped wood, and the plumb line came into being because of things that are not straight. Rulers are established, and ritual and rightness are illuminated, because human nature is evil.” —Xunzi (ca. 300–230 B.C.E.), Chinese philosopher

Central to Confucius’s philosophy is the idea that we’re all of more-or-less equal value at birth but can develop good or bad traits over the course of our lives by cultivating specific habits. This is an idea that we take for granted now, but for most of human history in the West it was pretty radical. Emperors who believed that they and their families were destined from birth to rule found it particularly problematic.

“Let us relieve the Romans from the anxiety they have so long experienced, since they think it tries their patience too much to wait for an old man’s death.”

Indeed, contemporary religious folk who buy into the idea that God rewards his most beloved followers with material goods are carrying that idea forward into the current age.

As you may remember from an earlier chapter, in all likelihood we owe the existence of the Hebrew Bible to the oppression of the Babylonians, who forced early Jewish communities to write down their oral histories before they were lost. These communities anxiously awaited a messiah, or rescuer, whom they identified with the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great (ca. 600–530 B.C.E.). This isn’t historical speculation; Isaiah 45 specifically calls Cyrus the messiah and identifies him as the divinely-anointed savior of the Jewish people.

“The plunderers of the world, they have laid waste to the land till there is no more left, and now they scour the sea. If a people are rich they are worth robbing, if poor they are worth enslaving; and not the East nor the West can content their greedy maw. They are the only men in all the world whose lust of conquest makes them find in wealth and in poverty equally tempting baits. To robbery, murder, and outrage they give the lying name of government, and where they make a desert they call it peace.” —The native Scottish rebel Galgacus, speaking of the Romans, as quoted by the Roman historian Tacitus (56–120)

In fact the Pax Romana included the reigns of both Caligula (12–41) and Nero (37–68), the two most infamous emperors in Roman history.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

To read

Five Reasons Rome Might Have Fallen

Roman fall

The Arda Viraf (“Viraf the just”), which was probably written during the Sassanid period, tells the story of a devout Zoroastrian who travels to heaven and hell and returns to Earth to report what he found. Several centuries later, Dante Alighieri (1265–1341) would write a similar but much longer work, the Divine Comedy, from a Christian perspective.

This was the Inquisition’s approach from the beginning: detain random individuals, make them believe that their own lives were in danger, and then release them only if they betray their neighbors.

“If the cairn were not built, the magpie wouldn’t have perched.”

“In what annals has it ever been read that houses were left vacant, cities deserted, the country neglected, the fields too small for the dead and a fearful and universal solitude over the whole earth? . . . Oh happy people of the future, who have not known these miseries . . . ” —Francesco “Petrarch” Petrarca (1304–1374), poet

“[I]t occurs to me that what I am now about to tell will seem neither probable nor plausible to future generations, especially as time flows on and my story becomes ancient history. I fear they may think me a writer of fiction, and even put me among the poets.” —Procopius of Caesarea (ca. 500–554), from his Secret History

“All the earth is a grave, and nought escapes it; nothing is so perfect that it does not fall and disappear.” —Nezahualcoyotl (1402–1472), king of Texcoco

“Presently we discovered two or three villages, and the people all came down to the shore, calling out to us, and giving thanks to God. Some brought us water, and others victuals: others seeing that I was not disposed to land, plunged into the sea and swam out to us, and we perceived that they interrogated us if we had come from heaven. An old man came on board my boat; the others, both men and women cried with loud voices—‘Come and see the men who have come from heavens. Bring them victuals and drink.’ There came many of both sexes, every one bringing something, giving thanks to God, prostrating themselves on the earth, and lifting up their hands to heaven . . . I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased.” —Christopher Columbus, from his journal entry of October 14, 1492

The first to outline anything resembling the racial categories we have now was the French doctor François Bernier (1620–1688), whose A New Division of the Earth (1684) reclassified humanity into “four or five Species or Races.”

Henry’s first—and longest (twenty-four years!)—marriage was to a woman he didn’t have killed, presumably for sentimental reasons. After meeting the much younger future wife number two, Henry had his marriage to Catherine annulled against the pope’s wishes. This broke off England’s ties with the Roman Catholic Church (though in doing this Henry did not technically create the Church of England; that happened decades later under Queen Elizabeth).

surviving child together: Mary I (1516–1558), who as queen would become known as “Bloody Mary.”

That cleared the way for Queen Elizabeth (1533–1603), who reigned for forty-four years—longer than any monarch had for centuries. One of her first acts was to create the Church of England. It’s difficult to overstate just how drastic this change was. In 1557, advocating Anglicanism would get you burned at the stake; in 1559, it was effectively a job requirement for high-ranking clergy.

When she passed in 1603, Elizabeth, who never married, was buried alongside her sister, Bloody Mary—a touching gesture of reconciliation between Catholic and Anglican England, though perhaps not one with which Mary would have been entirely comfortable, all things considered.