Category: The Story of Mankind
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Ancient Greek Life
Greek Life But how, you will ask, did the ancient Greeks have time to look after their families and their business if they were forever running to the marketplace to discuss affairs of state? In this chapter I shall tell you. In all matters of government, the Greek democracy recognized only one class of citizens—the…
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Greek Self-Government
In the beginning, all the Greeks had been equally rich and equally poor. Every person had owned a certain number of cows and sheep. Their mud-hut had been their castle. They had been free to come and go as they wished. Whenever it was necessary to discuss matters of public importance, all the citizens had…
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The Story of Mankind: The Greek Cities
We modern people love the sound of the word “big.” We pride ourselves upon the fact that we belong to the “biggest” country in the world and possess the “biggest” navy and grow the “biggest” oranges and potatoes, and we love to live in cities of “millions” of inhabitants and when we are dead, we…
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The Story of Mankind: The Greeks
The Pyramids were a thousand years old and were beginning to show the first signs of decay, and Hammurabi, the wise king of Babylon, had been dead and buried several centuries, when a small tribe of shepherds left their homes along the banks of the River Danube and wandered southward in search of fresh pastures.…
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The Story of Mankind: The Aegean Sea
When Heinrich Schliemann was a little boy his father told him the story of Troy. He liked that story better than anything else he had ever heard and he made up his mind, that as soon as he was big enough to leave home, he would travel to Greece and “find Troy.” That he was…
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The Story of Mankind: The Indo-Europeans
The world of Egypt and Babylon and Assyria and Phoenicia had existed almost thirty centuries, and the venerable races of the Fertile Valley were getting old and tired. Their doom was sealed when a new and more energetic race appeared upon the horizon. We call this race the Indo-European race, because it conquered not only…
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The Story of Mankind: The Phoenicians
The Phoenicians, who were the neighbors of the Jews, were a Semitic tribe which at a very early age had settled along the shores of the Mediterranean. They had built themselves two well-fortified towns, Tyre and Sidon, and within a short time they had gained a monopoly of the trade of the western seas. Their…
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The Story of Mankind: Moses
Some time during the twentieth century before our era, a small and unimportant tribe of Semitic shepherds had left its old home, which was situated in the land of Ur on the mouth of the Euphrates, and had tried to find new pastures within the domain of the Kings of Babylonia. They had been driven…
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The Story of Mankind: Lesson 8: The Sumerians
The fifteenth century was an age of great discoveries. Columbus tried to find a way to the island of Kathay and stumbled upon a new and unsuspected continent. An Austrian bishop equipped an expedition which was to travel eastward and find the home of the Grand Duke of Muscovy, a voyage which led to complete…
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THE STORY OF MANKIND
“The Story of Mankind” by Hendrik Van Loon chronicles human history from prehistory to the modern era, highlighting key events, cultures, and figures that shaped civilization.