o make no other epochal addition to the list of accomplishments that
came to him as a heritage from his barbaric progenitor. Indeed, even to
this day the list of such additions is not a long one, nor, judged in
the relative scale, so important as might at first thought be supposed.
Whoever considers the subject carefully must admit the force of Morgan's
suggestion that man's achievements as a barbarian, considered in their
relation to the sum of human progress, "transcend, in relative
importance, all his subsequent works."

Without insisting on this comparison, however, let us ask what
discoveries and inventions man has made within the historical period
that may fairly be ranked with the half-dozen great epochal achievements
that have been put forward as furnishing the keys to all the progress of
the prehistoric periods. In other words, let us sketch the history of
progress during the ten thousand years or so that have elapsed since man
learned the art of writing, adapting our sketch to the same scale which
we have already applied to the unnumbered millenniums of the prehistoric
period. The view of world-history thus outlined will be a very different
one from what might be expected by the student of national history; but
it will present the essentials of the progress of civilization in a
suggestive light.

Civilization proper.

Without pretending to fix an exact date,--which the historical records
do not at present permit,--we may assume that the most advanced race of
men elaborated a system of writing not less than six thousand years
before the beginning of the Christian era. Holding to the terminology
already suggested for the earlier periods, we may speak of man's
position during the ensuing generations as that of the First or Lowest
Status of civilization. If we review the history of this period we shall
find that it extends unbroken over a stretch of at least four or five
thousand years. During the early part of this period such localized
civilizations as those of the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Babylonians
and the Hittites rose, grew strong and passed beyond their meridian.
This suggests that we must now admit the word "civilization" to yet
another definition, within its larger meaning: we must speak of "_a_
civilization," as that of Egypt, of Babylonia, of Assyria, and we must
understand thereby a localized phase of society bearing the same
relation to civilization as a whole that a wave bears to the ocea