Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-12-02
PROBLEMS IN HISTORY

DO YOU KNOlJ-
Who built the colossal Pyramids OF
Egypt and why2
DO YOU KNOW
Where the word paper had it's origin?
DO YOU KNOW
The strange ancient people who cOnsid-
cred that to eat the flesh of the dead
was to honor the departed?
DO YOU KNOW
What race once worshped a goddess
whose earthly representation was the
hippOpOtamus?
The Assyrian empire lasted only $50 years
after Sargon II. Fresh nomadc Semites COM
ing from the southeast, the Chaldeans,
sisted by two Aryan-speaking peoples from
the north the Modes and Persians, combined
against it and took Nineveh in Cos B. c.
The Chaldean Empire, with it's capital at
Babylon (Second Babylonian Empire), last
ed under Nebuchadnezzar the Great NE
buchadnezzar H. and the successors until
$50 3. c., when it collapsed before the at
tack of Cyrus, the founder of the Persian
So the story goes on. In $50 B. c., as we
shall tell later in some detail, a Greek con-
queror. Alexander the Great, is looking on
the murdered body of the last of the Persian
rulers
The Long Story of Conquest
The story of the Tigris and Euphrates
civilizations, of which we have given as yet
following after conquest, and each conquest
replaces old rulers and ruling classes by
new; races like the Sumerian and the Elam-
tie are swallowed up, their languages van
ish, they interbreed and are lost, the Assyrian
melts away into Chaldean and Syrian, the
Hittites become Aryanized and lose distinc-
tion the Semites who swallowed up the
Sumerans give place to Aryan rulers, Modes
and Persians appear in the place of the
Elamites, the Aryan Persian language domi-
mates the empire until the Aryan Greek
Gusts it from official life.
Tho Vital Powers of civilization
Meanwhile the plow does it's work year by
year, the harYests are gathered, the builders
build as they are told, the tradesmen work
and acquire fresh devices; the knowledge of
writing spreads, novel things, the horse ana
wheeled vehicles and iron, are introduced and
become part of the permanent inheritance Of
mankind; the volume of trade upon sea and
desert increases, mems ideas widen and
knowledge grows There are setbacks, mas
sacres, pestience; but the story is, on the
whole, one of enlargement.
For four thousand years this new thing,
civilization, which had set its root into the
soil of the two rivers, grew as a tree grows;
now losing limb, now stripped by storm,
but always growing and resuming it's growth.
After four thousand years the warriors and
cOnquerOrs were still going to and fro over
this growing thing they did not understand,
horses writing and computation, money, a
greater variety of foods and textiles, a wider
knowledge of their world.
The time that elapsed between the empire
of SargOn l. and the conquest of Babylon by
Alexander the Great was as long, be it noted,
al the least estimate, the time from Alex
ander the Great to the present day. And
before the time of SargOn, men had been
settled in the Sumerian land, living in towns,
worshiping in temples, following an orderly
Neoithc agricultural life in an organized
community for at least long again. "Eridu
Lagash, Ur, Uruk, Larsa, have already an i'm
memorial past when first they appear in his
tory
One of the most difficult things for both
the writer and student of history is to sus-
tain the sense of these time-intervals and
prevent these ages becoming shortened by
perspective in his imagination. Half the
duration of human civilization and the keys
to all it's chief institutions are to be found
before Sargon |.
Copyright, 1929