ABSTRACT
“The history of society is a history not of centuries but of ages,” 1 and we may, for the moment, seek larger vistas and briefly survey man's culture development. Probably human culture has existed for 240,000 years. If we reduce this period to a scale of 12 hours, so that each hour represents 20,000 years and each minute 333 1/3 years, we find that during the first ll 1/2 hours man lived in a Stone-age preliterate culture. Twenty minutes ago the earliest vestiges of Egyptian and Babylonian civilization appear; Greek literature, philosophy, and science flourished 7 minutes ago. A minute ago Lord Bacon wrote the “Advancement of Learning” and the “New Atlantis,” and less than a half minute has elapsed since man invented the steam engine. 2 If we take half of this time interval, assuming that the Stone age was well under way 120,000 years ago, and plot human history on a scale of 6 inches, allotting 20,000 years to an inch, we find that 5 of the 6 inches are occupied by the Paleolithic, or Old Stone age. The Lower Paleolithic occupies much the greater part of the Old Stone age, approximately four-fifths of it. The more advanced culture of the Upper Paleolithic fills a much shorter interval than that of the Lower Paleolithic, and gives place to the Neolithic about 10,000 years ago. In 3,000 years Neolithic man learns to work copper, in another 2,000 years bronze, proceeding in another thousand years to the working of iron, the metal on which modern civilization is built. He improves the working of iron, engages in engineering enterprises, and embarks on the career of applied science which blossoms into the civilization of the present age. If these millennia of human culture are reduced to a scale of one hour, man has spent about 55 minutes in the Paleolithic culture; 5 minutes ago he embarked upon the Neolithic culture, the cultivation of plants, the domestication of animals, the making of pottery, weaving, and the use of the bow and arrow;3 1/2 minutes ago he began the working of copper; 2 1/2 minutes ago he began to mold bronze; 2 minutes ago he learned to smelt iron; one-fourth of a minute ago he learned printing; 5 seconds ago the Industrial Revolution began; 3 1/2 seconds ago he learned to apply electricity; and the time he has had automobiles is less than the intervals between the ticks of a watch, i.e., less than one second. To those who take a microscopic view of human history contemporary civilization looms large, but to those who go aeroplaning through the millennia of human history our modern culture is brief. 1
