Resumo de History - a.k. hussain

World, History of the. Human beings have probably lived on the earth about 2 million years. But the story of World history begins only about 5,500 years ago with the invention of writing. The period before people began to write is usually called prehistory.

Archaeologists have pieced together the story of prehistory by studying what the people left behind, including artwork, tools, ruins of buildings, fossils, and even their own skeletons. Such objects provide the main evidence of what prehistoric people were like and how they lived. For a description of life in prehistoric times, see the World Book article PREHISTORIC PEOPLE.
The first traces of writing date from about 3500 B.C. From then on, people could record their own history. By writing down their experiences, they could tell future generations what they were like and how they lived. From these documents, we can learn firsthand about the rise and fall of civilizations and the course of other important events. The history of the world--from the first civilizations to the present--is based largely on what has been written down by peoples through the ages.
The beginnings of agriculture about 9,000 B.C. brought about a great revolution in human life. Prehistoric people who learned to farm no longer had to roam in search of food. Instead, they could settle in one place. Some of their settlements grew to become the world''s first cities. People in the cities learned new skills and developed specialized occupations. Some became builders and craftworkers. Others became merchants and priests. Eventually, systems of writing were invented. These developments gave rise to the first civilizations.
For hundreds of years, the earliest civilizations had little contact with one another and so developed independently. The progress each civilization made depended on the natural resources available to it and on the inventiveness of its people. As time passed, civilizations advanced and spread, and the world''s population rose steadily. The peoples of various civilizations began to exchange ideas and skills. Within each civilization, groups of people with distinctive customs and languages emerged. In time, some peoples, such as the Romans, gained power over others and built huge empires. Some of these empires flourished for centuries before collapsing. Great religions and later science and scholarship developed as people wondered about the meaning of human life and the mysteries of nature.
About 500 years ago, one civilization--that of western Europe--started to exert a powerful influence throughout the world. The Europeans began to make great advances in learning and the arts, and they came to surpass the rest of the world in scientific and technological achievements. The nations of Europe sent explorers and military forces to distant lands. They set up overseas colonies, first in the Americas and then on other continents, and conquered other regions. As a result, Western customs, skills, political ideas, and religious beliefs spread across much of the world.
Today, the many peoples of the world continue to be separated by different cultural traditions. But they also have more in common than ever before. Worldwide systems of communications and transportation have broken down barriers of time and distance and rapidly increased the exchange of ideas and information between peoples. However far apart people may live from one another, they are affected more and more by the same political and economic changes. In some way, almost everyone can now be affected by a war or a political crisis in a faraway land or by a rise in petroleum prices in distant oil-producing countries. The separate cultures of the world seem to be blending into a common world ure. Much of world history is the story of the way different civilizations have come closer together.
WORLD, HISTORY OF THE/Early centres of civilization
For hundreds of thousands of years, prehistoric people lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants. Even small groups of people had to roam over large areas of land to find enough food. A group usually stayed in one place only a few days. The discovery of agriculture gradually ended the nomadic way of life for many people. After prehistoric men and women learned to raise crops and domesticate animals, they no longer had to wander about in search of food. They could thus begin to settle in villages.
Agriculture was developed at different times in different regions of the world. People in the Middle East began to grow cereal grasses and other plants about 9000 B.C. They also domesticated goats and sheep at about that time, and they later tamed cattle. In southeastern Asia, people had begun raising crops by about 7000 B.C. People who lived in what is now Mexico probably learned to grow crops about 7000 B.C.

The invention of farming paved the way for the development of civilization. As prehistoric people became better farmers, they began to produce enough food to support larger villages. In time, some farming villages developed into the first cities. The plentiful food supplies enabled more and more people to give up farming for other jobs. These people began to develop the arts, crafts, trades, and other activities of civilized life.
Agriculture also stimulated technological and social changes. Farmers invented the hoe, sickle, and other tools to make their work easier. The hair of domestic animals and fibres from such plants as cotton and flax were used to make the first textiles. People built ovens to bake the bread they made from cultivated grain and learned to use hotter ovens to harden pottery. The practice of agriculture required many people to work together to prepare the fields for planting and to harvest the crops. New systems of government were developed to direct such group activities.
The changes brought about by agriculture took thousands of years to spread widely across the earth. By about 3500 B.C., civilization began. It started first in Southwest Asia. Three other early civilizations developed in Africa and in south and east Asia. All these early civilizations arose in river valleys, where fertile soil and a readily available water supply made agriculture easier than elsewhere. The valleys were (1) the Tigris-Euphrates Valley in the Middle East, (2) the Nile Valley in Egypt, (3) the Indus Valley in what is now Pakistan, and (4) the Huang He Valley in northern China.
While civilization was developing in the four valleys, people in most other parts of the world were still following their old ways of life. Little cultural progress was being made in such regions as northern and central Europe, central and southern Africa, northern and southeastern Asia, and most of North America. In parts of Central and South America, the people were developing some new ways of life. But advanced civilizations did not appear there until hundreds of years later.
The Tigris-Euphrates Valley. One of the most fertile regions of the ancient world lay between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq). Silt deposited by the rivers formed a rich topsoil ideal for growing crops. By the 5000''s B.C., many people had settled in villages in the lower part of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, an area later called Sumer.
The Sumerians lived by farming, fishing, and hunting the wild fowl of the river marshes. They built dykes to control the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and irrigation canals to carry water to their fields

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