survived. They had to struggle day and night against cold and hunger. They were

forced to invent tools. They learned how to sharpen stones into axes and how to

make hammers. They were obliged to put up large stores of food for the endless

days of the winter and they found that clay could be made into bowls and jars

and hardened in the rays of the sun. And so the glacial period, which had

threatened to destroy the human race, became its greatest teacher because it

forced man to use his brain.

 

HIEROGLYPHICS

 

THE EGYPTIANS INVENT THE ART OF WRITING AND THE RECORD OF HISTORY BEGINS

 

THESE earliest ancestors of ours who lived in the great European wilderness were

rapidly learning many new things. It is safe to say that in due course of time

they would have given up the ways of savages and would have developed a

civilisation of their own. But suddenly there came an end to their isolation.

They were discovered.

 

A traveller from an unknown southland who had dared to cross the sea and the

high mountain passes had found his way to the wild people of the European

continent. He came from Africa. His home was in Egypt.

 

The valley of the Nile had developed a high stage of civilisation thousands of

years before the people of the west had dreamed of the possibilities of a fork

or a wheel or a house. And we shall therefore leave our great-great-grandfathers