ANCIENT MAN
THE BEGINNING
OF CIVILIZATIONS

BY HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON

1922.

DEDICATION To HANSJE AND WILLEM.

My darling boys,

You are twelve and eight years old. Soon you will be grown up. You willleave home and begin your own lives. I have been thinking about thatday, wondering what I could do to help you. At last, I have had an idea.The best compass is a thorough understanding of the growth and theexperience of the human race. Why should I not write a specialhistory for you?

So I took my faithful Corona and five bottles of ink and a box ofmatches and a bale of paper and began to work upon the first volume. Ifall goes well there will be eight more and they will tell you what youought to know of the last six thousand years.

But before you start to read let me explain what I intend to do.

I am not going to present you with a textbook. Neither will it be avolume of pictures. It will not even be a regular history in theaccepted sense of the word.

I shall just take both of you by the hand and together we shall wanderforth to explore the intricate wilderness of the bygone ages.

I shall show you mysterious rivers which seem to come from nowhere andwhich are doomed to reach no ultimate destination.

I shall bring you close to dangerous abysses, hidden carefully beneath athick overgrowth of pleasant but deceiving romance.

Here and there we shall leave the beaten track to scale a solitary andlonely peak, towering high above the surrounding country.

Unless we are very lucky we shall sometimes lose ourselves in a suddenand dense fog of ignorance.

Wherever we go we must carry our warm cloak of human sympathy andunderstanding for vast tracts of land will prove to be a steriledesert--swept by icy storms of popular prejudice and personal greed andunless we come well prepared we shall forsake our faith in humanity andthat, dear boys, would be the worst thing that could happen to anyof us.

I shall not pretend to be an infallible guide. Whenever you have achance, take counsel with other travelers who have passed along the sameroute before. Compare their observations with mine and if this leads youto different conclusions, I shall certainly not be angry with you.

I have never preached to you in times gone by.

I am not going to preach to you today.

You know what the world expects of you--that you shall do your share ofthe common task and shall do it bravely and cheerfully.

If these books can help you, so much the better.

And with all my love I dedicate these histories to you and to the boysand girls who shall keep you company on the voyage through life.

HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON.

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