The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp through Civilization's Best Bits by Erik Sass, Steve Wiegand, Editors Of Mental Floss, Mangesh Hattikudur (With)

From the Publisher

History is . . .
(a) more or less bunk.
(b) a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken.
(c) as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis.

Match your answers:
(1) Stephen Daedalus of James Joyce's Ulysses
(2) Henry Ford
(3) Arthur Schopenhauer

It turns out that answer need not be bunk, nightmarish, or diseased. In the hands of mental_floss, history's most interesting bits have been handpicked and roasted to perfection. Packed with little-known stories and outrageous—but accurate—facts, you'll laugh yourself smarter on this joyride through 60,000 years of human civilization. Remember: just because it's true, doesn't mean it's boring!

School Library Journal

Adult/High School

Sass and Wiegand do an admirable job of covering 60,000 years of human history in one volume. Along with the names of people and places, the dates and statistics, the wars, disasters, revelations, and accomplishments, there are fascinating stories, hilarious oddities, and plenty of fun. Nearly every page has a sidebar entry or two that fit well with the general narrative and also provide a chuckle or a "Wow, I didn't know that!" reaction. In 12 chapters with titles such as "Athens, Alexander, and All That" and "The Not-Really-That-Dark (Unless You Lived in Europe) Ages," the authors cover our collective story from the earliest Homo sapiens on the grasslands of Africa to the current debate on global warming. Each chapter begins with a helpful "In a Nutshell" summary and a chronology of major events and ends with a well-selected list of comparative statistics. While some may bemoan the lack of bibliographic references and other academic fixtures, others will cheer this clever packaging of a wealth of information.-Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA

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Chapter One

Africa and After
(60,000 BCE-1500 BCE)

In a nutshell

If there's one thing you can say about human beings, it's that we're always hungry. When modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) left Africa to conquer the globe more than sixty thousand years ago, they settled near sources of food, and those areas that produced more food became more populated. Some groups found forests with game to hunt, while others wandered grasslands, tending herds of cows. In Stone Age Mexico, coastal peoples subsisted on shellfish for thousands of years, leaving a huge heap of clam shells 240 feet long, 90 feet wide, and 21 feet tall.

Another thing about us: we don't like to share. Tribes constantly battled for territory, and some were pushed into less friendly environments—but nomads made the best use of limited resources. Arabs conquered the vast Arabian Peninsula by taming the camel, a hardy desert animal that carried them between lush oases. Central Asians took to horse- and sheepherding, ranging across thousands of miles in search of rare good pastures. Inuit learned to build homes out of ice.

But in terms of calories per acre, grain cultivation feeds many more people than fishing, hunting, or raising domestic animals. Grain cultivation began around 9000 BCE and soon spread around the world, and places that grew grain experienced a population explosion (oh yeah, apparently we also like to have sex . . . a lot). Soon, there was so much food that somepeople could stop working in the fields and specialize in crafts. Expert potters, weavers, and masons were soon followed by tailors, leather tanners, miners, and other trades. Yes, that includes "the world's oldest profession."

Around 8000 BCE, the world's first civilizations—defined as people living in cities—began appearing. The craftspeople lived together in encampments for safety against rival groups and for convenience of trade. Cities also became centers of government—in most cases, likely a hereditary monarchy descended from old tribal authority. Little is known about the world's first governments, but they were probably dominated by a single family or clan passing authority from generation to generation, with a dominant man becoming ruler each time. In prehistory, governments along matriarchal (woman-centered) or communal (leaderless) lines may have existed, but by the beginning of recorded history, these had been snuffed out. Each of the world's first civilizations was ruled by one man, a king. Men have hogged the remote ever since.

The king's job was simple: to protect his followers. In general, the people believed that the king's authority came from the immortal gods, so kings were closely associated with religion from the get-go. In some places the king was also the high priest, in charge of sacrificial offerings and ceremonies intended to bring good harvests. In other places, the king worked closely with the high priest or employed soothsayers to help divine the future.

While rival kings could cause trouble, the biggest enemy facing early civilizations was nature itself, which operated at the will of invisible gods. Droughts, floods, and other natural disasters could destroy crops, bringing starvation and misery. Translation: If everyone had enough to eat, the gods were happy with the leader; if there wasn't enough to eat, well . . . It's no surprise that across the "civilized" world, each ruler's first act was to store grain against hard times.

To make this food-insurance system work, kings ordered their subjects to turn over some grain during good times, which could be distributed again in an emergency. Grain was stored in huge stone or mud-brick silos, called granaries. Priests were in charge of keeping track of which grain had come from which landowner.

To help remember the grainy details, priests invented writing. Recording quantities, names, and dates on clay tablets in turn led to accounting and banking. Soon regular people began quantifying goods such as livestock, tools, and luxury items. As writing spread to society at large, merchants, bankers, and scribes joined the other craftsmen who lived in cities. Writing led to the first commercial contracts (e.g., "for these four pigs, you bring me two cows in three days"—we're not saying it was glamorous).

However, not every culture chose to settle down and farm. The differences between cities and nomadic groups created a lot of friction. For one thing the cities' accumulation of wealth, in the form of surplus grain and other goods, naturally attracted attention from people living a more marginal existence outside the cities. Nomads often enjoyed a tactical advantage over city folk, and men from the wilds, skilled in horse-mounted warfare, have long terrified the simple farmer on the outskirts of town. The nomadic threat still exists today—but by 1500 BCE, the power of settled societies based on farming was already uncontestable. The history of civilization is their story.

What Happened When

2,500,000 BCE
Homo habilis, earliest protohuman ancestor, uses stone tools in Africa.

2,000,000 BCE
Various protohuman ancestors spread out across the planet.

1,500,000 BCE
Hominids master fire.

300,000 BCE
Neanderthals live in Europe.

150,000 BCE
The Sahara is a lush grassland.

130,000 BCE
Modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, appear in Africa.

60,000 BCE
Homo sapiens sapiens spread out over the planet.

10,000 BCE
Polar ice caps begin to melt, raising sea levels four hundred feet.

9000 BCE
The Natufian culture domesticates wheat, inventing agriculture.

7500 BCE
The world's first cities emerge at Catal Huyuk and Jericho.

5,300 BCE
The Sahara has become a desert.

5000 BCE
Catal Huyuk and Jericho are mysteriously abandoned.

4500 BCE
The first Sumerian cities, Eridu and Ur, are founded.

4000 BCE
The first cities are founded in Egypt.

3100 BCE
Egypt is united by the pharaohs and becomes the world's first state.

3000 BCE
China's first civilization begins (Longshan culture).

2600 BCE
Harappan civilization flourishes in the Indus River Valley.

2530 BCE
Egyptians complete the Great Pyramid of Cheops.

2200 BCE
Babylon is founded by the Amorites.

1900 BCE
China's first royal family, the Xia dynasty, rules.

1750 BCE
Abraham leaves Ur for Canaan.

1700 BCE
Harappan civilization disappears.

1600 BCE
Indo-Europeans establish Hittite and Mitanni kingdoms in Mesopotamia.