A Short History of the World (38 page)

1.
Outline of History
: Wells's earlier and longer version of the history of the world is discussed in the Note on the Text.

1.
millions of miles respectively
: The accurate figure for Neptune is 2,774 million miles. A ninth planet, Pluto, was discovered in 1930, with a mean distance from the sun of 3,672 million miles, and with an orbit so eccentric that it sometimes comes nearer to the sun than Neptune.

2.
six miles off
: The 1965 edition of the
Short History
rounds down Neptune's location to five miles off and adds Pluto at eight.

3.
far below that level
: Human beings have since reached the moon and sent probes deep into space, but have yet to find any definite evidence of life.

1.
much longer than that
: Estimates as of 2005 push back the age of the Earth more than twice as far, to 4,600 million years.

2.
spiral nebulae
: These spiral clouds are vastly larger and further away than was realized at the time Wells was writing. Many contain thousands of millions of stars.

3.
If we could go back
: It should be noted that Wells's descriptions in this chapter are extremely speculative.

1.
1,600 million years
: The current estimate is that the Record of the Rocks covers a length of time closer to 4,000 million years. The periods into which the record is divided continue to be revised in the light of new evidence. A modern consensus is given in the chart below.

2.
any living thing
: The earliest period is now classified as the Precambrian, divided into the Azoic (or Archaean) and the Proterozoic. Seaweed, algae and invertebrates were already in existence in the Proterozoic period.

3.
spicule
: A small, pointed structure which makes up the skeleton of a sponge.

1.
We now know that the genetic ‘plan' of every creature is carried by the chemical DNA, contained in each of its body cells. The cells contain two slightly different sets of instructions, one set from the mother, one from the father, recorded on spiral-shaped molecules called chromosomes.

2.
the first known Vertebrata
: The first vertebrates are now thought to have appeared in the Ordovician period, with larger vertebrates developing during the Silurian period.

1.
Life was still only in the sea
: More recent science has been able to detect leafless plants on land as early as the Silurian period. During the Devonian period, these were joined by leafy plants, insects and invertebrates.

2.
over this planet
: Periods of extreme cold and warmth are thought to arise from small changes in the Earth's orbit and axis, compounded by variations in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and by the gradual movement of the continents, which changes the direction of warm water currents and can also provide a surface for snow and ice to accumulate.

3.
reproduce its kind
: During the Carboniferous period, some reptiles did breed on land.

1.
learns its most valuable lessons
: Through the metaphor of learning lessons, which personifies life as a pupil studying for an examination, Wells implies that biological evolution entails progress towards a goal, not just adaptation to changing conditions. At the end of the next paragraph, he takes the side of land life because he knows that it will one day produce the human race. Such literary devices, perhaps unscientific but necessary to engage
the reader's sympathy and supply an effective storyline, may be discovered throughout the book.

2.
still incalculable movements of the Earth's crust
: It is now known that continents are embedded in rigid, moving plates, driven by convection currents beneath the Earth's crust. During the Carboniferous and Permian periods, the continents moved together to form one great landmass, since dubbed Pangaea, which broke up during the Age of the Reptiles, then began to move towards the current, equally temporary distribution of continents.

3.
It came to an end some 80 million years ago
: The end of the Mesozoic period is today dated at 65 million years ago and divided into three periods, the Triassic, the Jurassic (when dinosaurs were dominant) and the Cretaceous.

4.
same limitation
: Scientists now believe that many dinosaurs were warm-blooded.

1.
selvas
: Rainforests.

2.
race
: Species.

3.
80 million years
: The Mesozoic Age is now thought to have lasted some 180 million years.

4.
The cold has killed them
: The causes of the dinosaurs' extinction remain controversial. Climate change is usually accepted as the major factor, many people believing it to have been accelerated by the consequences of an asteroid, meteor or comet striking the Earth. The death of the dinosaurs may, however, have been exaggerated, since some scientists now classify birds as their living descendants.

1.
to the present time
: The Cenozoic period is generally estimated to have begun 65 million years ago.

2.
it is now slowly emerging
: The last ice age ended about 20,000 years ago.

3.
we lack sufficient science
: The period during which human beings have dominated the Earth is now considered to be ‘interglacial', a short era of comparative warmth within an overall ice age. This would suggest that we are headed for another ‘glacial age'. However, many people believe that in recent decades human
activity has caused significant global warming which might reverse this process. Climate change remains therefore a highly controversial topic.

4.
they keep together
: Scientists now believe that some dinosaurs lived in herds and showed parental care in raising their young.

1.
the first man-like beings lived upon our planet
: The ‘First Glacial Age' is now dated from around 5 million years ago. Within this period, at least 4,500,000 years ago, upright-walking apes appeared in Africa, having evolved into a distinct species between 6 and 8 million years ago. At what period the species made the transition from ape men to ‘true men' is a matter of judgement.

2.
not bones but implements
: Many ‘almost human' fossils have now been discovered in East Africa, some of them 4 million years old.

3.
‘eoliths' (dawn stones)
: These objects are now thought to have been chipped by natural forces, not by early humans.

4.
makers of the eoliths
: Pithecanthropus erectus has been tentatively dated to over 1 million years ago.

5.
bored holes in bones
: In the Outline of History, where he had greater space for discussion, Wells was more cautious about the nature of the Piltdown evidence. In fact there was no such creature as
Eoanthropus
. Scientific tests in 1953 showed the remains to comprise the jaw of an orang-utan and a human cranium, treated to simulate age.

1.
About fifty or sixty thousand years ago
: By more recent reckoning, Neanderthals arrived in Europe around 130,000 years ago and survived until around 30,000 years ago.

2.
it made and used
: By his choice of the pronoun ‘it', his exclusion of Neanderthals from the category of ‘true men' and his disparaging descriptions of them, Wells seeks to place our own ancestors in a comparatively flattering light and encourage solidarity between modern humans. By suggesting we wiped out rival species, however, he also warns us against our inherited disposition to bloodshed which, equipped with modern technology, can lead to world wars. Wells fictionalized the supposed competition between
Homo sapiens
and Neanderthals in a short story called
‘The Grisly Folk' (1921). William Golding's novel
The Inheritors
(1955) is a pro-Neanderthal riposte, artistically powerful but scientifically even more questionable than Wells's version.

3.
head down and forward
: Freshly discovered evidence has amended our view of the Neanderthals. They walked upright like modern people and were not especially hairy. They seem to have been quite skilful tool-makers and hunters, were the earliest known humans to bury their dead and could even speak.

4.
even thousands of years
: Neanderthals seem to have existed for over 250,000 years.

5.
their region of origin
: The generally accepted view today is that humans originated in Africa and migrated to other parts of the world, evolving into several different types along the way, including Neanderthals and ourselves. DNA research suggests that the modern type of human,
Homo sapiens
, originated about 200,000 years ago. The earliest known skulls of anatomically modern people come from Ethiopia and date from about 195,000 years ago. Having spread out from Africa about 150,000 years ago, our ancestors gradually replaced all other types of human. Some experts think
Homo sapiens
wiped out its rivals, but in some places our ancestors and Neanderthals lived side by side for 10,000 years, suggesting we may simply have been more efficient over the very long term, perhaps because we were better able to cope with the warming climate. There is even a minority theory (noted by Wells in the
Outline
) that the two types interbred.

6.
Broken Hill in South Africa
: The site is now known as Kabwe in Zambia. Several skulls have been found there and dated as about 150,000 years old.

1.
very high type indeed
: Few today would accept the value judgement of ‘high' or any simple correlation between brain size and intelligence. There is no dispute, however, that Cro-Magnons were anatomically identical to modern humans.

2.
de Mortillet
: Louis de Mortillet (1821–98) was a French anthropologist and politician. Wells took this quotation from
An Introduction to the Study of Prehistoric Art
(1915) by Ernest Albert Parkyn (1857–1930).

3.
the first True Men
: This account of the Tasmanians – inevitably based on the observations of the people who exterminated them – should probably be viewed with scepticism.

1.
such contemporary savages as still survive
: This chapter is, as Wells indicates, thought-provoking speculation rather than history. The sources he cites carry less weight today than they would have done in the 1920s, since few now would accept Freudian psychoanalysis as a science or endorse the implicit assumption that ‘contemporary savages' preserve unchanged a culture 40,000 years old. Wells's novella ‘A Story of the Stone Age' (1897) is a related, fictional attempt to re-create the experiences and mentality of early humans.

2.
J. J. Atkinson: Primal Law
by James Jasper Atkinson (d. 1899) was published in 1903 in a joint volume with Andrew Lang's
Social Origins
.

3.
Old Man… gods and goddesses
: The highly speculative theory is that Palaeolithic humans lived in small groups, each one led by a dominant male, rather as gorillas live today. The so-called ‘Old Man' would drive away or even kill boy children as they grew to be his rivals until, once he had reached forty or so years of age and begun to physically deteriorate, some younger male would kill him in turn.

4.
always something of a child
: The once common analogy between ‘primitive man' and modern child is regarded today with great scepticism.