Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/797

Progress of Modern Science and Invention 597 For, after all, the real progress of civilization depends less upon statesmen who control the fate of nations than upon the scientist, inventor, and engineer, who give us control of nature and, to some extent, of life itself. From the laboratory comes most of the wealth and power of modem nations. The statesmen of the future must therefore reckon with these new contributions as the states- men of the past have had to reckon with the new sea routes which changed the fate of the Mediterranean ports, or the Indus- trial Revolution which readjusted the nations of Europe and led to their expansion throughout the whole world. III. THE NEW HISTORY 1085. Great Extension of History Backward. Among the branches of human knowledge which have undergone great changes during the nineteenth century is history itself. It is now based on far more reliable sources than it was formerly and is more carefully written. Such a book as this could not have been produced fifty years ago, for the facts contained in the first three chapters were not then known. Half a century ago history dealt with a very short period in man's long career, mainly the last twenty-five hundred years. During the last half century a vast amount has been learned about man and his achievements in Egypt and Mesopotamia long before the Bible as we have it or the poems of Homer were written. We now know that writing was used in Egypt some four thousand years before the opening of the Christian Era. In this way the scope of history has been doubled and extends through five thousand years instead of twenty-five hundred. Moreover, much has been discovered in the last fifty years about man before he had learned to write and make records of his experiences and thoughts. As we have seen, we can trace his gradual inventions and improvements by his stone tools and utensils, and later by the pictures he left on the walls of caves, and still later by the vestiges of his houses found on the shores of the Swiss lakes.