65 pages • 2 hours read
E.H. GombrichA Little History of the World
Nonfiction | Book | YA | Published in 1936A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 2-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Greatest Inventors of All Time”
In introducing the story of humankind, Gombrich begins by describing the discovery of the first skull fragments of Neanderthals, an early species of human, in Germany. They had strong jaws, a heavy brow, and very little forehead. He explains that, because these ancient, different humans lived before we began to write things down, we know very little about the way that they lived, and this time period is referred to as “prehistory” (6).
After subsequent digging, mainly in Africa and Asia, our ancestors have been found. It is believed that they came about 70,000 years after the appearance of Neanderthals, who lived on Earth for about 200,000 years. By the time recorded history appears, many important components of civilization had already been invented by these people. Gombrich offers as examples making fire, cooking food, building houses, and making tools and weapons. Sharpened stones were used as tools and weapons, so this period is referred to as the Stone Age. This period coincided with the last Ice Age. Prehistoric peoples likely took refuge from the cold in caves, which is why they are often referred to as cavemen. Perhaps their most important invention was the ability to speak in a mutually understood language.
The Ice Age lasted for tens of thousands of years, and when the planet warmed, people learned to plant grass, grind grain for bread, tame animals, and build tents. They became more advanced toolmakers, using harder stones to carve into their tools and weapons. Around 4,000 B.C., they discovered metals. They discovered that adding tin to copper created bronze, a much stronger metal. Subsequently, people made weapons, jewelry, armor, and tools from bronze, and this time period is known as the Bronze Age.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Land by the Nile”
This chapter on the civilization of ancient Egypt begins with a description of the physical landscape. The country of Egypt is located in Northern Africa, in the part that is closest to Europe. While much of Africa has a hot, arid climate with vast deserts, the Nile River running through Egypt provided fertile soil through seasonal flooding that allowed the country to thrive and become rich and powerful. Their first king, called a pharaoh, ruled in 3100 B.C. Egyptians pharaohs lived in grand stone palaces and had unlimited power. Gombrich offers the example of King Cheops, who, around 2500 B.C., summoned all of his subjects to build his tomb in the form of an enormous pyramid. Pyramid tombs like these were an aspect of Egyptian religion, which viewed the pharaoh as a son of the sun god. Egyptians believe that a person's body must be preserved for their soul to continue on into the afterlife. They preserved corpses, called mummies, with oils and ointments and wrapped them in strips of cloth. They were placed in wood coffins, which were then placed in stone coffins, and then finally buried in a tomb of chiseled rock like a pyramid.
Over time, many tombs have been emptied, but those left intact can tell us a lot about how Egyptians lived. The tombs contained food, furniture, clothes, and paintings depicting their lives. These vivid paintings tell us a great deal. The Egyptians depicted bodies as flat and stiff figures, but the scenes were detailed and show how they fished, farmed, fought, and played. They also showed hieroglyphs, the Egyptian form of writing that was formed out of a series of little pictures. This was a complex language, and scribes were highly esteemed in ancient Egypt. The Ancient Egyptian empire lasted almost 3,000 years.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Sunday, Monday…”
Focusing on the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia, this chapter describes the land it was built upon. Situated in modern-day Iraq, it sat between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Today, the region is filled with tall hills rising from the plain that hold the remnants of Mesopotamian cities. The Babylonians, Assyrians, and Sumerians are the three peoples that Gombrich focuses on as one-time rulers of the region. It was once thought that Egypt had the first “culture”—that is, towns, trade, social structure, religion, art, and writing—but we now know that Sumerians were building houses and temples by 3100 B.C. Among these tall hills are the once-powerful capital cities of Nineveh and Babylon, as well as the city of Ur, where, according to the Bible, Abraham was born.
The Sumerians developed a type of writing called cuneiform, composed of single strokes ending in small wedge shapes, which they inscribed on clay tablets. One of the first Babylonian kings to rule over the region of Mesopotamia, Hammurabi, left his book of law written on a tablet. This is the oldest known lawbook in the world, dating from around 1700 B.C. The surviving statues and tablets from the Mesopotamians tell us that they worshiped the sun, moon, and stars. They observed that the stars revolved around the sky in a fixed manner. They were fascinated by the stars that seemed to, unlike the others, move around in the sky from position to position. These moving stars were planets. They dedicated a day to each of the five planets they knew about, and then a day each for the sun and the moon—the origin of the seven-day week. To get closer to the skies, Sumerians and Babylonians erected ziggurats, temples built atop stacked terraces. Nebuchadnezzar, the last great Babylonian king, lived around 600 B.C. During his reign, he built canals and cisterns that irrigated the land. Eventually, those were blocked, leaving the land how it looks today, with hills of ancient cities.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The One and Only God”
In this chapter, Gombrich departs from his descriptions of large, powerful civilizations and introduces the Jewish people and their religion. Originally a tribe of herdsmen living on the land between Egypt and Mesopotamia, they were victim to constant invasion and foreign rule by the two powerful countries that flanked them. Gombrich acknowledges that such a fate was not uncommon for small tribes but explains that because of their unique religion, the Jews “didn’t just become part of history, they made history […] they shaped the course of all history to come” (24). He explains that their stories of the one God eventually became the Old Testament of the Bible, and many of these Biblical stories describe ancient cities like Ur and Babylon. He uses the Bible as a reference to tell of the enslavement of the Jews under the Egyptians, and how Moses led the Jewish people from Egypt into the desert to win back the land of their ancestors in around 1250 B.C. After many violent battles, they founded the kingdom of Jerusalem, ruled by kings like Saul, David, and Solomon. In 586 B.C., the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar marched through the city of Jerusalem on his way to Egypt and destroyed it. He took out the eyes of their king and led the Jews to Babylon in captivity. They remained there for 50 years, until the Persians destroyed the Babylonian empire in 538 B.C. In telling the story of their constant invasion and enslavement, Gombrich emphasizes the resiliency of the Jewish people: “[...] the effect of so many disasters on the few Jews who survived them was to make them even more devout” (27).
Chapter 6 Summary: “I C-A-N R-E-A-D”
Gombrich begins this chapter with a question for the reader about reading itself: “How do you do it?” (29). He explains that with 26 letters, a modern writer can write down anything in almost every language. Egyptian and Sumerians could write, but their script represented whole words or syllables. A script in which each letter represented a sound, and could be combined to spell out anything at all, was something new. This was invented by the Phoenicians, a civilization of skilled craftsmen and traders living in port cities near the region of Jerusalem. Gombrich explains that they needed to do a lot of writing to keep records of their trading receipts and contracts. They traded and settled in towns on the coast of Africa, Spain, and Italy, where they shared their form of writing that they used for contracts, receipts, records, and keeping in touch. Gombrich concludes this chapter by telling the reader that they have now learned to “not forget the Phoenicians” when they write something down (30).
Chapters 2-6 Analysis
Gombrich begins his story in these chapters with the beginning of humanity, setting a linear narrative structure. First, he explains what we know and do not know about prehistoric humans and describes some of the foundational inventions that led to civilization. He then describes some of the earliest civilizations and cultures: the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, the Jews, and the Phoenicians. He asks the audience often to use their powers of reasoning and imagination to appreciate the enormity of the advancements and accomplishments of early peoples. When describing various prehistoric inventions, he asks:
Isn’t it an amazing thought that […] one day someone discovered how to make fire? Do you realize what that actually means? Can you do it? Not with matches, because they didn’t exist. But by rubbing two sticks together until they become so hot that in the end they catch fire. Have a go and then you’ll see how hard it is! (7).
He suggests that perhaps the most important invention of prehistory was the ability to talk, a concept that one perhaps might not think of as an invention at all.
While his tone is playful, Gombrich consistently emphasizes the importance of imagining the perspectives of these people who seem too far away to be understood. In these early chapters, it becomes clear that Gombrich’s priority in his retelling is not to provide a comprehensive historical analysis, but to encourage young readers to be curious and thoughtful about the past and its lessons for us. His conversational style of narration indicates that his interaction with the reader is just as, if not more, important than the historical events that he describes. He also intentionally uses stories, phrases, or words that children may know as reference points, or a kind of “artifact” of the past that they can observe for themselves. Of Babylon, he says: “Do you know the story of the Tower of Babel […]? Well, Babel is Babylon. So now you will be able to understand the story better” (26). He opens the chapter on Mesopotamia by asking the reader if they know the origin of their seven-day week and concludes the chapter by explaining how it was created and named by the Mesopotamians. These lasting reminders of the past are used to anchor our view of the history that Gombrich calls an endless line of mirrors.
In his descriptions of the societies in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Jerusalem, Gombrich begins by describing the environment in which they lived, setting the scene for these sections of his story. He describes their geographic location and climate and uses descriptive language that invites the reader to imagine the scene clearly and vividly: “Between Egypt and Mesopotamia there is a land of deep valleys and rich pastures. There, for thousands of years, herdsmen tended their flocks. They planted vines and cereals, and in the evenings they sang songs, as country people do” (24). He utilizes examples of individual rulers, like Pharaoh Cheops and his pyramid, to provide a more detailed description of life in these places and time periods. Cheops himself is not an important figure, but the construction of his pyramid serves to provide context for the lives of Egyptian subjects: “They had to pull and shove every single block by hand. Just think of it, in the heat of Africa! In this way, it seems, for thirty years, some hundred thousand people toiled for the pharaoh, whenever they weren’t working in the fields” (11). More than names and dates, Gombrich prioritizes a more conceptual understanding of human history for the reader.
These chapters also provide insight into Gombrich’s imagined audience. There is an apparent assumption that his readers are from Western countries with a predominantly Judeo-Christian heritage, as he uses Biblical figures as points of reference: “There’s the story of Abraham, for example. Do you remember where he came from? The answer is in the Book of Genesis, in chapter 11” (25). Beyond using the Bible as a primary source that depicts historical events, he assumes familiarity with the text and its structure.
