World Leaders Biography

In the last letter, I told you how the early men were afraid of everything and imagined that every misfortune was caused by angry and jealous gods. They saw these imaginary gods everywhere-in the jungle, in the mountains, in the river, in the clouds. Their idea of god was not of a kind and good person but of a very irritable person who was always losing his temper. And as they were afraid of his anger they were always trying to bribe him by giving him something, chiefly food. Sometimes if a disaster came, like an earthquake or a flood or disease which killed large numbers of people, they would become very frightened and think that the gods were angry. And to please them they would go so far as to sacrifice men and women, even kill their own children, and offer them to the gods. This seems horrible but a man who is afraid will do anything. This must have been the beginning of religion. So religion first came as fear, and anything that is done because of fear is bad. Religion, as y...

I have told you in my previous letters how man was very much like an animal when he first appeared on the earth. Slowly, over thousands of years, he developed and became something better. At first he must have hunted all by himself, like some of the wild beasts today. Then he found that it was wiser and safer to go about in herds with other men. If many men kept together, they were stronger and could defend themselves better against the attacks of beasts and maybe of other men. Even the animals go about in herds in this way for their own safety. Sheep and goats and deer and even elephants move about in herds. When the herds sleep, some of them remain awake and watch over them. You must have read stories of packs of wolves also. In Russia, in winter, these wolves go about in packs and when they are hungry, as they often are in winter, they attack men. One wolf would seldom attack a man, but a crowd of them feel strong enough to attack a party of men. And the men have to fly for their ...

I am going to tell you something about the early civilizations. But before I do so, we must try to form some idea of what civilization means. The dictionary will tell you that to civilize means to better, to refine, to replace savage habits by good ones. And it especially refers to society or a group of people. The savage condition of people when men are little better than beasts is called barbarism. Civilization is the reverse of that. The further away we get from barbarism, the more civilized we are. But how can we find out if a person or a society is barbarous or civilized? Many people in Europe think that they are very civilized and the people of Asia are quite barbarous. Is this because the people of Europe put on more clothes than the peoples of Asia and Africa? But clothes depend on the climate. In a cold climate men put on more clothes than in a hot climate. Or is it because a man with a gun is stronger than the man without a weapon and is therefore more civilized than hi...

We have seen how the Aryans spread out over many countries, and carried their language, whatever it was, wherever they went. But different climates and different conditions produced many differences in various groups of the Aryans. Each group went on changing in its own way with new habits and customs. They could not meet the other groups in other countries as it was exceedingly difficult to travel about in those days. Each group was cut off from the others. If the people of one country learnt something new, they could not tell it to the people of another country. So changes came in, and after some generations the one Aryan family became split up into many. Perhaps they even forgot that they all belonged to one large family. Their one language became many languages, which seemed to differ greatly from each other. But although they seemed so different there were many common words and similarities. Even now, after thousands of years, we can find these common words in different languag...

We cannot say in what part of the world man first came into existence, nor do we know where the first human settlements were. Perhaps men came into existence in several parts at more or less the same time. It is likely, however, that when the great glaciers of the Ice Age were melting away and going back towards the north, men lived in the warmer regions. When the ice went, there must have been vast steppes, something like the tundras which we have in Siberia now. These must have become grasslands, and men must have wandered about them as they wanted grass for their cattle. These people who have no fixed place to live in and are always wandering about are called 'nomads'. Even now, we have some nomads in many countries, including India, like the gypsies. People must have settled down near great rivers, for the land near the rivers was very rich and good for agriculture. There was plenty of water and it was easy to grow food on the land. So we suppose that people settled i...

We discussed in our last letter the Neolithic men who used to live chiefly in lake dwellings. We saw that they had made great progress in many ways. They discovered agriculture and knew how to cook and to tame animals for their use. All this was many thousands of years ago and we do not know much about them. But probably most of the races of men we have in the world today have descended from these Neolithic people. We find now, as you know, white men and yellow men and brown and black. But as a matter of fact, it is not easy to divide the races of men into these four divisions. Races have got mixed up and it is difficult to say about many of them to which division they belong. Scientists measure the heads of people and by this measurement they can sometimes find out the race. There are other ways of finding this out also. How did these different races come into existence? If they are all descended from the same people, why do they differ so much from each other now? You know that...

We have seen that the first signs of life on our earth probably were simple little sea animals and water plants. They could only live in the water and if they came out and dried up, they must have died as the jellyfish dies today if it gets stranded on the beach and dries up. But in those days there must have been plenty of water and marshy land, much more so than we have today. Now those jellyfishes and other sea animals which had slightly tougher skins could stay a little longer on dry land than the others as they did not dry up so soon. So gradually the soft jellyfishes and everything else like them became fewer and fewer as they could not face dry land easily, and those with harder coverings became more and more. This is a very interesting thing to notice. It means that animals slowly fit themselves or adapt themselves to their surroundings. You have seen in the South Kensington Museum in London how birds and animals in winter, and in cold countries where there is a lot of ice, b...