Author Description

Hendrik Willem Van Loon was a Dutch-American historian, professor at Antioch College, and lecturer at Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Munich. Most widely known among his books is The Story of Mankind, a history of the world especially for children. Beautifully written, it won a prize for literature, the first Newbery Medal in 1922. Anyone who can chronicle world history from 500,000 B.C. to present times, and do so in a lively, entertaining style, deserves a medal. The warm, personable tone of Hendrik Willem van Loon's writing lends itself to true learning in a way that stern, dry textbooks never do.He also wrote Ancient Man, which tells the story of man from the beginning of prehistoric times until the end of the ancient world. This too, although it never won a prize, is a truly great children's book!ContentsAncient Man:Prehistoric ManThe World Grows ColdThe Earliest HumansThe Key Of StoneThe Land Of The Living And The DeadThe Making Of A StateThe Rise And Fall Of EgyptMesopotamiaThe SumeriansAssyria And BabyloniaThe Story Of MosesJerusalemDamascus, The City Of TradeThe Phoenician SailorsThe Alphabet Follows TradeThe End Of The Ancient WorldDates Connected With The Ancient WorldOnce upon a time there was a man.This man lived hundreds of thousands of years ago.What did he look like?We do not know. We never saw his picture. Deep in the clay of an ancient soil we have sometimes found a few pieces of his skeleton. They were hidden amidst masses of bones of animals that have long since disappeared from the face of the earth. We have taken these bones and they allow us to reconstruct the strange creature who happens to be our ancestor.The great-great-grandfather of the human race was a very ugly and unattractive mammal. He was quite small. The heat of the sun and the biting wind of the cold winter had colored his skin a dark brown. His head and most of his body were covered with long hair. He had very thin but strong fingers which made his hands look like those o