Recorded human history began just from 4000 B.C and onward. That was 6,000 years ago, counting from now. According to historians and archeologists, that was when city-states were first founded and established in the Middle East and the Near East regions. Human history before that can't be called 'recorded', because the stories of them as we know 'them' were sheer, oral myths, shrouded in mysteries and still needing a lot of interpretation in order to make some guessing conclusions on what they could be or could have been.
Well, it all begun in Sumer (Iraq), and Egypt. City-states, trades, cuneiform writings, ‘ziggurats’, in the case of the former, and ‘pyramids’ in the case of the latter.
Then came India (maybe earlier than the previous two) onto the scene. Then China. Then the other major players like Greece and Mayans.
Middle Eastern and India peoples contributed religion and mathematics to the world community, Greeks, the concept of democracy and science. The Chinese, mathematics and world changing technologies like paper, the compass, and guns etc. The Mayans were, in South America, single -handedly formulating and practicing all the great aspects of civilization of their own kind. Yes, mathematics of their own, pyramids of their own, and religions of their own. That was how the world was before the 12th century, 5200 years after our initial point of counting.
In the 12th century, out of an obscure place in central Asia, the Mongols arose united, to become the lords of the world. They had been fierce warriors and bandits to Chinese for all of history. The Great Wall was for fencing them off. The Mongols, who came in the 13th century, were ruling an empire that covered much of Eurasia. From Korea to Hungary, from Siberia to Afghanistan and parts of South East Asia. The Mughals of India (15th to 17th century) were their descendants. Their empire was a cultural clearing house. Knowledge from the East flowed into the West (Europe)and those from the West to the East. Afro-Eurasian trade flourished under them, the silk road being the backbone of the flow of commerce and, the world became ‘the world'.
Up to this point, Germanic tribes, whose language would later evolve to become English, were still roaming in the remote corners of western Europe and they were nowhere as united or highly civilized and just used the proto-English languages they were speaking at the time. The Romans were long gone. Germans sacked Rome in the 4th century, but in the 13th century, a king of Normandy (France) invaded England and conquered it. 'William the Conqueror' he was. England became a nation under the Normans, and from that point on, England became a superman. And the rest was the history.
The British empire was long gone, but it left these legacies to the world community; 'Law', 'Engineering', 'Parliamentary Democracy', and 'the language' above all of them.
It is a well-accepted fact that English, compared to other languages, is for the world community, easy to learn, although it is hard to master. And, generally, all the knowledge of the world can be learned from books written in English (by all the scholars around the world) and, in the U.S, England, Australia, and India, they all speak English.
So, English will still be the lingua-franca of the world in this century. Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn for us all, isn't it? And, as we all know that with China, the problem is, they ever are a walled society.
From here, because of the above-mentioned facts, I enthusiastically encourage all the teens across the world to learn English. Start it for fun, and you will find out that your life will be more and more full of fun. At the very least, you can enjoy Hollywood movies more.
Phoe Wa
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