Young readers will enjoy browsing through this heavily illustrated capsule history of the human race. It opens in the time before written history-- approximately 1,800,000 B.C.--when the first human beings are known to have lived in Africa. Moving rapidly on, boys and girls will find dates for the beginning of farm communities (c. 6000 B.C) in what is now Turkey, the dawn of Egyptian and Sumerian cultures beginning some 3,000 years later, the development of civilizations in Greece, Rome, China, and the Indus Valley, the rise and feudal wars of European kingdoms, the age of world exploration in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the rise of America, the wars of the twentieth century, the race to the Moon, and the world after 9/11. Hundreds of important dates are listed that mark major historical events, life spans of world leaders, major catastrophes, and great human achievements. The illustrations on every page are lively and in full color, and the book's endpapers display dated tables of ruling dynasties around the world. Read Less