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WOW!Inventions that Changed the WorldDiscoveries that Changed the World

Ideas that Changed the WorldEvents that Changed the World

GETA LIFE!A series of biographies with more than you ever wanted to know about:

William the ConquerorElizabeth I

Julius CaesarFlorence Nightingale

Henry VIIIQueen Victoria

Oliver CromwellMarie CurieNapoleon

Mary Queen of Scots

Philip ArdaghIllustrated by Mike Phillips

HISTORYDETECTIVESillustrated by Colin KingUse the historical evidence to solve the mysteries -

two great books in one:Ancient Egypt with The Pharaoh's Stolen Treasure

The Aztecs with Enemy SpyThe Romans with Kidnap!

Ancient Greece with Death at the Theatre

For all the good who diedyoung CONTENTS

First published 2000by Macmillan Children's Books

a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd25 Eccleston Place, London SWIW 9NF

Basingstoke and Oxfordwww.macmillan.com

Psychoanalysis 16

Astrology 24

Money 31

World Religions 40

Darwinism 56

Text copyright © Philip Ardagh 2000Illustrations copyright © Mike Phillips 2000

The right of Philip Ardagh to be identified as theauthor of this book has been asserted by him in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may bereproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or

transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written

permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorizedact in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution

and civil claims for damages. American Civil Rights 81

Glossary 93

Index 95This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out,

or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consentin any form of binding or cover other than that in

which it is published and without a similar condition includingthis condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

IDEAS! COMMUNISM

Imagine a world where no one's come up with the idea ofmoney, so we have to barter for everything - where you

were given this book in exchange for a bag of apples or abox of nails. Imagine a world without religions, so therewon't have been any Crusades or Inquisitions but therewon't have been any spiritual guidance and comfort forbillions, either. There are so many things that we accept aseveryday parts of our lives that it's easy to forget thatthey're big ideas put into practice . . . and that, in somecases, people gave their lives to turn these ideas into areality. In this WOW! book we take a look at some of theideas that changed the way we live or think about the worldtoday. There's the idea that people shouldn't be judged bythe colour of their skin. There's the idea that womenshould have the vote as well as men. There's the idea thateverything should be shared equally amongst everyone.And what of the world-changing ideas of the future? Whoknows? Perhaps you already have the glimmering of agreat idea forming in your mind.

30 £>ECEMBE' 1922, MOScoW, ,USSIAComrade Vladimir lIyich Lenin's health is poor and his body

weakened - following an attempt to assassinate him some fouryears earlier - but nothing can take away the feeling of triumphand accomplishment that today brings. Today, after the OctoberRevolution of 1917 and the defeat of the anti-Communist 'White

Russians' in 1920, Lenin has lived to see the creation of theSoviet Union - a mighty Communist empire!

PHILIP AROAGH2000

The idea of Communism and how it works in practice aretwo very different things. The idea of Communism is to

be as fair as possible. A Communist society would be asociety where all the natural resources - coal, gas, gold anddiamonds, for example - belong to the people, along withall the mines and equipment needed to extract them. Noone would pay lighting or water bills. All jobs would beshared out equally amongst the people, based on theirabilities, and all benefits would be given to peopleaccording to their needs. Noone would own their ownhome. Society would build and provide homes foreveryone. Once such a society was up and running, there'dbe no need for government or rulers, so everyone would beequal. And you can't get much fairer than that.

of books called the Republic, based on the whole matter ofjustice. This discussed everything from 'what is anindividual?' to 'what is the state, or society?'. He saw theideal state as being made up of three distinct classes: theruling classes (the wise 'philosopher-kings'), the militaryclasses (the courageous soldiers and sailors) and themerchant classes (the temperate traders, creating ahealthy economy). What was different about his state,though, was that you weren't born into a particular class.Just because you were the child of a philosopher-kingdidn't mean that you'd grow up to govern. Just becauseyour dad was a general didn't guarantee you a cushy job inthe army. No. Everyone would receive exactly the sameeducation until that person reached a level of educationwhere their ability and interest could take them no further.So the class you belonged to depended on when youstopped your education. Being a philosopher-king requiredthe sharpest mind and the most knowledge so, logically,these would be the pupils who carried on their educationright up to the end of the process. For such a republic towork, Plato reasoned, none of the classes must put pressureon any of the others so, as well as wisdom, courage andtemperance there had to be justice too. Although the rigid'three classes' system might not appeal to laterCommunists, the idea of the same education andopportunities for all most definitely did.

The reality was, of course, very different from the word go,not least because no societies - or very, very few - are builtfrom scratch. In other words, to achieve Communism youneed revolution. Because private property needs to becomepublic property - belonging to all people - it needs to betaken away from the original owners ... something whichmost of them are likely to be unhappy about! And suchrevolutions need to be organized and led and, once therevolution is won, these leaders usually want to keep onleading for fear that, if they don't, others (with differentideas) will. It's all very well saying that everything belongsto everyone and that 'all property is theft', but someoneneeds to make sure that it stays that way. So there needs tobe a police force and an army, and officials to check thatthe right people are receiving the right benefits and so onand so on. So, in a society where everyone is supposed tobe equal, there will still be those with more power andimportance than others - and this is why many argue thatCommunism in practice is doomed.

The idea of an ideal society being onewhere the people (the society itselfrather than individuals) ownedeverything and decided everythinggoes back to Ancient Greece and

the writings of people such asPlato. The philosopher Plato(c.423BC-347BC) wrote a series

A number of attempts at creating sharing societies, wherepeople treated each other more equally, came about as aresult of religion. These weren't whole countries but small

communes (mini-communities) wherepeople lived together on the basis thatthe good of the commune was moreimportant than the comfort of anyone individual. Prime examples ofsuch communes are Christianmonasteries, priories and nunnerieswhich spread right across Europe inthe Middle Ages. Later, in thesixteenth and seventeenthcenturies, when .ProtestantChristians were persecuted, thisled to them setting up theirown communes - including .r'_

in places such as America, faraway from their persecutors.

community, it ran a number of different industries as wellas farms and was controlled by a committee. Unusually,women had exacdy the same rights as men, and childrenwere raised by the community as a whole. In the end, theoriginal principles of the Oneida Community were lostand, in 1880, the business side of it became a company.

True Communism - or at least the theory of it - arrived inthe form of The Communist Manifisto written by Karl Marx(including ideas of fellow Communist Fredrich Engels) andpublished in London in 1848. This was a declaration ofthe aims of a secret group calling themselves theCommunist League, founded the year before and made upof German workers and intellectuals who'd been forcedinto exile because of their aims. The introductioncontains a warning. 'A spectre is haunting Europe,' it states.'The spectre of Communism.' Much of the Manifestodiscusses the 'class struggle' betweenwhat Marx saw as the two main ?-/Y'",-=-

classes: the capitalists and the L r" \ ~working classes. He called these If-; ~ ~ \tthe 'ruling bourgeoisie' and ~the 'downtrodden proletariat'. ~ J, L -~"~ fThe argument was that the l(i(?:;.':. (Ibourgeois capitalists became richat the expense of the workingclasses who would eventuallyrise up against them, and thatthe Communists would be thetrue saviours of the working

In the nineteenth century a number of cooperativemovements flourished, where members benefited fromgoods and services shared fairly amongst them. However,most members of such groups still lived in mainstreamsociety. One of the most successful experiments incommunal living was the Oneida Community, set up inOneida, New York State in the US in 1848. It'd originallybeen founded by John Humphrey Noyes in Vermont backin the l830s, based on the principle that, to be close toGod, you must give up all personal possessions and ties -including such things as marriage - and live together in asharing community. This wasn't too popular with some ofthe locals, hence the move to New York. A large

classes. Mter the inevitable revolution, the working classeswould also be the ruling classes - so there would be no suchthing as class. The main force behind the CommunistManifesto can best be summed up in its call for action:'Workers of the world, unite!'

The Communist League wasdisbanded in 1852 and, when Karl

Marx died in 1883 - havingwritten a number of other

important works, including DasKapital - his mark on the worldwasn't that great - but his time

would come. It was after hisdeath that Marx's words had

their greatest influence. Hisparticular branch of

Communism becameknown as Marxism and was

the basis of Bolshevism: Marx's theories as developed bythe Russian leader Lenin. There were two revolutions inRussia in 1917; in March and in November. The Marchrevolution saw the overthrow of the Tsar (the Russianmonarch) and the setting up of a republic. Therevolution in November saw Lenin and his BolshevikCommunists come to power. (The revolution in Novemberis sometimes referred to as the 'October Revolution'because, at the time, the Russians were using an oldcalendar system which was thirteen days behind theWestern world, putting events in 'their' October.) This

second revolution was bloodless. The civil war between theBolsheviks and anti-Bolsheviks which followed wasn't.Many died on either side, but the Communists were fmallyvictorious. Russia and the soon-to-be-formed Soviet Unionwas to remain Communist right up until 1991 (see WOW!Events that Changed the J11orld).

Many people describe the fall of the Soviet Union as theend of Communism, but that's very misleading. China -officially the People's Republic of China - has beengoverned by a Communist regime since 1949. With 20 percent of the world's population living in China, this meansthat, because of that country alone, a lot of people are stillliving under Communism. The Chinese Communist Partywas formed in 1921, in Shanghai, and one of its originalmembers was Mao Tse-Tung. Mao was chairman of thefIrst government council when the Communists came topower and, from 1960 until his death,was chairman of the CommunistParty. An incredibly powerful andinfluential fIgure, he organized theCultural Revolution in 1966,during which he publishedQyotations qf Chairman Mao (betterknown as The Little Red Book). Theidea of this 'revolution' was toachieve pure Communism byforce, getting rid of those officialsand party members who weren'tas true to Communist ideals as it

was thought they should be - with the young betraying theold and the old the young.

Much of the United States' foreign policy over the lasthundred years has been concerned with the suppression ofCommunism. The island of Cuba, lying close to the shoresof the US state of Florida, is itself a Communist country,which really annoys a lot of Americans. Whether in Korea,Vietnam or Nicaragua, the US has always supported -either militarily or financially - those fighting aCommunist regime or Communist rebels. The importanceof the 'space race' (see WOW! Events that Changed the World)had as much to do with trying to beat the Communists - inthe form of the Soviet Union - to the moon, as theachievement in its own right. In the 1950s, the attempts toweed out Communists in the US itself resulted in theSenator Joseph McCarthy's 'witch hunts' in whichhundreds of Americans were accused of beingCommunists and were blacklisted, often simply onthe say-so of others. In 1954, McCarthy was finallydisgraced into ending what many thought of as a'paranoid' crusade.

To many older people, the word 'Communism' will alwaysconjure up images of drab streets, a lack of advertisinghoardings, food shortages, secret police and people'sattempt to escape or defect to the West, away from

Communist regimes. They will have memories of the ColdWar - between the Communist Soviet Union and thecapitalist West - where battles weren't fought with guns butwith spies and propaganda. There are those who see littledifference between Communist leaders and Fascistdictators, and they !J1ay have a point, but this is farremoved from Karl Marx's idea of Communism: a fairerworld for ordinary people.

PSYCHOANALYSIS

23 S£P1£MS£~ 1939, LONt>ON, £N~LANt>Sigmund Freud has died. A Jewish Austrian, he fled his

homeland the year before, to escape the Nazis, and settled inEngland. His death makes the world news, as he was one of

the greatest and most original thinkers of his generation. Hiscreation of psychoanalysis is a completely new approach to

what makes a person's personality, based on the fact that eachof us has unconscious as well as conscious thoughts that make

us what we are.

Most of the time we're awareof what we're doing. I'm

writing this and you'rereading it, for example. Mostof the time we know whywe're doing something-or, at least, we think wedo. I'm writing thisbecause I'm an authorand I want to share someof these exciting world-changing ideas with you,the reader. You're readingthis either because youwere told to, because you

want to, or because you're bored and you've got nothingbetter to do. But you probably know - or think you know -why you're doing it. Your mind, and therefore you, isconscious of why you're doing something.

The founder of psychoanalysis, the Austrian SigmundFreud (1856-1939), argued that we all have a unconsciousmind as well- that there's a part of our brain that has a bigeffect on why we do certain things without our realizing why.For example, if you had all four books from the WOW!series in front of you, and were equally interested ininventions, discoveries, events and ideas, what might havemade you pick this one out to look at first? There could be101 different reasons but they could include the fact thatyou particularly like the colour of the cover of this book. Itcould be that this was the same colour as a tricycle you hadwhen you were very little. Now, here's the important part.You don't look at the book and consciously think toyourself: 'the cover of the book is the same colour as thetricycle I had when I was very little. That trike made mefeel very happy, so this colour - and in a way this book -does too'. Your conscious mind may simply think 'this booklooks nice', whilst unconsciouslY, it's for the reason I've justsaid.

Now apply the same idea of the unconscious mind to moreserious matters in a person's life. Some people grow up

with what, to other people, seem very strange phobias(irrational fears). There are people who are frightened ofbirds, spiders, and even buttons. Most of us have at leastone such phobia, but it doesn't stop us getting on with oureveryday lives. But it's not so easy for people with a fear ofopen spaces, or of confmed spaces, or of crossing roads oreven talking to other people. If such people could behelped to overcome their fears,then they could lead normallives. Sigmund Freud arguedthat, in most cases, the reasonwhy most people have theseirrational fears can probablybe traced back to an event orsituation in the person's past.He suggested that the unconsciousmind had a reason - a startingpoint - for these phobias,usually rooted in earlychildhood.

Sigmund Freud then went one stage further and said that,if a person could be made to remember this original cause of,for example, the phobia and be made to face it and makesense of it, then he or she could be helped to be cured ofit. (As an adult, the person would have more experienceand be better equipped to make sense of and understandsomething which simply upset or frightened him or her asa child.) This is the basis of psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis is often described as being an 'analytictherapeutic process', but don't panic! That's a complicatedway of saying something more easily explained. ~alytic'simply means that this is a process of analysing things:examining them very carefully, so as to understand them.'Therapeutic' means that the process is a part of atreatment. So, as an analytic therapeutic process,psychoanalysis is a way of looking at a person's state ofmind, trying to fmd an explanation as to why things are theway they are, interpret what it means, and then to makechanges to 'cure' that person. Unlike many othertreatments, however, it is the patients themselves who haveto make the changes - with the help of the psychoanalyst- in order to get better.

Freud also believed that, under the influence of theunconscious mind, rather than a person's thoughts beingabstract concepts - such as 'a fear of cheese' - they may beplayed out like a drama and, in these dramas-in-the-mind,certain objects may be replaced and represented by otherobjects, or symbols. Unlike in conscious thought, there's noobvious logic to the thoughts and images produced by theunconscious. This, Freud claimed, helped to explain whatdreams were - dramas played out in the unconscious mind- and he believed that analysing dreams was a veryimportant part of psychoanalysis.

ID, EGO AND SUPEREGO

With conscious and unconscious thought at work inside us,Freud and others were keen to try to explain exacdy what'1' means when we talk about ourselves. According topsychoanalysis, ,there are three constituents of thepersonality: the id, the ego and the superego.• The id contains the urges and drives that originally

come from our bodies and not our minds - our desire toeat when hungry, for example.

• The ego is what does the thinking, and reacts to theworld around us. In an effort for the ego (and us) tofunction as normally as possible, the ego has a numberof defence mechanisms. These include repressing(burying in the unconscious) things it can't cope withright now. (According to psychoanalysis, anxiety is anextremely important emotion because it makes theunconscious mind protect you in many different ways.)

• The superego's job is to modify or hold back any drivesor impulses that the id has which might result in aperson behaving antisocially - badly towards otherpeople. It's the superego which is supposed to give usour positive image of what we could be: our ideal self

FREUD, THE PERSON

Sigmund Freud's most famous work, The Interpretation qfDreams was published in 1900 and oudines all the keyconcepts in his approach to psychoanalysis. It was based onthree years of self-analysis in which he wrote down his owndreams and then attempted to analyse them. Five yearsearlier, he'd published Studies on Hysteria with the Viennese

physician Josef Breuer, explaining theirwork with hysterical patients. In

this they describe how patientswere hypnotizedand 'taken back'to events whichhad originally

caused the .hysteria,and made to act them

out and then sort themout. You can see how this helpedlead Freud fo his theory of

psychoanalysis. Not everyone was convinced by theseextraordinary new ideas, however. Although Freud was aqualified physician and neurologist, there were manypeople in the medical profession who thought his'psychoanalysis' was pure hocus pocus/bunkum, but beliefdid grow.

One of Freud's earliest and most famous pupils was CarlJung (pronounced 'Yung'). He later took his approach topsychoanalysis off in a different direction to Freud's,creating what he called 'analytical psychology' (known bysome as Jungism). He believed that there were twodistincdy different parts to the unconscious mind: thepersonal unconscious (containing the unconsciousmemories of the individual) and the collective unconscious(the 'reservoir of the experience of the human race'). Healso put forward the belief that there were two differenttypes of personality: introversion and extroversion.

Introversion is when a person'sinterests are turned in on himself orherself Extroversion is when they'returned out onto the world. Mostpeople go between the two.Introverts and extroverts, however,

Jung argued, were peoplesuffering from an imbalance.

completely wrong or, at the very best, seriously flawed ormisguided. It is undeniable, however - whether one is abeliever in psychoanalysis or not - that the development ofFreud's theories changed the way we think about thethought process and ourselves, and has led to a healthydebate in trying to understand what it is that makes uswhat we are.

Alfred Adler, also a pupil of Freud, went off in yet anotherdirection. His belief was that everything anyone does isbased on him or her feeling inferior to - less importantthan - everyone else. Babies feel inferior because they can'tfeed themselves, Adler argued, andthey then grow up trying to be as

good as everyone else around them.Fellow student Otto Rank, on theother hand, introduced the idea ofneurosis. Since then, many otherschools of psychoanalysis andpsychiatry have grown up all overthe world.

Today, there are still many people from all walks of life whobelieve that Sigmund Freud's ideas were, at the very worst,

ASTROLOGY than a bit of fun, looking up your general horoscope in thepaper to see what the astrologer says the day has in storefor you. In the past, though, astrology could decide the fateof nations.

It's now or never. Hitler must make his decision. Britain has beenthe thorn in his side, holding out against V2 rockets fired from theContinent and from bombs dropped from the air. The British Royal

Airforce has defeated his own Luftwaffe and, whilst the rest ofEurope seems to fall easily into his power, this tiny, pathetic islandnation is standing up to the might of the Third Reich! It's time to

act! Should he order the invasion of Britain by sea. Surely, yes? Butwait - what do the stars predict? The planet alignments are ill-

favoured. No! The attack must wait, if it ever comes ...

Did Hitler really never invadeBritain because of astrology?

Some say that the story isnonsense. Others say that it'sastrology that's nonsense, butit's been with us for thousandsof years. Astrology is the idea

that the movement and position ofplanets can actually have control

over people on Earth, and that eventscan be predicted by the studying of them. This shouldn'tbe confused with astronomy, the scientific study of starsand planets. Today, to most people astrology is little more

A personal horoscope (showing the positions ofastronomical bodies at the time of a person's birth) ismapped out inside a special circle called an ecliptic, whichrepresenfs the path of the Earth's orbit around the sun ina year. This is divided into twelve sections, each namedafter one of the signs of the zodiac listed on page 26.('Zodiac' comes from the Ancient Greek zoidiakos kuklos,meaning 'circle of animals'.) An astrologer then plots theposition of twelve 'heavenly bodies' (ten planets, plus thesun and the moon) within these zodiac signs. Eachheavenly body is supposed to represent a specific humandrive, and each sign of the zodiac a particular personalitytype. The zodiac sign in which the sun appears on yourchart is called your sun sign. This depends on the day ofthe year you were born, and people born under particularsun signs, sometimes referred to as 'star signs' (the sunbeing a star, don't forget), are supposed to have particularcharacteristics. The ecliptic is further divided into twelve'houses', with the position of the heavenly bodies withinthese houses giving revealing information as to a person'shealth, travel etc.

Aries (the ram):

2\ March-\9 April

SIGNS OF THE ZODIACand 'sun sign' birth dates

Taurus (the bull):

20 April-20 May

Cancer (the crab):

22 June-22 July

Libra (the weighing scales):

23 Sept-23 Oct

Capricorn (the goat):

22 Dec-\9 Jan

Leo (the lion):

23 July-22nd Aug

Scorpio (the scorpion):

24 Oct-21 Nov

\Aquarius (the water carrier):

20 Jan-\8 Feb

The idea that the study of the moon, stars and planetsmight give clues as to the future seems to have beenthought of independendy in different civilizations atdifferent times. Possibly the earliest form of astrology wasstudied in Babylonia (now southern Iraq) 5,000 years agoin 3000BC. By 1,000 years later - that's 2000BC - theChinese had their own form of astrology, and then itcropped up everywhere from the Indian continent to theAmericas.

Gemini (the heavenly twins)'

21 May-21 June

)1We can never know for sure the reason why the movementof planets was seen to be so significant by so many differentpeoples, but we can have an educated guess. For a start, inthe days before automatic lighting inside and out, far morepeople would have spent time staring up at the night sky,wondering what all those stars were. And, also, peoplewould have come to learn that the success or failure oftheir crops had to do with how much sunshine they got -and if the sun was responsible for growing crops, who wasto say that the moon and planets didn't have otherresponsibilities of their own? The Babylonians knew aboutfive planets, those which we now call Jupiter, Mars,Mercury, Saturn and Venus. Perhaps because it looked red,and people look red and flushed when they're angry - weeven use the phrase 'seeing red' today - they associatedMars with anger, aggression and war.

Virgo (the maiden):

23 Aug-22 Sept

J?,

Sagittarius, (the archer):

22 Nov-2\ Dec

Pisces (the fish):

\9 Feb-20 Ma rch

about the Roman gods' attitude towards the government'spolicies!) Then there were augurs, who 'told the future' bystudying cloud shapes or flocks of birds, and the ever-popular fortune tellers who could read your palm or haveyou throw special fortune-telling dice. But it was usually tothe astrologers that the Roman emperors turned, whenwanting warnings of possible assassination attempts!

One of the most famousastrologers of all time wasthe Frenchman Michel deNotredame (1503-66),better known by the Latinversion of his name:Nostradamus. He wasregularly consulted by theQueen, and later DowagerQueen, of France, Catherinede' Medici. In 1555 he wrote abook called Centuries,which contained prophecies of eventsthat would happen during the following centuries. Fans ofNostradamus argue that he foretold many events, includingthe rise to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany in the 1930sand the assassination of US president John F. Kennedy in1964. Others point out that these predictions - eachforetold in four-line rhymes - are so vague and ambiguousthat you could make them fit a whole series of events oncethey'd happened!

In Ancient Greece, astronomy (the'proper' scientific study of heavenlybodies) was in existence beforeastrology, and when astrologyreached the Greek shores - inabout 500BC - philosophers,such as Pythagoras, simplyincluded it alongside their othersciences. This was also the casein the Middle Ages in Europe.Although the Church wasquick to condemn astrology as notfitting in with Christian teaching, it was· still taken veryseriously right up until the early sixteenth century. It wasonly when people such as Copernicus and Galileo startedunderstanding why the Earth and the heavens behaved theway they did - with the Earth orbiting the sun and not theother way around - that some of the glamour and magicrubbed off astrology and it became less and less important.(You can read about Galileo in WOW! Discoveries thatChanged the vt1orld.)

In Ancient Roman times, astrologers were just one ofmany different types of foretellers of the future. As well asastrologers there were 'haruspices', who were priestsbelieved to have a special skill at understanding the insidesof sacrificed animals. (For example, the condition of asacrificed animal's liver was thought to tell a great deal

MONEYToday, there are those who genuinely see astrology as animportant way of guiding their own lives, and there arethose who see it as a multi-million-pound industry. Topnewspaper astrologists get paid top money and there are ahuge number of books, magazines, CD-ROMs andwebsites given over to astrology. Some are very serious,some are very colourful and some are plain crazy.

The cost of shares has been rocketing thesepast few months, with investors c1amouring

to buy more, in the hope that their value willgo even higher - and then they can sell

them at a profit - but now the confidencehas gone. The shares are over-valued and inthe past few days it's been 'Sell! Sell! Sell!'

Today, panic selling is at its worst. Ten billiondollars has been wiped off the value of

shares. Thousands of people havelost their investment. Many are leftbankrupt, with not a cent to theirnames. Some will commit suicide.

Many people - including me, I confess - don't believe inastrology. They don't look at newspaper horoscopes, andare saddened when otherwise perfectly normal people askthem what star sign they are. To them, it's complete andutter tosh. But that's not the point. The point is that manyimportant people throughout history did believe it andastrology did influence their decisions and, therefore, majorevents in world history as well as, eventually, leading to theserious study of astronomy and other sciences. And here'sa thought to consider: it's the pull of the moon - a'heavenly body' - that controls the tides of our seas andoceans on Earth ... and our bodies are made up of about70 per cent water, so who's to say that the moon doesn'texert some physical influence on us too? No one can claimto have a defmite answer to that one.

Money is an idea which grew. It's an idea which meansthat something which, in itself, isn't necessarily worth

much - a twenty pound note isn't made of twenty pounds'

worth of paper, ink and metal strip, if you think about it -now has a totally different value. It's a value not justaccepted by the giver and the receiver, but by the wholesociety using that currency of coins and notes. A fifty pencepiece only has value because we've accepted it has thatvalue.

Something that people often ask is, when a country is shortof money - say it's at war and needs to buy weapons orfood - why doesn't its government simply print moremoney and spend that? Good question. The answer is thatif a government prints more money, left, right and centre,it devalues that currency - in other words, if a twentypound note is just another printed paper product like acomic or a newspaper, then why should anyone see it ashaving any more value than a comic or newspaper? Peoplelose confidence in it. That is why countries often used to tiein how much money they had in circulation - in all thebanks, tills, purses, wallets, piggy banks, pockets, etc., etc. -with how much gold the government had in their vaults. Inother words, for every penny in circulation in a country,there was a penny's worth of government gold. This wascalled the 'gold standard'. But times change. Today, withinternational trading of currencies and stocks and shares,it's the strength of a country's economy, and agovernment's control over it (by regulating interest ratesand spending), that determines the strength or weakness ofone country's currency - the value of their money -compared to another.

Of course, there was a time when coins themselves weremade of gold and silver, so the amount of money the coinrepresented was also the genuine value of the coin itselfThis is why some old rogues used to 'clip' coins. That is,they trimmed the edges off coins to collect the gold andsilver, whilst still being left with a coin with the same facevalue. ('Face value' is the value we give a coin - what'swritten on it: 'twenty pence' or 'one pound' for example -rather than its real worth.) To avoidclipping, many coins were given millededges - little lines all the way around- so it was possible to see if a coinhad been clipped. Today, somecoins still have milled edges, tomake forging harder.

BARTER, BARTER, BARTERBefore anyone came up with the idea of money, peoplewould barter for goods and services. If you were a fruitgrower and you wanted a pair of shoes, you would end uppaying for your shoes withfruit, but only if that'swhat the shoemakerwanted. You mightend up paying for theleft shoe with fruitand the right shoeby agreeing to helphim mend his leaky

roo£ There was a lot of give and take on both sides and justbecause an exchange of goods was agreed one time didn'tmean that it would necessarily be agreed again. When fruitwas scarce it would be worth more - it would get you moregoods in exchange - than when fruit was in plentifulsupply.

In some societies, rice, dog's teeth, or even figs came torepresent a certain value and were used to pay for services,rather than people always having to barter from scratch _so they were a currency of sorts.(In case you were wondering: therice was in China, the dog's teethin New Guinea and the figs inAncient Egypt.) In about 2000BC- 4,000 years ago - it was theChinese who came up with smallbronze tokens in the shape ofitems used for bartering,including spades and knives, and itcould be argued that these were the world's first coins.Numismatists (experts on coins), however, say that thishonour actually belongs to the Lydians of Asia Minor, inthe seventh century BC (about 2,700 years ago). It was theLydians who made the first true coins, stamped with animpression on each and each of the same weight. Like allearly coins, these had actual as well as face value. Theywere made from a mixture of gold and silver called'electrum' but what made them most different frommodern coins is that they were shaped more like beans

than discs. The first true gold and silver coins were alsomade and issued in Lydia in the sixth century BC.

Everyone knows a good idea when they see one, so coinssoon caught on and were a big hit in Ancient Greece andRome. Because the Romans ended up with an enormousempire, ruling much of the (then) known world, theircurrency spread to numerous countries.Coins are very useful to archaeologiststo help them date sites - a coin undera mosaic floor, for example, can be animportant clue as to the earliest timethat floor can have been laid.

Most Roman coins included the head of the ruler oremperor on one side, a practice still common in many partsof the world today. In Britain, coins have long had a headof the ruling monarch on one side and another image onthe other. The correct term for the side of a coin with thehead on it is the 'obverse' side, whilst the other side is calledthe 'reverse'. When flipping a coin, though, they're morecommonly known as 'heads' and 'tails'. 'Tails' probablycomes from the fact that the head is the top of your bodyand the extreme opposite of that would be the tip of yourtail - if you had one! During the rule of theCommonwealth in Britain, under the Lord ProtectorCromwell in the seventeenth century, however, coins didn't

have heads on them. (Neither did King Charles I - he'dhad his chopped off now that Cromwell's lot were inpower.) So which was 'heads' and which was 'tails' on aCommonwealth coin would be very difficult for us non-experts to guess!

It was very important that only monarchs, emperors orgovernments issued coins, so that control could be kept ontheir value and people accepted their worth. Right up until1500, coins in the Western world would have been hand-struck: the metal impression of heads and tails stamped byhand. It was the Italians who produced the fIrst uniformlyshaped and stamped coins. (Before then, coins were neverterribly round, and the stamping was often off-centre andnot too well done!) Now the Italians created a system ofpunching out perfectly round discs which were thenstamped in special screw-down presses. All British coinswere now made under strict control by the Royal Mint.

The idea for paper money, or banknotes (what Americanscall 'bills'), was probably invented by the very brainyChinese. They were certainly using them in AD800 - that'sabout 1,200 years ago. According to tradition, they cameabout to prevent theft. When members of the ImperialCourt were regularly bringing bags of money to theemperor, their horses were weighed down with all the coinsso were easy targets for bandits lying in wait. They couldn't

gallop away from an ambush. Paper money solved that. Itwas as light as - as paper, and soongained the nickname 'flyingmoney'. Not only couldpeople carrying papermoney easily gallopaway at high speedat the fIrst sign oftrouble, but it wasalso difficult forbandits to tell whowas carrymgmoney and whowasn't!

There are, in fact, three main types of money. I don't meandifferent currencies. There are plenty of them, fromindividual countries' currencies - pounds, dollars, lira,roubles - to a shared common currencies, such as the Euro,but I'm talking about types of money in terms of how it'svalued. We've discussed them already, but here's howthey're divided up and what they're called.• The fIrst type is when the face value of a coin is the

same as its actual value. (So the face value of a goldcoin, say, is literally worth its weight in gold.) This iscalled 'commodity money', because the coin itself is acommodity. It has value.

• The second type of money is called 'credit money'.That's what banknotes are. If you look at a Britishbanknote, you'll [md that it has 'I promise to pay the

bearer on demand the sum of ... ' on it. In theory, theidea is that, if you were to go to the Bank of England inLondon and give them a note, they'd have to change itinto coins for you. But please don't try it or, if you do,please don't mention my name. I said in theory. Inpractice, that may be how the system works, but thereare easier ways of getting change. It's simply that, forexample, one million pounds' worth of £50 notes arefar cheaper and easier to transport than one millionpounds in pound coins or twenty pence pieces, so creditnotes - banknotes representing that amount of coinage- are issued.

• The third main type of money has the strangest name.This is 'fiat money', and it has nothing to do with cars.Fiat money is simply money that has the face value it hasbecause the government that issued it says so. So there.Most coins are fiat money. A penny isn't commoditymoney because it isn't actually worth a penny in itself,and it isn't credit money because even the Bank ofEngland - in theory or practice - can't change it intoanything smaller for you. It's worth a penny because thegovernment says so. And that's that.

Today the idea of money is as important as it's alwaysbeen. We still expect to pay for things and to be paid. Thebig difference is that banks, building societies, shops andbusinesses are doing their best to encourage us not to useactual money. We can pay for things by cheque or creditcard or debit card. More and more people's salaries andbenefits are paid directly into their accounts - which is

really the transferring of figures onto one record fromanother, not actually someone popping around with bagsof cash. This means that we can buy things over the phoneor via the internet - we don't have to see the buyer or sellerface-to-face. The original idea of money completelychanged the way we live and do business. Now we'reprobably about to enter a whole new phase in the way itactually changes hands. In the not too distant future theremay be no actual money - no coins or notes - at all.

WORLD RELIGIONS

IIlA'C~2000, JE'USAUIIl, i~E plVlPEP CliYLooking old, and frail with illness, Pope John Paul II, leader of theRoman Catholic Church, is in this ancient city, sacred to Jews and

Christians alike. It is here, in front of anaudience of Jews and Muslims, that hemakes a historic apology for the deathand destruction caused to Muslims andJews by Christians during the bloody

Crusades - the 200-year religious wars ofthe Holy Land, fought on this very soil.

The ideas which have pr?ba?ly had more .influence th~nany others in the world s hIStOry are the Ideas set out m

the teachings of the world's various religions. That's whyyou'll fmd that this is the biggest chapter in all four booksof the WOW! series. On a basic level, religion is a belief ina supernatural power (or powers) that created or rules overthe universe, including people's destiny - in other words, ageneral belief in a god or gods. More specifically, it's aninstitutionalized system of expressing that belief - differentorganized religions (as institutions), such as Hinduism,

Judaism and Christianity, have different beliefs anddifferent ritual ways of observing such beliefs.

The actual word 'religion' comes from the Latin word'religio'. Latin was the language of the Ancient Romans (seeWOW! Events that Changed the f1!Orld)who 'stole' most oftheir gods and goddesses from the beliefs of the AncientGreeks, simply changing their names. The Roman king ofthe gods, Jupiter, for example, was the Greek king of thegods, Zeus!

'Religio' means the observing of ritual duties and alsohaving a deep, inner belief, which neatly' sums up therequirements of most major religions: to believe and followa code of practice (a way of behaving) is not enough. Youmust express your belief by following the particular ritualsof your particular faith, whether it be praying at certaintimes throughout the day, going through certain rights atcertain ages - such as the Jewish bar mitzvah - or simplyattending religious services.

What some people might see as a country's myths andlegends -'traditional tales' - others might see as a part oftheir religious beliefs. Myths are said to be traditionalstories that are based on events that didn't really happen,often containing super-humans, and that were told to helpexplain local customs or natural phenomena (such as whyit rains, or what lightning is). Legends are slightly differentin that they might be based on people who really lived, orevents that really happened, which have been changed andbuilt up into something bigger and more dramatic overtime. But you have to be careful. What you think of as 'agood story' may, to someone of a certain faith, be seen asan important part in the history or teaching of theirreligion. They may be sacred stories or even part of theirscriptures.

Most countries have creation myths (explaining how theworld came into being) and these are included in the sacredwritings of many religions. This is hardly surprising. Mostreligions have a god as the creator of the Earth, so theyneed to explain exactly how that god did it. Anothercommon theme is a terrible flood sent by a god to punishhumans. The story of Noah and the Ark, filled withanimals, is familiar to Jews and Christians. Ancient Greekswould have been familiar with the story of the son of thegod Prometheus building a boat and surviving with hiswife. Hindus are familiar with the story of Matsya the fish- actually the first incarnation of the god Vishnu -

warning the first human, Manu, to build a boat and fill itwith 'the seed of all things'. There are similar ancient floodstories from Australia, Babylonia, China and SouthAmerica, to name a few. These are a part of the sacredhistories of the different faiths.

Each of the world's main religionshas a sacred history based aroundthe key event (the mostimportant moment) inthat particular faith. InJudaism - theJewish faith- the part most central toits teaching is the Jews'flight from slavery inEgypt (the Exodus) andMoses receiving the TenCommandments fromGod. Although Christiansalso believe in these events,which are contained in theOld Testament of their Bible, the key event in their sacredhistory is God's coming to Earth in the form of JesusChrist, his teachings, his crucifixion and resurrection(coming back to life). For Muslims (followers of Islam), themost important moment was when Allah (God) gave divinerevelations to the prophet Mohammed, which were writtendown and put together to form the Koran. Buddhists seeBuddha's moment of enlightenment as the central part oftheir sacred history and teachings.

There are some people who have no religious beliefs. Theydon't believe that there are any gods or deities, or that thereis any life after death - whether it be as a soul in heaven oras a part of reincarnation (coming back as anotherperson or animal) - a common belief in many religions.A common argument of 'non-believers' is that thevarious religions have grown up to feed a certain humanneed. In other words, if the gods aren't true, humanswould have made them up anyway! Early humanswill, for example, have worshipped the sun because itbrought them heat and light and helped the cropsgrow - and they wanted to keep on the right side of it,so that it stayed friendly and came back every morning.By creating gods, they suggest, humans gained asense of safety and belonging and, over the centuries,specific ideas and rituals have grown up around thesebeliefs.

Being religious is often referred to as 'having faith' andreligions are sometimes called 'faiths'. This has comeabout because the word 'faith' means having theconfidence and belief in an idea or person withoutnecessarily having proof. In other words, religiouspeople don't actually have to have met their god orgods face-to-face in order to believe in theirexistence.

Over the years, experts have tried to divide faiths intodifferent categories. Some suggest that the earliest beliefswere probably in spirits - people thinking that most, if notall, objects from trees to water to rocks had spirits insidethem. ('If I have thoughts and feelings, then why can't atree?') This type of belief has been labelled animism. Thisthen developed into a belief that there were a variety ofgods controlling their lives - the sun god, the moon god,the thunder god and so on - which is called polytheism (polymeans 'many'). Later, these experts reasoned, this wasrefmed into the idea of one single god, which is calledmonotheism (mono means 'single'). But, as is true withexperts in just about every subject, not all of them agreewith this! Some argue that religion probably began asworshipping nature, developed into worshipping theirdead ancestors and then into trying to overcome the fear ofdeath by believing in reincarnation or the afterlife. Eitherapproach is based on the theory that religion developed outof people trying to make sense of the world around them.If you understand something, then it becomes lessfrightening.

In the past, religion was central to official life in mostcountries (and still is in many countries today). In mostcases it was impossible to divide official religion and thestate. Religion affected everything from architecture,education, painting and writing, to the clothes people

wore . . . even the calendar. All the dates in this book areeither BC, 'Before Christ', or AD, 'Anno Domini', meaning'Year of Our Lord' - the birth of Jesus being the startingpoint for the calendar now used by much of the world.(The Islamic calendar begins in what the Western worldgenerally calls AD622. The Jewish calendar begins way, wayback in what Christians call 3760BC.)

thirteen-year-olds of the Jewish faith. Christians take theirFirst Holy Communion or are confIrmed. Many otherfaiths have their own rituals to mark such occasions.

Most religions require followers to spend a certain amountof time celebrating and thinking about their faith. Fordevout Muslims, this means praying fIve times a day. ForChristians, this may simply mean attending a service in achurch once a week. Then there are dates in the variousreligious calendars that are of special signifIcance andwhich require special rituals: Christmas and Easter areimportant times for Christians, Yom Kippur and Passoverare important to Jews, and Ramadan is important forMuslims - with a whole month of fasting during daylighthours.

Even in Britain, where only a very small percentage ofpeople regularly attend church, the trappings of religion -the rituals - are often used to mark important moments inpeople's lives. Couples who never go to church otherwiseoften want to get marriedin a church, or have their childrenchristened (baptized with holy water). Again, the samecan be said about death. Most British people who aren'tpractising Christians (but are not, of course, believers inanother faith) choose to have Christian funeral services andburials - which is as much a part of the nation's culture asit is to do with any actual heartfelt beliefs.

Because the teachings of many faiths are concerned withpeople getting along peacefully together, many people ofdifferent faiths live happily side by side. There are,however, still religion-based conflicts in the world todayand, in the past, there were regular religious wars. This isone reason why the idea of religion, or religious ideas, havehad such a huge impact on the world we live in today. Overthe centuries, millions of people have died for theirreligious beliefs: Christians and Jews in the Roman arena,Muslims at the hands of Christians during the Crusades,Christians at the hands of fellow Christians during the

To believers, however, these rites of passage - ritualsmarking signilicant points in their religious and personallives - are an extremely important part of expressing theirfaith, and different religions have different ceremonies atdifferent times. In addition to birth, marriage and deathceremonies, for example, entry into 'adulthood' is markedby ceremonies called bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs for

Spanish Inquisition, and Jews at the hands of the Nazisduring the Holocaust in the Second World War. The list isvery long and very bloody.

A popular spectator sport back in Ancient Rome was a dayat the amphitheatre watching 'the games'. Anamphitheatre was a huge, round, open-air building with anarena in the centre where the actual games took place.There was a whole variety of games, but they all had onething in common: they were violent and often very bloody.There were gladiator fights. There were fights betweenwild animals - and there was a real crowd-pleaser whichinvolved unarmed 'criminals' being thrown to the lions (orother, equally vicious) wild animals. These 'criminals' wereoften Christians or Jews because they regularly refused togive up their own God to worship Roman gods instead.Eventually, Rome ended up with its own Christianemperor, and this activity was stopped! (See U0w! Eventsthat Changed the U0rld.)

The Crusades were the wars fought between WestEuropean Christians and Muslim from 1096 to 1291. TheChristians wanted to recover the Holy Lands - what is nowIsrael and Israeli-occupied territory - from the SeljukTurkish Muslims. The First Crusade aimed to recapturethe city of Jerusalem, which was sacred to Christians. Theysucceeded in 1099, killing many Muslim (and Jewish)

people living there, and ruling veryharshly. Hence the modern-day Pope'sapology. The Muslim leader Saladinmanaged to recapture Jerusalem in1187, and the aim of the ThirdCrusade by the Christians was to getit back again. Led by King Richardthe Lionheart of England and KingPhilip of France, they failed. Therewere eight Crusades in all, and theywere probably as much to do withEurope flexing its military muscle totry to gain territory as to do with trueChristian beliefs.

In the thirteenth century, the 'official' Christian religionwas the Roman Catholic Church, with the Pope at its headas 'God's representative on Earth'. The Church hadextraordinary power and influence over the countries ofWestern Europe, in some instances owning as much land ina country as its monarch. Kings and queens may haveruled their own nations, but most went out of their way tostay in the Church's good books. Anyone disagreeing withthe Church's statements or rulings on matters were calledheretics, and what they said in disagreement was calledheresy. In 1231, Pope Gregory XI (the 'XI' just means hewas the eleventh pope with that name) ordered hisInquisitors to interrogate those suspected of heresy and topersecute heretics. It generally only took two alleged

witnesses for a suspect to be found guilty, and there weremany accusations. It was the Spanish Inquisition, whichbegan in 1478, that resulted in the greater horrors andmiscarriages of justice. Set up to weed out Jewish andMuslims who'd been forced to become Christians becauseof cultural pressures, it later turned into the persecution ofProtestants (any Christians who'd broken away from theteachings of the Roman Catholic Church). Manythousands of so-called heretics were executed. Spanishmonk and grand inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada aloneordered about 2,000 people to be burnt at the stake, andthe torturing of many more.

those people living in the South American rainforests, themost isolated tribespeople in Mrica - to name just a few -have beliefs as important to them as Islam is to a Muslimor Christianity to a Christian. It's what you individuallybelieve that is important. There are, however, a number ofreligions whose followers make up the majority of religious 'people in the world. In alphabetical order, they are:Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam (the Muslimfaith), Judaism (the Jewish faith) and Sikhism, and Ithought it'd be a jolly sensible idea to end this chapter witha quick outline of each. So here you have it, the WOW!whirlwind guide to world religions . . .

The Holocaust, when spelled with a capital 'H' (and alsoknown as the Shoah), was the mass murder of Jewishpeople living in continental Europe during the SecondWorld War (1939-45). It was a part of the Nazi dictatorAdolf Hitler's plan to wipe out the Jewish race. Jewishpeople were rounded up and kept in ghettos before beingpiled into cattle trucks and taken to death camps in Poland,the most infamous of which was Auschwitz. It is estimatedthat approximately six million Jews died. The word'holocaust' comes from the Latin 'holocaustum'which means'whole burnt offering'.

Buddhism grew up in thesixth and seventh centuriesBe in eastern North India,where Hinduism was themain religion. It's based onthe teaching of SiddharthaGautama, who became the·Buddha, or 'EnlightenedOne'. Buddhism rejects theVedic scriptures and isfounded on the search forrelease from the endless cycleof reincarnation humans aresubjected to. It believes thata person can ultimatelyescape being born againand again by achieving

There are, of course, a vast number of different religionsand beliefs across the globe. Native North Americans,

Enlightenment. There are two main branches ofBuddhism, Theravada and Mahayana, and it is practisedin a great many countries, having anything up to 300million followers.

The main religion in India, Hinduism, was founded in1500BC and has an estimated 700 million followers. Tribesof people, called Aryans, first settled in India in 2550BC.Over time, they settled the whole subcontinent andbecame known as the Hindus, which means 'of the Indus'(after the Indus valley). The Aryans' cycle of stories andteachings, passed down the centuries by word of mouth,were [mally recorded in four separate collections. Thesebecame the basis for the Vedic religion. Between c.900 andc.500BC this, in turn, developed into a new religionincluding new Hindu gods and goddesses. (Vedic gods werestill there, but playing more minor roles.) Central to thebeliefs of Hinduism is reincarnation and the mostimportant Hindu sacred texts are the Puranas.

Christianity is the most widely spread religion in the world,with around 1.7 billion followers - that's 1.7 thousandmillion Christians. Christianity is based around the life andteachings of Jesus Christ. According to Christians, Jesuswas the son of the one God, who appeared in human form,and who died on the cross to givepeople the chance to be forgiventheir sins if they followed histeachings. He is said tohave risen from the deadand ascended toHeaven. Christiansbelieve in an afterlife.The Christianscriptures, the Bible, isdivided into the OldTestament (containingevents before Christ'sbirth, which form a partof the Jewish faith) andthe New Testament(starting with his birth).

Based on the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed,'Islam', according to its sacred book the Koran, means 'tosurrender to God's will'. Followers of Islam, calledMuslims, believe in one God who has four main functions:creation, sustenance, guidance and judgement. In

return, it is the duty of human beings to give their lives tothe service of God and to try to lead as pure a life and tocreate as pure a society as possible. On the Day ofJudgement the good will go to Heaven and the failures toHell. God, however, is forgiving and will look upon thedeserving with kindness. There are over one billion (onethousand million) Muslims in the world today.

coming of a Messiah whose arrival can be hastened by thestudy of the scriptures.

Sikhism, the most recent of all the religions outlined in thischapter, was founded by Guru Nanak (1469-1539). Born aHindu, he travelled with a Muslim on apilgrimage of enlightenment, settlingin the Punjabi region of India in1520. He soon earned a reputation asa wise teacher and many came tolearn from him. He taught the Unityof God and the Brotherhood ofMan. His followers became known asSikhs, which means 'learners'. Mterhis death, there were a series of gurus,the final - Guru Gobind Singh - dyingin 1708. Since then, the religion hashad no spiritual leader. All guidancecomes from reading their holy bookthe Adi Granth, itself called a guruand renamed the Guru Granth Sahib.Sikhism has over 20 millionfollowers.

Judaism - the Jewish faith - began inIsrael and the surrounding lands,and the modern state of Israeloffers citizenship to allJews. Thereare between 12 million and 13million Jews worldwide, and theybelieve in one God who continues togovern the universe. According toJudaism, God revealed hisinstructions to the Jews and theserevelations are recorded in thesacred writings of the Torah, hiscommandments. A covenant -agreement - was made betweenGod and the Jews, his chosen people. The Torah forms partof their sacred book, the 7anach (sometimes called theJewish bible and containing the same material as theChristian Old Testament), the other two sections being thePentateuch Nebiim ('the prophetic literature') and the Ketubim('the other writings'). A second book, called the 7almud,contains discussions and commentaries on the first, as wellas laying downJewish religious law.Jews are waiting for the

DARWINISM as the 'odd ones out'. However, that certainly wasn't thecase when he first published his ideas.

12 F£S~UA~Y 1809, S~~£WSSU~Y,S~~OPS~I~£, £N~LANt> Before we go any further, it's important to dispel a few

common misconceptions about Darwinism. Manypeople believe that Charles Darwin wrote a book calledThe Origin qf the Species, that the 'species' referred to werehumans, and that in it he stated the belief that humanbeings are descended from apes. The truth be told, TheOrigin qf the Species is a shortening of the full tide of the1859 book On the Origin qf the Species by Means qf NaturalSelection (the 'On' was dropped when the third edition waspublished). The 'species' referred to are all species of plantand animals, not just humans, and he never wrote anywherethat he believed that humans are descended from apes.What he did say was that humans and apes probably had

Almost six years have passed since the death of Josiah Wedgewood,one of the most famous British potters whose name and fine

pottery will live on for many generations. Sadly, he is not alive towitness the birth of his daughter's fifth child, today. The baby - a

boy - Charles Robert, will not only one day grow up to becomeeven more famous than him, but his ideas will actually change theway that most of us see the living world around us - because this

tiny baby grandson is Charles Darwin.

Darwinism gets its name from theBritish scientist Charles

Darwin (1809-82). Today, mostscientists and ordinary people -with the noticeable exception ofCreationists, who take thestory of Genesis to be theabsolute truth - take thetheories put forward inDarwin's books On the Originqf the Species by Means qf NaturalSelection and Descent qf Man to be fact. His is the generallyaccepted view of how animals and humans evolved, andthose who think otherwise are the ones who are often seen

a common ancestor. This is a big difference because, if wewere descended from apes, what's stopping existing apes,such as those in London Zoo, evolving - developing overgenerations - into humans? This is clearly ridiculous. If,however, both apes and humans are descended from acommon ancestor which died out millions of years ago -and there are far more similarities between humans andmonkeys than there are differences, as modern DNAtesting has shown - then there's no danger of thathappening!

seen as 'normal' snuffles die out. Nature has seen to thesurvival of the fittest - not necessarily fittest as in healthiestbut as in best adapted to suit the world around them - butit's important to remember that such changes occurredover very long periods of time.

The reason why this idea was so unpopular with Christiansat the time - and Britain saw itself as a very Christiannation - is obvious. The Bible states that God createdAdam and Eve and the animals as they are now.Darwinism states that they evolved, with the less well-adapted members of a species (and sometimes even wholespecies) dying out along the way. To accept Darwin's viewswould not only be to accept that the Bible was wrong, butalso to accept that God made imperfect creatures, whichcouldn't adapt as well as others.

The most important part of Darwinism, however, appearsin the words at the end of the title of his book: NaturalSelection. It was Charles Darwin's belief that the animalsthat are on the Earth today are the animals who haveadapted best to survival. Take an imaginary example: aspecies of creatures - let's call them snuffles - survive byeating berries growing on a particular type of bush. Theyare small creatures so can only reach and eat the berriesgrowing on the branches near the bottom of the bush. Themore snuffles there are, the more berries get eaten off thelower branches and, because there aren't enough berries togo around on those bottom branches, some snuffles die.Like people, snuffles come in different shapes and sizes, sosome snuffies have longer legs than others. Because longerlegs mean that they can reach higher up the bush, they canget to eat more berries long after the lower branches havebeen stripped bare. So the long-legged snuffles survive andbreed, eventually creating more long-legged snuffies, untilall snuffies look that way - and those which were originally

The problem with backing up this widely acceptedChristian view was fossils. These showed the remains ofincredible creatures that weren't around any more. Whatwere they then? These were explained by thecatastrophists' theory - the idea that the Earth had beensubjected to dramatic, violent changes, following naturalcatastrophes, the most recent of which had been the floodfor which, according to the Bible, Noah built his ark. Eachset of animals would have been wiped out in thesedisasters, and the animals on the Earth today must

obviously be descended from those saved by Noah. Plainand simple.

Then there was the commonly held belief in Britain in thelate eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that theEarth could only be about 4,000 years old. This figure was,again, reached from information contained in the Bible, bylinking people from generation to generation all the wayback to Adam and Eve and the creation story. In 1785,however, a Scottish geologist called James' Hutton arguedthat, by looking at the geological processes going onaround him - the speed at which rivers wore awayriverbeds or rain eroded rocks - it would have taken theworld millions, not thousands, of years to end up in thecondition it had then reached - and, slowly but surely, thescientific world began to listen. But rocks and soil were onething, animals and people were quite another.

Charles Darwin was a naturalistonboard a ship called The Beaglewhich, from 1831 to 1836,was on a voyage to survey thesouthern hemisphere,making accurate maps andrecords of the flora(plants) and fauna

(animals) to be found in these faraway places. He startedout the journey aged just twenty-two and, although he wasunpaid, this was an incredible opportunity for a brilliantyoung mind. It was when he reached the GalapagosIslands that he made a most interesting discovery ...

Here was a group of islands with similar tortoises and birdson each island. But they were only similar. They were notthe same. There were significant differences between thetortoises on each island, and it was the same with themocking birds and fmches too. They were differentvarieties. Now, if God had placed them there, surely they'dall be the same? Then Darwin noticed that the habitat forthese creatures - the environment the animals survived inon each island - differed slightly on each island too. Anidea was already forming in Darwin's mind: the tortoisesand birds on each island had to adapt to fit in best with theenvironment of their particular island. On returning toEngland in 1836, he spent many years and fIlled manynotebooks trying to make sense of the information he'dgathered. (It may seem obvious to us now, but that'sbecause he did all the work for us!)

Darwin first shared his theories with the world when heread out a scientific paper in 1858. This was the same yearthat another brilliant naturalist Alfred Russell Wallaceannounced a similar theory, which he'd come up with quite

independently of Darwin. It was the publication ofDarwin's On the Origin of the Species by Means of NaturalSelection, a year later, that really caused the sensation. Allcopies were sold on the very fIrst day of publication and itquickly went through six further editions.

Darwin's ideas weren't only attacked by the Church butalso by many fellow scientists. They argued that he couldn'tprove them, which was true enough. People couldn't simplysit around and wait to see if animals evolved around them- evolution was a slow process! Then, they argued, howcould animals with particularly useful characteristics - forexample, the snuffies with the longer legs, in my made-upexample on page 58 - so conveniently pass thesecharacteristics onto their offspring? That couldn't beexplained either. Not in those days, maybe, but with today'sunderstanding of genetics (which you can read about inWOW! Discoveries that Changed the "WOrld),we know thatDarwin was right. Such characteristics can be passed onthrough genes.

What angered the Christian Church most of all, though,was Darwin's theory of 'common ancestry' and the waythat he grouped human beings together with otheranimals. Surely the creation of human beings, at least,must have been special, and separate from that of all othercreatures? Again, today we have the advantage of modern

science to support Darwinism. We now know that the fIrsttrue humans, homo sapiens sapiens - which is what we are -fIrst walked on this Earth about 100,000 (not 4,000) yearsago and that we shared the planet with a group of 'almosthumans' - Homo sapiens neanderthalensiswho died out about30,000 years ago. They probably weren't as well suited tothe environment as the bigger-brained homo sapiens sapiens.

On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection hasbeen described as 'the book that shook the world' because,in the end, it altered so many people's way of thinkingabout the world around them. Then, in 1871, Darwinproduced his second best-known work: The Descent of Man.In this instance 'descent' doesn't mean the 'decline' or 'fall'of humans - Man was short for humankind, both men andwomen - but 'descent' as in 'descendants and ancestors', inother words: the lineage of the human race.

3-2 MILUONYEARS AGO

750,000YEARS AGO

100,000 YEARSAGO TO PRESENT

VOTES FOR WOMENToday, Darwinism is taken for granted by so many that it'sdifficult to imagine that it's actually a group of ideas puttogether and argued by one man. Later in his life, CharlesDarwin himself became more accepted by society ingeneral. Today there are many scientists who are happilyChristian (though not Creationists) and believers inDarwinism too. Charles Darwin is buried in WestminsterAbbey, which was not only a great honour but also a placeof Christian burial.

4 JUNe 1913, epSoM POWNS ~ A(e(OU~se, eN<iLANPAs the king's horse thunders around the bend in the racecourse a

woman ducks under the railings and steps right into its path. Whaton earth's going on? What's she doing? Trying to attract attention?

Make some kind of protest - or is she on a suicide mission? Thecrowd looks on in horror as the woman is trampled underfoot,

toppling horse and jockey. She is - she was - Emily Davidson, asuffragette, fighting for the idea of votes for women. Whatever her

original plan, she has just given her life for that cause. A riot willbreak out and over 6,000 will attend her funeral.

The idea that a person can't vote in any kind ofgovernment election or referendum simply because she's

a woman may seem incredible to you. That's probablybecause we now live in a society where everyone overeighteen who's registered - and isn't 'of unsound mind' ora prisoner serving a sentence - has that right, but it was ahard-fought one. Countries which have been held up asshining examples of democracy, such as Ancient Greeceand Rome, were only democratic compared to othercountries, because even there the men certainly didn'tallow the women to elect any representatives.

cause. Especially as, once in prison, they would often go onhunger strike to gain yet more publicity.

Probably the most famous suffragettewas Emmeline Pankhurst. Shestarted out as a suffragist but,frustrated at how peaceful meansdidn't seem to be getting themanywhere, decided to become asuffragette and take direct action. Suchaction included women smashingshop windows and street lamps,burning down empty buildings andsports pavilions, slashing paintings in artgalleries, pouring acid over golf courses, hassling and

heckling politicians, holding marchesand public meetings, and generally

keeping the issue of votes for womenin the public eye. Pankhurst

herself was arrested a number oftimes between 1908 and 1913.When the First World War

(1914-18) broke out, manysuffragists and suffragettes

put the issue of votes forwomen aside to

concentrate on warwork.

That's not to say that all women thought that they shouldbe given that right. When the idea of 'votes for women'was at its height at the end of the nineteenth and beginningof the twentieth century, there were those women whoargued that it was far better for women to influence menrather than actually getting involved in the mechanics ofelections. They saw women as having a unique, special anddifferent contribution to make to society, and voting woulddestroy this. They were known as the 'antis' which wasshort for the 'anti-suffragists'. The suffragists, on the otherhand, were people who believed in equal voting rights forwomen. The name comes from the word 'suffrage' which- far from being about pain and suffering - actually means'the right to vote'.

There's a general misconception that the suffragists inBritain were all nice 'middle-class' ladies from comfortablebackgrounds. However, by the l870s, more and more'working-class' women were members of trade unions andtaking an interest in politics and rights. Many of them werealso supporters of the suffragist movement. There's alsoanother misconception that the only people championing'votes for women' in Britain were the suffragettes, whoshouldn't be confused with the suffragists. Suffragistsbelieved in fighting for the cause by peaceful means.Suffragettes had a more nUlitant approach. They wereprepared to break the law. In fact, they wanted to getarrested so as to get in the newspapers and further the

But how did the women's suffrage campaign come to be?One milestone was the publication of A Vindication qf theRights qf U0man in 1792, by the British writer MaryWollstonecraft. In it, amongst other things, Wollstonecraftargued for the equality of men and women in everythingfrom education to opportunities. A remarkable person, shespent a number of years in Paris during the FrenchRevolution before finally settling in England. (Herdaughter, also called Mary, married the poet Shelley andwrote an even more famousbook: Frankensteinin 1818.)Mary Wollstonecraft'sRights qf U0man becamea talking point, and a'bible' for many earlyfeminists.

requirements a man neededbefore having that right, andmany poor and working-class men were excluded, sowomen's suffrage could beadded to fighting for thesemen's causes. Suffragists alsohad the support of mensuch as]ohn Stuart Mill (aneconomist and philosopher)who, in 1865, was one of the co-founders of the firstwomen's suffrage association. The monarch at the timewas Queen Victoria but - despite her own authority andresponsibilities as a woman - she was totally against theidea of women getting the vote.

It was in 1897 that the various different women's suffragegroups joined together to form the National Union ofWomen's Suffrage Societies. It was six years later, in 1903,that Emmeline Pankhurst broke away to form theWomen's Social Political Union and its members becamethe suffragettes. It was almost ten years after that thatEmily Davidson stood in front of the king's horse at EpsomDowns and was killed. Then came the war ...During the l830s and l840s, suffragism really began to

gather momentum. The Chartists, who were interestedin all aspects of human rights - their name coming froma 'people's charter' submitted to Parliament in 1837 -were supporters of votes for women. It's important toremember that in Britain in those days not all adultmen had the vote either. There were a number of

In 1918, the year the First World War ended, and partlydue to women taking over men's jobs during that war, the

British government gave voting rightsto certain women. These were'women householders, wives ofhouseholders and womenuniversity graduates over 30'.That still excluded a lot ofwomen, but it was a startand an incredible victoryfor all those people whohad fought for theirrights, then put aside theirdifferences to help theircountry fight for adifferent cause. In 1928,British women were giventhe same voting rights asmen. The battle had beenwon.

MEANWHILE, IN AMERICA ...

With women excluded from voting the world over, the fightfor the right was by no means limited to Britain, and manycountries have their own heroes and heroines of the cause.In the US, many women wished to become activelyinvolved in the movement to abolish slavery (see WOW!

Events that Changed the J%rld) but found that they were madeunwelcome by some male campaigners. Many womenthen set up their own all-women abolitionist societies, butalso campaigned to be heard in the more generalassemblies. In 1848 the first women's rights convention metin Seneca Falls, New York. There were between 100 and300 people there, depending on whose reports you chooseto believe, but we do know that it was a mixture of bothmen and women. Public reaction was generally verynegative and newspapers tried to ridicule suffragists asbeing members of a 'shrieking sisterhood'. Manysuffragists were physically attacked at public meetings,which were regularly stormed by thugs. Then came theAmerican Civil War.

The greatest split between the abolitionists and thesuffragists came after the war, in which the Americanunion was saved from splitting up and the slave-owningsouthern confederacy was defeated. Abolitionists fearedthat women demanding votes would make it harder forthem to gain votes for freed black slaves - in other words,the women's issue was 'getting in the way' of what they sawas the main issue.

In 1868, there was a split within the suffragist movementitself, with the setting up of two different associations.The National Woman Suffrage Association was set up to

campaign for a federal law, which would cover the wholeof the US, granting voting rights to women everywherein the country at the same time. The American WomanSuffrage Association, set up six months later, however,aimed to get voting rights for women state by state. Theyargued that if they could at least get votes for women insome states,-it would help in the campaign to get votes inothers and so on, until women everywhere could vote.This second approach had some early successes. A yearlater, Wyoming became the first state to give women thevote.

last European country to give women the vote, butwomen in several Arab countries still do not have votingrights today. The struggle continues.

Other states followed suit, with Colombia giving womenthe vote in 1893, Utah and Idaho in 1896, Washingtonin 1910 and California in 1911, followed by nine othersup until 1918. Then in 1919, after the First World War,women in all states were granted the vote under the 19thAmendment to the US Constitution. The woman'ssuffrage amendment had been put before Congress tovote on every year since 1878, thanks to the hard work ofElizabeth Cady Stanton. As well as being the leader ofthe National Woman Suffrage Association, ElizabethCady Stanton, along with Susan B. Anthony, is probablyone of the most famous name in the American fight forwomen's rights. Susan B. Anthony, who fought for thecause for 50 years, was the first woman to have her imageappear on an American coin. Thanks to the efforts ofthese and other suffragists, suffragettes and theirsupporters - both men and women - women now have avoice in democracies the world over. Switzerland was the

Luther King Jnr. used passive resistance to fight racism inthe US (which you can read about in the next chapter).When white policemen set their dogs and then high-pressure hoses on a march made up of mainly black men,women and children, the marchers didn't fight back. Ifthey had, it'd just have been another running street battle.As it was, the world saw pictures of ruthless white authorityfigures attacking innocent black people, and the impactwas far, far greater.

PASSIVE RESISTANCE

The prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, is addressing theIndian people in a radio broadcast, his voice full of emotion.

'Friends and comrades,' he begins, 'the light has gone out of ourlives and there is darkness everywhere .. .' He goes on to tell thestunned and grieving audience of listeners that Mahatma Gandhi,

known as 'the Father of the Nation', has been assassinated. ButNehru has a warning. No one must seek

revenge for what has happened throughanger, because 'nothing would displeasehis soul so much as to see that we have

indulged in ... any violence.' Gandhihad helped win them their

independence, only six months ago,through totally peaceful means.

Passive resistance can work in many different ways. Duringthe Second World War, Jewish people in countriesoccupied by the Germans were required to wear a yellowstar, to be easily identified as Jewish. Not to wear a starcould lead to serious trouble. In Denmark, Jewish peoplefollowed the instructions but - as a passive act of defiance- a great many non:Jewish people wore the yellow star too.

Now the Germans couldn't tellwho was Jewish at a glance. When

the time came for DanishJews tobe rounded up and

deported to the deathcamps, they'd all

disappeared. The otherDanes had taken all

6,000 of them in smallboats across the sea to the

safety of Sweden. Herewas a great victory without

a single act of violence.

In a world with a history filled with terrible and bloodywars, passive resistance is the unusual idea that

oppression can be confronted, and eventually even beaten,by peaceful means. It is based on the principle of whatChristians call 'turning the other cheek' - if you're hit onthe cheek, don't hit back, but turn the other cheek andoffer that one as a target too. The followers of Martin

One of the fIrst people to use theterm 'civil disobedience' - aform of passive resistanceinvolving non-cooperationwith the authorities (in otherwords, not doing what theauthorities want, but not gettingviolent about it) - wasAmerican Henry Thoreau(l817-62). In 1846, a partof everyone's poll tax (thetax all registered voters hadto pay) went towards funding US soldiers in the MexicanWar (1846-48). Because Thoreau thought that the wholewar was wrong, he didn't want a single cent of his moneyto go towards funding it, so he refused to pay his poll tax,making it clear why. As a result, he ended up in jail. He laidout his reasons in more detail in a famous essay calledResistance to Civil Government in 1849, outlining how passiveresistance such as his could be effective under othercircumstances too. The world-famous novelist LeonTolstoy (1828-1910) is also credited with having influencedthe passive resistance movement with his writings on thelove for all humans and non-violent resistance to 'the forcesof evil' as defmed in the Bible.

cooperation and non-violent resistance to Britishoccupation of his country. Mohandas Gandhi, oftenreferred to as Mahatma Gandhi - 'mahatma' means 'greatsoul' - described himself as a 'soldier of peace'. It's braveenough to take up a weapon and fIght for your country. It'seven braver to fIght for your country without a weapon -especially when the enemy were the well-armed Britishrulers of India. Gandhi had actually been educated inBritain, and got a law degree at University College,London. Back in India, a fIrm with business interests inSouth Mrica sent Gandhi there as a representative, and itwas there that he developed his ideas on resisting injustice.

Being a 'non-white' person, he found himself being treatedlike a second-class citizen. (You can read about SouthMrica, racism and apartheid and its eventual downfall inVllow!Events that Changed the Vllorld.)Gandhi was horrifIed bythe way that Indians were treated in South Mrica andcommitted his life to improving their plight. Mter beingbadly beaten by white South Mricans in 1896, Gandhibegan suggesting passive resistance and non-cooperationtowards the South Mrican authorities, calling his approach'satyagraha' which, rougWy translated, means 'defence oftruth by truth'. Gandhi ended up spending over 20 years inSouth Mrica, only leaving once many of the changes he'dso peacefully fought for - such as the South Mricans fmallyaccepting Indian marriages as legal- had come into being.

The greatest exponent of passive resistance was theIndian leader Gandhi (1869-1948) who used non-

Back in his home country of Indiaonce more, in 1915, Gandhi nowturned his 'satyagraha' on the Britishcolonial rulers. He wanted Indiato rule itsel£ The Britishgovernment was worried and, in1919, the British parliament passedthe Rowlatt Acts which gave thecolonial rulers extra power tosuppress any such 'revolutionaryactivities', violent or not. In thatsame year, a demonstrationagainst the acts resulted in aterrible massacre of about 400 ~- ~peaceful protesters in Amritsar, when soldiers in the Britisharmy opened fire on them. A whole series of campaigns ofnon-cooperation followed between 1920 and 1944,involving millions of Indians - and I don't just mean 'a lot',I really do mean millions. Gandhi himself was jailed anumber of times. Slowly but surely, he gained attentionfrom and then influence over the British authorities. Theyrealized that his movement of passive resistance wasn'tabout to go away. Though Britain had experience ofcrushing armed rebellions, peaceful ones were harder todeal with.

'Satyagraha' didn't just mean unarmed demonstratorssitting in the street blocking traffic, and not raising an arm

against their attackers if hit, spat at or even dragged away.It also meant that Indians resigned from the civil serviceand all public appointments. Indians wouldn't attend courtif summoned, because they didn't recognize its authority.They didn't send their children to government schools.Indians also boycotted British goods, and people in thevillages began to make more and more of their own.Knowing that many Indians would suffer many hardshipswhen standing up to authority, Gandhi lived a very simplelife himsel£ Not all pro-Independence Indians believed inGandhi's peaceful approach, however, and a number ofviolent armed attacks on the colonial British rulers greatlydistressed him. For a while, he withdrew from the cause.Finally, India gained independence from Britain in 1947,but only at the expense of it being divided into twoindependent countries: India (which was mainly Hindu)

and Pakistan (which was mainlyMuslim). This partition led to

riots and it was only whenGandhi threatened to fast -

go on hunger strike - untilthey stopped that peace

was restored. Gandhiwanted friendshipbetween religions.

He always freelyadmitted that his beliefs hadbeen influenced not only by

his own faith, Hinduism, andby the writings of Tolstoyand Thoreau, but also by

Christianity. What matteredto him was that people lived

peaceful lives together as people. Tragically, in January .1948, Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated by a Hinduextremist.

AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS

1 PE(EMSE~ 1955, MON1CiOME~Y,ALASAMA, USA

Passive resistance is still an approach used by manypressure groups and protesters today. In Britain, manyeco-warrior groups protesting about road-building orhousing developments destroying woodland or countrysideput themselves between the environment and thebulldozers - chaining themselves to blocks of concrete orliving up trees and down tunnels to slow the whole processof dearing the land. Another example is of countriesboycotting other countries' goods. During white apartheidrule in South Mrica, many countries boycotted SouthMrican goods. They couldn't directly attack South Mricabut, by peaceful means, they could damage the country'seconomy, trade, power and status in the world. Passiveresistance can be very effective in causing world change.

Rosa Parks is sitting in her seat on the bus. Although both whiteand black people can travel on the same bus together, the rules are

a clear: if a white person wants a seat andyou're black, you get right up and give it

to him. And that's exactly what Ms Parks isbeing asked to do - being told to do -day in, day out. But not today. On this

particular December morning, RosaParks isn't about to give up her seat toanyone. It's going to get her arrested. It's

going to lose her her job, but it's also goingto be seen by many as the startingpoint of the modern American civil

rights movement - fighting for blacksand whites to be treated equally.

The idea that all people should be treated equallyregardless of the colour of their skin seems an obvious

one. Anything else is outrageous, but it's an idea that hashad to be fought for in the US through the courts, in

government and on the streets. Slavery was abolished inthe US in the 1860s (and you can read about this in WOW!Events that Changed the Mlorld) but the fight for black peopleto be treated the same way as whites - to have the samecivil rights - dates back further than that. In the past, theUS was a segregated country: black people and whitepeople lived apart, went to separate schools and oftencouldn't even sit on the same bench. ('Whites Only' signsseemed to be everywhere.)

DIFFERENT STATES, DIFFERENT LAWS

It's important to remember that, in the US, as well asnational laws covering the whole country, states can maketheir own laws, unique to their own particular state.Segregation laws, therefore, varied from state to state. Thelaws were often referred to as Jim Crow' after a terriblestereotyped and unflattering black character from themusic hall of the 1830s. (So a person might say that JimCrow wouldn't let him do something, rather than sayingsegregation didn't allow it.) The southern states are morefamous for their segregation, but the northern states -which fought against slavery and for keeping the statesunited in the American Civil War (1861-65) - hadsegregation laws too.

In 1849, a man named Benjamin Franklin Roberts tookthe authorities of the city of Boston, in the northern state

of Massachusetts, to court to try to force them allow hisdaughter to go to the local elementary school, nearest tohis home. The problem was that Roberts and his daughterwere black and the local school was for white children only.He was represented by a black lawyer named RobertMorris and by a white man named Charles Sumner.Franklin Roberts lost his case and his daughter didn't get togo to the school he wanted for her but, just six years later,segregation in all Massachusetts state-run schools was,indeed scrapped. And Charles Sumner, who'd been electedto the US Senate in 1851, went on to write the Civil RightsAct of 1875 - but that's jumping ahead.

In 1857, the Supreme Court of the United States declaredthat a black person couldn't be a US citizen! Before the

American Civil War, black people weren'teven allowed to be members of the army

or navy, either. When the war started,however, many black men joined the

Union army, in 'allblack' units, such

as the 4th USColored Infantry.

Despite poorer equipmentand, often, less pay than their

fellow white soldiers, black soldiersplayed an important part in the

black - and who was to say he might not have treated thatsame person badly even if he was white? - surely the lawwasn't being very equal? Wasn't it favouring blacks overwhites? Of course, this false argument completelyoverlooked that it was always the white people who had thebetter railway carriages, much more power and were doingthe discriminating - but the US Supreme Court regularlyagreed with this kind of argument and came down infavour of the segregators!

civil war, 23 of them being awarded America's highestaward for bravery, the 'Medal of Honor'.

With the war over, the northern states victorious, and theUS still united, three important amendments were made tothe United States Constitution. The 13th, 14th and 15thAmendments were made in 1865, 1868 and 1870 andended slavery, made black people US citizens, with equalprotection under the law, and prohibited racialdiscrimination in voting - black or white, you could vote (ifyou were a man). Most northern states scrappedsegregation altogether. Sumner's Civil Rights Act made itillegal for blacks and whites to be segregated in places suchas theatres and restaurants - but the unfairness anddiscrimination across the whole US was far from over. Theproblem with these national laws was trying to enforcethem - to make sure they were followed - in states wherewhite people didn't like them.

Some states used even sneakier methods to try to stop blackpeople voting, typical of which was Mississippi. Once blackpeople had become US citizens and been given votingrights, just under 200,000 of them registered and voted -so the state introduced new rules and regulations for votersin the 1890, to try to stop them. First, anyone who wantedto vote had to pay a regular poll tax, which was far tooexpensive for most black people, who hadn't long beenfreed from slavery and were in the lowest paid jobs.Secondly, no one could vote unless they'd passed a readingand writing test. Again, this was deliberately designed toexclude black people because most of those lucky enoughto have received an education (and that wasn't all of themby any means) wouldn't have received the same qualiry ofeducation as most white people. The same was happeningright across the southern states. Nowhere in the southcould a black person marry a white person and, in somestates, a black minister wasn't even allowed to perform themarriage ceremony of two white people.

A popular argument with those people wanting to keepblack and white people separate involved the word 'equal'.Surely it was perfectly legal to have 'whites only' carriageson the railroad - as Americans call the railway - as long asthere were an equal number of 'blacks only' carriages?What could be more equal than that? And if a white personcould get into trouble with the law for treating a personbadly simply because the person he was treating badly was

well as sections of the community to blacks as well aswhites.

Sadly, things got worse, not better. Asociety of white terrorists called theKu Klux Klan - not the Klu KluxKlan as people often say - had beenformed in the l860s, which useddreadful violence and threats to keepsegregation alive. Memberswore white robes and pointedwhite hoods to cover their /~heads and hide their identity.Smaller local groups, called Klaverns, grew up and, overthe years, many black people were murdered by whitepeople, a common method being 'lynching', when thevictim was hanged from a tree. (Over 2,000 were killed thatway in fifteen years alone.) Many Klaverns got so out ofhand that the Klan disowned them. Then the originalKlan itself disbanded in 1871. The modern Klan which. ,still exists today, was founded in 1915.

During the 1930s, vast numbers of black people left themore hostile southern states to settle in the morewelcoming northern ones. Here, they encountered lessracism, and better education and job opportunities. Notonly that, in the south in the past, most black Americanshad lived in the countryside. Now more and more of themwere living and working in towns and cities, in closerproximity to each other, and nearer white people. Becauseblack people could vote in the northern states, and in largenumbers, more and more pro-civil rights and anti-segregation politicians were getting elected. Then therewas the war itself: membership of the NAACP increasedby 1000 per cent, newspapers published by black peoplefor black people campaigned for victory against the fascistsabroad and against the racists at home, and black andwhite soldiers fought alongside each other in hugenumbers. Things would never be quite the same again.

Those fighting for racial equality, meanwhile, were doingtheir own organizing. Following a meeting at Niagara Falls,Canada, where blacks and whites discussed ways offighting for rights, the National Association for theAdvancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed in1909. It was made up of a mixture of both white and blackactivists, and they began challenging segregation laws incourts across the land. They successfully overturned anumber of laws, opening institutions like law schools as

Then, on that December day in 1955, Rosa Parks wasarrested in Montgomery for failing to give up her seat onthe bus. She was an active member of the NAACp, and herbranch organized a boycott of the bus service. Almost allthe black people in Montgomery stopped using the busesand suddenly the bus company found itself short of about

50,000 potential customers! The boycott lasted a year and,in November 1956, a federal law was passed stoppingsegregation in any form on buses. All passengers should betreated equally.

The man who organized the boycott was a black Baptistminister by the name of Martin Luther KingJr. (The Jr.'stood for Junior' because his father's name was MartinLuther King too.) As well as being a committed Christianand an excellent organizer, he was also an inspiring speakerand soon became a public figure,well-known across America. Hewasn't only popular with blackpeople, but also with many whitenortherners. He arranged rallies,marches and demonstrations butinsisted that they always bepeaceful. He believed in f!l/@passive resistance, the idea ~ ~';'lthat violence and force can ~eventually be defeated by peacefulmeans - the idea looked at in theprevious chapter of this book.

The modern civil rights movement didn't only want toabolish all traces of segregation, it also called for freedomof speech and freedom of religious beliefs, and for these

laws to be protected and enforced by the goodwill of thepeople in power, not simply be there on the statute bookand ignored at state or county level. Based on these beliefs,Martin Luther King Jr. formed special links with Jewishand Protestant groups and his voice of protest for civilrights became louder and louder.

The 1960s saw a whole variety of protests, from college sit-ins to 'freedom rides' on buses, from state to state, withmany ending in violence against the protesters. In 1962,black student James Meredith won a right, through thecourt, to attend the all-white Mississippi University. Thegovernor of the state, however, was against his attendingand tried to stop him enrolling. Finally, President Kennedyhad to supply Meredith with a bodyguard of federalmarshals so that he could get into the building. Anti-blackriots broke out and, along with over 300 people injured,two people actually died. When a similar incident occurredwith enrolment in Alabama, in 1963, Kennedy sent in thearmy! That same year, a key turning point came inBirmingham, Alabama, when pictures of white policeofficers attacking peaceful black marchers (many of themchildren) with dogs and water hoses, were shown aroundthe world.

In August 1963, 200,000 supporters of civil rights marchedthrough the US's capital city, Washington, DC. There,

Martin Luther KingJr. gave one ofthe most famous speeches in UShistory, which included the words:'I have a dream that my four littlechildren will one day live in anation where they will not bejudged by the colour of their skin

but by the content of their character.I have a dream today!' President

Kennedy, who proposed a new CivilRights Act, was assassinated that November. Tragically,Martin Luther King was also assassinated, but not until1968, and not until he had achieved much more in thefight for civil rights.

Although one of equality's [mest exponents, Martin LutherKing Jr. was only one person in a series of groups andindividuals who'd been fighting for change, in their owndifferent ways, for over a hundred years. There were, forexample, black leaders such as Malcolm X - himselfassassinated in 1965 - who believed that equality couldn'tbe achieved using King's peaceful methods and should beachieved 'by any means necessary'. There are those whowould argue that they are still fighting for civil rights in theUS today. In April 1992, 58 people were killed and over$750 million of damage was caused in riots in Los Angelesfollowing the acquittal of four white police officers.They'd been charged with the severe beating of a blackman named Rodney King, and were acquitted despite thewhole attack having been recorded on videotape. Even

though two officers were later found guilty, many black andwhite people felt that this was further proof that the battlefor civil rights has yet to be fully won. The US has come along way, however, since Rosa Parks refused to give up herseat on that bus.

abstract - without reference to aspecific incident. Difficult tounderstand and relate toeveryday existence

acquittal - the process of beingfound 'not guilty' in a trial

apartheid - the official SouthMrican government policy ofdividing and treating peopleaccording to the colour of theirskin

baptize - to duck in or sprinkle aperson with water as a sign thatthey are a member of theChristian Church

blacklisted - put on a list ofthose considered untrustworthyor disloyal, preventing themfrom working in certain jobs(such as the fIlm industry)

boycotted if people orbusinesses are boycotted, noone will have dealings withthem, buying or selling (Namedafter a nineteenth-century landagent called Captain Boycottwho upset his tenants, andended up the victim of aboycott!)

c. - short for the Latin word 'circa'meaning 'about'. A datemarked c. means anapproximate date; the eventoccurred around about then

capitalists followers ofcapitalism, the system wherebygoods and production areowned privately, not by thestate (as with Communism)

colonial - a colonial power was apower which ruled other,separate countries, calledcolonies. Britain was thecolonial power of India. She,and not the Indians, ruled thecountry

defect - to desert your country orstate to join one with different,

usually opposite, viewsdemocracy - a society where the

government is ruled by electedrepresentatives of (at least someof) the people

devout - deeply religiousDowager - a widow who still

holds the title she had frombeing married to her now-deadhusband (Catherine was queenin her own right when marriedto the king and, when her sonbecame king, she still had thetitle 'queen')

eco-warriors - a nickname foractivists who take direct action(usually non-violent) over issuesabout the environment

economy - the management offinances, imports, exports,production, and all in-comingsand out-goings of a country

exile - living in exile means thatyou've been forced to liveoutside your homeland, againstyour will

exponent someone whoupholds an idea or cause

fasting - not eating (especially asa part of a religious ritual)

genes - a part of DNA, in a fixedposition in a chromosome,which determine particularcharacteristics (e.g. a 'tall' geneor a 'blue eyes' gene)

Genesis - The first book in theOld Testament of the Bible,covering the stories of thecreation of the Earth, andAdam and Eve in the Gardenof Eden

hysteria - an uncontrollableemotion (such as panic or fear),or a physical ailment (such asloss of memory) with no'bodily' cause, it's all in themind

incarnation - a particular form.The god Vishnu is said to haveappeared in a number ofdifferent forms, or incarnations.Those who believe inreincarnation believe that

people come back (after death)in different incarnations too

independendy - on your own,without help from others

interest - money earned onmoney saved and paid onmoney borrowed

lineage - a line of descendantsfrom an ancestor

militant aggressive andvigorous

misconceptions - commonlyheld beliefs that aren't actuallytrue

monarch - a king or queenneurologist - a specialist on the

human nervous systemoccupied - countries occupied by

Germany in wartime, forexample, were those countriestaken over by Germany, againsttheir will

Protestant - Protestants are anyChristians who aren't RomanCatholics

reincarnation - the belief thaton death the soul leaves thebody and is born again inanother body

republic - a country or statewhich doesn't have a king,queen or emperor

southern hemisphere - thehalf of the Earth lying to thesouth of the Equator(represented by the bottom halfof a globe if you slice ithorizontally through themiddle)

stereotype - a typical idea orimage of a group of people,often wholly inaccurate (e.g. 'allfat people are lazy')

sustenance - nourishment, a wayof maintaining health,livelihood and life

temperate - moderate or mildUnion - Union soldiers were those

who fought to keep the states ofthe USA united in the US civilwar, and mostly came from thenorth. They were fightingConfederacy troops, whowanted to break away to form aseparate group of states

Vedic - from the earliest religionof the Aryan settlers in India

Adam and Eve 59,60Adi Granth 22Adler, Alfred 55American civil rights 81-93American Civil War 70, 82, 83Ancient Greece 8, 28, 35, 65apartheid 77, 80Asia Minor 34Astrology 24-31Babylonia 27,43banknotes 36, 37, 38baptisms 46bar mitzvahs 46bartering 34bat mitzvahs 46Beagle, The 60Bible 43, 52, 59, 60, 76Buddhism 43, 51, 52capitalists 11CD-ROMs 30Charles I, King 31Chartists 68China 13,34,43Christianity 10, 40, 41, 42, 43,

46,47,48,49,50,51,52,59,74, 79

Christmas 47class system 9, 11coins 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39collective unconscious 21commodity money 37, 38common ancestry 62Communism 7-16Communist Manifisto 11, 12Copernicus 28credit money 37, 38Cromwell, Oliver 35, 36Crusades 6,40,47,48,49Cuba 14currency 32, 34, 35, 38Darwin, Charles 56, 57, 58, 60,

64Darwinism 56-65de' Medici, Catherine 29democracy 65Denmark 75dreams 19, 20eco-warriors 80

ego 20Egypt 34,43Epsom 65,69extroverts 22federal law 71, 88fiat money 38First World War 67,69, 72fortune tellers 29fossils 59Freud, Sigmund 16, 17, 18, 19,

20,21,22Galapagos Islands 6 1Galileo 28Gandhi 74, 76, 77, 78, 79gold 7,32,33,34,35,37Guru Granth Sahib 55Hinduism 40, 51, 53, 79, 80Hitler, Adolf 24, 29, 50Holocaust 48, 50, 51Holy Communion 47Holy Lands 48id 20India 51,53,55,74,77,78,79Interpretation qf Dreams 20introverts 22Iraq 27Islam 43,46,51,53Jerusalem 40, 48, 49Judaism 41,43,51,54,75Jim Crow' 82Jung, Carl 21, 22Kennedy,John F. 29,89,90Ketubim 54King, Martin Luther 74, 88, 89,

90King, Rodney 90Koran 43,53Ku Klux Klan 86legends 42Lenin 7, 12Little Red Book 13Lydians 34Malcolm X 90Mao Tse-Tung 13marriage 10,46,85Marx, Karl 11,12,15McCarthy, Joseph 14Middle Ages 10, 28Mohammed 43, 53monasteries 10money 31-40moon 14,25,27,30,45Moses 43

Muslims 40,43,47,48,50,53,54

myths 42Nanak, Guru 55natural selection 56, 57, 58, 62,

63New Guinea 34New York 10,31,70Noah 42, 59, 60Nostradamus 29nunneries 10Oneida Community 10, 11Origin if the Species 56, 57, 62, 63Pankhurst, Emmeline 67,69Parks, Rosa 81,.87, 91passive resistance 74-81Passover 47Pentateuch Nebiim 54philosopher-kings 9planets 24, 25, 27Plato 8,9Pope Gregory XI 49Pope John Paul II 40Protestants 50psychiatry 22psychoanalysis 16-24reincarnation 44,45,52,53religions 40-56Royal Mint 36

Russia 7, 12, 13Saladin 49Second World War 24, 48, 50,

75,87segregation 81,82,83,84,86,87,

88Sikhism 51, 55South Africa 77, 80Soviet Union 7, 13, 14Spanish Inquisition 47, 50Stanton, Elizabeth Cady 72star signs 25state laws 82Stock exchange 31suffragettes 66, 67, 69, 72suffragists 66, 67 69, 70, 71, 72superego 207iJlmud 547iJnach 54Tolstoy, Leon 76, 79Torah 54unconscious mind 17, 18, 19, 20,

21USA 10,14,43,70,84,88,90V2 rockets 24votes for women 65-74Wollstonecraft, Mary 68Yom Kippur 47zodiac, signs of the 25, 26

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