Excerpt from The Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times in India, South-Western Asia and Southern Europe The Essays in this volume have been written to help those who, like myself, are trying to trace the paths worn by the ruling races of the world through the tangled jungles of past time, and thus to learn the real history of the childhood of humanity during the ages when national life began its troubled journey towards its ultimate and, as yet, unseen goal. They call especial attention to the chronological data supplied by social laws and customs, mythic history and ritual, and prove that these when studied provide guiding marks from which we can deduce, even in ages which have been hitherto called prehistoric, the order in which the leading epochs of civilisation succeeded one another. The great discoverers who have distinguished the Palaeolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Ages, and have brought before our eyes vivid pictures of infant civilised life entombed in the ancient cave dwellings, pile villages, burial-grounds, and ruined cities of these periods, have already proved that the history of the past, before national annals telling of the deeds of individual rulers and leaders of mankind began to be written, is not shrouded in impenetrable darkness. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."