IN the first part of this volume the peoples discussed were classified either according to the physical or cultural stage in evolution which they had reached or according to the locality in which their material remains had first been found by archaeologists. Such terms as Neanderthal man, the Palaeolithic age, Badarians and the Tell Halaf culture are definitions with a limited application which are useful for scientific purposes, but they are nevertheless a cloak for anonymity. It was the invention of writing which enabled man to record his existence as an individual and thus to provide later generations with a means of determining his identity.

At the time when the events which are described in the opening chapters of this second part were taking place, writing had come into use in Mesopotamia and Egypt, and in Elam too, but its early script has only recently been deciphered. Elsewhere, with the possible exception of the Indus Valley, man seems to have been illiterate. Very early records, however, offer the historian but limited assistance; they generally refer to isolated incidents without giving much indication of the background. Chronicles compiled in later times supplement this sketchy information to a significant degree, but they are not always reliable. Biographical texts in narrative form do not seem to have been written before the middle of the Third Millennium B.C., the earliest known being inscriptions in the tomb of an Egyptian official named Metjen, who died in the reign of Sneferu (c. 2600 B.C).