History of the World

Humans or Homo Sapiens are unique species on Earth (and so far in the Universe ) because they have a cultural history: that's it they had wars, revolutions, religions rising and falling, scientific research and creation of new ways of communication and entertainment. There are, however, two versions of history: the supernatural one and the scientific actual one (however the scientic version doesn't deny the supernatural).

First Civilizations
10,000 years ago the last Ice Age was over and the world was once again green and lush, full of resources ready to be used by humans. During this time hunt was the main human activity but humans discovery agriculture (how this happen is unknown) and humans no longer needed to travel around.

Humans built villages that became cities which spawn the first civilizations. Societies such as ancient egypt, babylon, ancient India and primitive China gave birth to the first large-scale human constructions. Religion became influent during this time, and religious absolutism existed everywhere such as the Pharoes in Egypt or the Emperors in China. A simplistic destinction between magic and science begun during this time, thought it would have to wait until the Enlightment to the destinction to be fully complete.

Birth of Western Civilization
Somewhere at a rocky and nearly inhabitable penninsula later known as Greece a people with a unnatural thirst for knowledge, logical thinking and very fertile imagination, became devided into city-states, the most important being the city of Athens. In this city rouse the best of all political systems: democracy.

However, thought the Athenians created democracy they also created the first obstacles to it (women couldn't participate and democracy was restricted to a limited number of elite people). Logical thinking and knowledge flourished in Athens, gaving birth to the basis of modern science, so much that it's believed that some Athenians scholars were Atheist.

Rome: the rise of a empire
At west of Greece there was other less rocky penninsula where a great city was built. This city was inhabited by fierce warriors who conquered all of the penninsula and sent powerful hordes to conquer the world. The romans reached Greece which, by this time, was in decadence and easily fell. The Romans were a pragmatic people and, impressed by the logical and annalytical nature of greek culture, stole it and turn it into the official culture of their vast conquered territory (Rome was by this time a republic and had yet to became an empire).

After the conquest of Egypt, Octavius tricked the Roman Senate into gaving him untold political power by claiming that he in a theatrical way didn't want it. Once granted with power Octavius was self-proclaimed as emperor and would lead to long tradition of emperors (with diferent dinasties rising from time to time).

Religiously speaking the Roman Empire was liberal, thought the Imperial Cult was present (but it didn't prevent worship of deities). Countries and empires conquered by Rome were romanized, with local lenguague suplanted by Latin and their deities latinized (in a sense they're still the same original deities only called by the names of Roman Gods), and the Roman Empire was a multicultural center full of different religious and spiritual beliefs (that had to get along or otherwise get severly punished). This all changed with the arrival of Christianity.

Christians Take Over
Christianity was not very welcomed in the Roman Empire due to it's monotheistic and dogmatic nature (specially it's deny of typical roman traits such as sexuality and freedom of speech ). Christian were often the targets of religious intolerance and suffered from unemployment and poverty, as well the lack of protection from authorities. Then emperor Constantine I was crowned and he turn Christianity into official religion. Despite the Christian dogmas of charity and kindness toward neighbors, Constantine lead and allowed pillaging of pagan temples to support his construction of Constantinople.

Other christian emperors followed, creating more and more anti-pagan laws. The worst, however, was Theosius I who declared war on paganism forbiding people to worship pagan gods even in the privacy of their homes!!! Pagan temples were destroyed and over them Christian churches were built, along with pagan sacred texts being banned. This constant persecution of paganism lead to the it's fall and the Catholic Church was, by the time the Western Roman Empire fell a well stablized power in Europe.

Dark Ages
The Roman Empire eventualy became devided in two with the western side being conquered by the "barbarians" peoples from scandinavia. The Catholic Church work to evangilize the newcomers and to bring order to a chaotic continent. The Church wrote the bible (after previously selecting what texts were more convinient to be used) and built more churches. Actualy during this time the Church outlawn the belief in magic and the powers of witches because early Christians believed Jesus have defeated the pagan forces by ressurecting.

Outside of Europe the world was less than affected by the fall of Roman Empire, seeing the rise of some empires itself. In Asia the mongols get out of the frozen steps and conquered Persia and China. In Arabia Muhammad professed the Islam faith and lead his people in the conquest of a islamic empire. This empire was similar to the Roman Empire in religious terms, being quite liberal to the point people could critise Islam.

The Age of Reason... sort of
Islamic Empire continued to expand for the next centuries eventualy conquering the Bizantine Empire (the east side of the Roman Empire), cutting off Europe from acessing the Silk Rote (along with spices, precious stones, valuable scientific research, but who's counting?). With the acess to Asiatic products cut off Europeans had to find a way to gain acess to it. Portugal, which at the time was one of the few countries who wasn't at war, begun to explore the seas and begun go further and further down Africa, eventualy reaching India.

With a sea route to Asia avaliable, Portugal and later Spain, England and Netherlands, became very rich and powerful countries. Of course wealth resulted in envy creating more wars. Pagan lore begun to be rediscovered back in Italy which was splintered into city-states and greek and roman art was reatached into Christian Art, resulting in a revival. But art was not the only thing revived from paganism: witchcraft also came along, and in a few years sects of occultists were commonplace in Italy.

Christianity splint into diferent factions, the Catholics, the Church of England, the Calvinist and the Lutherians, each claiming to be the True Christianity. This splint of power along with more wars, famine, poverty and bad lucky harvests resulted in a very depressed and pissed off populations. In Germany a misogynistic and most likely mentally unstable priest named Henrich Kramer wrote an infamous manual of witch hunting, the Malleus Maleficarum, which claimed that women were inferior to man and that witchcraft was real and came from the Devil. Thanks to the invention of printing this book became a best seller and, despite the claims of Kramer that God would never allow innocent people to be killed, his book was responsible for the murder of an uncountable number of women.

Liberal Revolutions
Three hundreds passed and Europe was a place full of intolerance, hate, persecution where anything that acted outside of normality and the strict rules of society was to be killed at sight. By this time witch trials were common place resulting in people to flee to the Americas. Groups such as the Puritans came and they brought their fear of witchcraft with them, resulting in Salem's.

In France, people begun to plot against the political order and eventualy they came out in the form of the French Revolution. The fires of concepts long forgotten such as freedom and equality burned at the hearts of people who rouse to stand against opressing spoiled brats. France sought to free Europe by building a european empire but was stopped by the british and the old order was restablished. Science, by this time, make it to reach Earth and the Industrial Revolution took it's first steps on England.

The french eventualy took down the british-stablished order and became a republic and liberal revolutions happened across Europe such as in Portugal and (OF COURSE) the American Revolution!

World Wars and the Bipolar Politics
Liberal thinking didn't make it to reach all of Europe sadly and Germany and Austria remained tyranical empires that lusted for power. World War I destroyed european prosperity, the United States became the sole SuperPower and Germany was blamed as the sole responsible for the war. This resulted in extreme poverty and a lot of xenophobic atitude that allowed the rise of Hitler. Capitalism proved to be unefficient in Europe and thinkers developed the Communist ideology that took over Russia, creating the infamous Soviet Union.

The wicked satanist caused World War II which was more devasting than the first and destroyed whatever was left standing. Millions of jews were persecuted in the Holocaust and nuclear bombs murdered innocent japonese citiziens. After the war Europe was leveled to the ground (to say the least) and two sly dogs battled to have it: the United States and the Soviet Union. American politicians saw the destruction in Europe as a danger to the economical interest of America and created the Marshall Plan to rebuilt the continent. The Soviet Union colapsed after fourthy years of Cold War and it seemed that liberalism would finally take over the world and create the perfect society...

Now
This thinking was destroyed by the islamic attacks of 11/9 in New York. The attack murdered three thousand people and destroyed two important buildings. Religious extremism flourished in the Arabian World during the Cold War due to the nacionalistics dictadures created by the United States to protect it's interests.

Religious intolerance is everywhere in the world, there's gobal warming and now a worldwide recession. The future of mankind is uncertain...