The World’s Bloodiest History: Massacre, Genocide, and the Scars They Left on Civilization. By Joseph Cummins. Fairwinds Press, 2009. 320 pages, softcover. $19.95.

It is a chilling reminder that the dinosaur brain is still present and waiting for an opportunity to take over.

We have meet the enemy and he is us. —Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo

Civilization allows humans to live, love and work together while sublimating, to a degree, personal desires and goals. It has allowed mankind to make great strides in the arts, philosophy, sciences and standards of living. Yet, human beings are still subject to the darker side of nature where the "dinosaur brain" resides with baser passions like hatred and fear that, when they infect a group of "civilized" people, can unleash a destructive miasma that causes untold sorrows to all of humanity. Joseph Cummins examines 18 examples, cases of massacres and/or genocides from the ancient past to today, in The World’s Bloodiest History: Massacre, Genocide, And The Marks They Left On Civilization.

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Cummins used two criteria in deciding which historic events would be included in this dark and bloody history: an event’s brutality and its historical impact on civilization.

Curiously, the first chapter deals with the sacking of Carthage by Rome which, while historically noteworthy, I do not feel meets the threshold set by the author’s criteria. First, sackings such as that of Carthage were customary in wars of that period. Second, the author accepts the common fallacy that the Romans actually salted the earth to prevent crops from growing in Carthage’s surrounding area. Looking at the simple facts would prove that "salted the earth" was an analogy and not a statement of fact. Salt in the ancient period was a treasure. Roman troops were PAID in salt (hence, our word salary). The amount of salt needed to do such destruction would be prohibitively expensive no matter how much hatred there was between Rome and Carthage. The suffering of the people of Carthage was severe, but in those times it wasn’t unique and, hence, was not especially brutal for the time. It did however affect the world by removing the one major threat to Roman hegemony of the Mediterranean area.

The next three chapters deal with European affairs, starting with the conquest of Aztecs (or Mexica as they called themselves) by Spanish conquistadors, the classic story of how a technologically more advanced people overthrew and destroyed a more populous society. It affected the course of history in that the wealth that flowed from the Spanish conquest led the rest of Europe to want the resources of the New World for themselves, and so the Americas were opened to exploration and exploitation.

Roughly 50 years after Spain’s destruction of the Aztecs came the next macabre event in the book, the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, in which over 100,000 Protestant men, women and children were slaughtered in a single week by the French army in concert with Catholic clergy. For a religion founded on peace, love and kindness to one another, Christians often seem to find new and unique ways to kill in the name of God. While there was a schism between Protestant and Catholic faiths, the real powder keg in this massacre was political. However, the author rightly notes that, overall, this massacre didn’t have as much effect in the political affairs of France as it did in intensifying the schism between Protestant and Catholic theologies that is still felt to some degree today.

The last chapter in this group deals with what was a relatively minor affair locally that had significant impact on the world at large-the Indian attack on the East India Company that resulted in the black hole of Calcutta, a small prison cell so crammed with English prisoners that a number of them were crushed to death. Following this incident India lost its independence and Great Britain claimed the country as the jewel of the Imperial crown.

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