I'm trying to create a new Laravel project via "laravel new project_name". Everything works well until I try to view it in a browser.

$ larvel new laravel
bash: larvel: command not found...

$ composer global require "laravel/installer=~1.1"
Changed current directory to /home/username/.composer
./composer.json has been updated
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
Nothing to install or update
Generating autoload files

$ laravel new laravel
Crafting application...
Generating optimized class loader
Application key [5KwxlNJO2fdnBtuzuUmZuYWrFTXntYqU] set successfully.
Application ready! Build something amazing.

When I go to http://localhost/project_name/public The browser returns the following:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'class' (T_CLASS), expecting identifier (T_STRING) or variable (T_VARIABLE) or '{' or '$' in/var/www/html/laravel/public/index.php on line 50

I updated PHP to version 5.6.9 and repeated the process based on another thread in this forum. But that didn't change anything.

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.