Something like this should work:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ index.php?pageID=$1
First line turns on mod_rewrite. Second line sets the base URL to / (it's annoying, but you have to set it to the base path you're dealing with). Third and fourth lines make sure the request doesn't exist as a file, or as a directory. And the last line is the actual magic; basically it searches for "anything", captures what it finds in $1, and "rewrites" the URL to index.php?pageID=$1. If you learn to use regexes, you can do much more complicated things as well.