The Silent Readers Part 20

For many thousand years, stone arrow-heads, knives, and axes were made with rough, chipped edges. This time is sometimes called the Old Stone Age. When men had learned to make better tools of their stone knives and axes by grinding and polishing them to a smooth, sharp edge, they had entered upon the New Stone Age.

The next great forward step in human progress was taken when men discovered metals and began to use them. Copper was the first metal used, but it was soon found that it was too soft for making many articles.

Presently it was discovered that if a little tin were mixed with the copper it made a harder metal called bronze. So many weapons, tools, and ornaments were made of bronze that the time when it was used is called the Bronze Age.

Iron is the most useful of all the metals. It is much harder than bronze and better suited in every way for making tools and implements.

It took man a long time to learn how to use it, because it is not so easy to work as copper and bronze. When man made this "king of metals"

his servant, he traveled a long, long way on the road which leads to civilization.

The men invented the weapons and some of the tools of the earliest ages. But it is probable that the women first made many useful tools and utensils. Women wove the first baskets to use in gathering and carrying berries, nuts, and other articles of food. They used to cover fish with clay in order to bake them in the coals and they noticed how the fires hardened the clay. Then by molding clay over baskets so that they could be hung over the fire, women gradually learned how to make earthenware pots and bowls. Afterwards they cut spoons, ladles, and drinking cups from sh.e.l.ls, gourds, and the horns of animals. In these ways our foremothers made their first cooking utensils and their first dishes for holding and serving food and drink.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLAY BOWLS AND WOVEN BASKETS]

Women were not only the first basket-makers and potters. They were also the first spinners and weavers. They ground the first grain into flour with mortars and pestles of stone. Later they made simple mills for this purpose. In fact, women who lived before the dawn of history, began nearly all the household arts and crafts and in this way helped all the people who have lived since then.

Our earliest ancestors, like ourselves, found it necessary to carry things from place to place. But they lived long before the days of the railroad and the steamship. The first burdens were borne by the women.

They followed the men who hunted, and carried the meat and the hides of the slain animals back to the camp. After the dog, the donkey, and the horse had been tamed, articles to be transported were packed upon their backs or dragged upon the ground behind them. Sleds were made in the northern lands. Canoes and boats were built by the dwellers by the rivers and the sea. Last of all, the wheeled cart was invented. All these things are older than history.

We often call our own time the age of invention. The steam engine, the telegraph, and the many uses of electricity are all modern. They have made wonderful changes in our ways of living. But these changes in our lives are not as remarkable as were those made in the lives of our earliest ancestors so long ago by such inventions as the fishhook and the bow and arrow, and such discoveries as how to make fire, how to make pottery, how to domesticate animals and plants, and how to smelt and work the metals.

Nowadays children have homes and are cared for by their parents. Among the very earliest men there was nothing like our homes or our families. Each person found his own food and took care of himself. Of course, mothers cared for their babies, but n.o.body took care of a child after he was large enough to find his own food. Then he had to shift for himself. When he wanted his breakfast or his dinner he dug roots or hunted for berries, nuts, or acorns. Sometimes he feasted upon birds' eggs or upon a rabbit or a squirrel which he had caught.

The honey which he found in the nests of the wild bees was his only candy and he was apt to get well stung in taking it. He lived in constant fear of the wild animals around him and usually slept in a tree for safety. He spent his entire life in this way.

There are many things that people can do better by working together.

It took many years for early men to learn to help one another. When they became cave dwellers and learned how to make fire, the first family group began to be formed. This group was called the clan. The clan simply means those who were kin to each other; that is, a number of men and women who believed that they were descended from a common ancestor. At first the common ancestor was a woman, the clan mother.

In those days, relationship was always counted on the mother's side.

When a man married he went to live with the clan of his wife. In the course of time groups of clans came to be called tribes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRANSPORTATION]

A long time later, after the animals had been domesticated and men had come to own flocks and herds and other things that we call property, the father became the head of the family, as we know it today. Our kind of a family with the father as its head existed before history began.

Words had to be invented, just as tools were. At first men had no language. Very slowly they gave names to the things about them and learned to talk to each other. Mothers sang jingles and lullabies to their babies. Around the campfire at night men told how they had hunted the wild beasts. Women talked as they gathered and prepared food or dressed the skins of the wild animals. Mothers wanted their children to be brave and wise, so they told them stories about the bravest and wisest of their clan in the olden time. Perhaps this is why children, and older people too for that matter, have always been fond of stories. In these ways languages grew and the simple beginnings of literature were made.

People have always been fond of ornaments. The earliest men wore necklaces of teeth and claws. Later they made beads of bronze or of gold. The women tried to make their baskets and their clothes as beautiful as possible by coloring them with natural dyes. Some of the men liked to draw pictures of wild animals upon pieces of bone or upon the walls of their homes in the caves. People learned to count upon their fingers, and to use various parts of their bodies, like the finger, the hand, and the arm, as measures of length. For example, the cubit of which we read in the Bible was the distance from the elbow to the end of the middle finger. Our arts and sciences have grown from such crude and simple beginnings.

Our early ancestors lived in fear of many things about them. They thought that fire, the rivers, the sea, the sun, and many other natural objects were alive and could harm them or help them. So they offered gifts to all these things and prayed to them for help. Early men also believed that the souls of their ancestors lived after death, and that these ancestors could help them or harm them. They thought that if they offered gifts of food, and drink at the graves of their dead, the spirits of the departed would be pleased and would protect the living members of their families. If, on the other hand, the dead were neglected or forgotten they would become evil spirits who might bring great misfortune upon the living. They also thought that if the dead were not properly buried they would become ghosts, haunting the places they had known when they were alive. Because of these ideas early men were very careful to worship their ancestors. The first religions of the world grew out of these beliefs and practices of primitive men with reference to nature and to their own ancestors.

--_From "Our Beginnings in Europe and America", by Smith Burnham.

Courtesy of The John C. Winston Co._

QUESTIONS

1. Make a list of the things in everyday life which we take for granted as necessities which the earliest men had to learn how to make.

2. What was the earliest important discovery made by man? Do you think this was as important as the discovery of electricity? Why?

Name any inventions that have come into common use within your own or your parents' lifetime.

3. Before man discovered fire, what did he eat? Mention two steps by which he came to have better food to eat.

4. Mention in order five kinds of dwellings which the early men lived in, and three kinds of clothing which they wore.

5. What useful things did women do in these early days?

6. Why is your hand more useful than the paw of an animal?

7. From what source did each article of food on your dinner table to-day come? How many people had something to do with this food before it reached you?

8. Compare the clothing of people to-day with that of primitive man. Are we more or less dependent on others for food and clothing than primitive man?

9. We are still making new words. Make a list of words that have come into use since the World War began.

TRY THIS

This nonsense test must be worked out carefully or it may fool you. You will need only a small piece of paper for your answers.

1. If your name is Geraldine, or if you are not yet past 37 years of age, or

"If lollypops grow on b.u.t.ternut trees And G.o.dgillies ride on the galloping breeze"--

sign your name anywhere on your paper. Then, if you have signed your name, never mind the second paragraph, but skip to the third.

2. Rub out your name and write the name of the first president of the United States in its stead. Then take the remaining paragraph.

3. Write your name again in some other part of your paper and hand it in.

PUTTING WORDS WHERE THEY BELONG

Arrange your paper with your name on the first line and your grade on the second line. Divide the rest of your paper into four parts with lines drawn as shown below. Let the lines be drawn up as far as the third line of your paper.

SHIP BUILDING AGRICULTURE MINING MANUFACTURING

Write the words, SHIP BUILDING, AGRICULTURE, MINING, MANUFACTURING, at the top of the four s.p.a.ces on the fourth line, as shown above.

Below is a long list of words that is not very well arranged. On your paper re-arrange the words so that every word that concerns SHIP BUILDING is placed in the first list, and every word that concerns AGRICULTURE is placed in the second list, and every word that concerns MINING or MANUFACTURING is placed in its proper list. If you finish before the others wait quietly for them to complete their work.

ore crane mast dock mill loom bulkheads blast weaving cultivation drill crop irrigation keel fertilizer carpets launch safety-lamp silk dyes reaping lace soil rigging riveter pick pump cave-in shaft spinning anchor shuttle miner steel plates elevator sowing harvester grain textiles tractor