The First Days of Man, as Narrated Quite Simply for Young Readers

by Frederic Arnold Kummer

As the centuries went by, they once more found, in the marshes below the valley, fish which had made their way up from the Ocean, and from the bones of these they made smaller and sharper needles, for sewing the leather they had begun to use. Strips of this leather, called thongs, or the twisted entrails of animals, called gut, took the place of the cords made of marsh grasses, for binding on the heads of spears, or axes, and as the cave men took to wearing skins and furs, they began to lose the hair on their bodies, and they looked less and less like animals, and more and more like human beings.

Besides getting their food by hunting, the cave people soon learned many ways of trapping animals and other game. In the case of the larger beasts they sometimes made traps by digging deep holes or pits in the ground and then fixing upright in the bottom of these pits many strong, sharp stakes, with keen points. Over the pits they would lay a thin covering of branches and leaves. These traps were placed in the paths the animals usually took when going to the streams and ponds to get water. When the heavy beast walked on the thin covering of the pit, it would give way, and he would fall on the sharp stakes, and either be killed, or wounded so that the hunters could make short work of him with their spears.

Smaller animals and birds they trapped by snares of different sorts. One kind they made by bending down a stout sapling until it almost touched the ground, and hooking the end of it under a notched stake driven in the earth. On the end of the sapling was a noose of cord, or gut. This noose they spread in a circle around the notched stake. On the stake they tied a bit of food, for bait. When the animal tried to pull the food off the stake, the bent sapling would slip out of the notch and fly upward, and the animal or bird would be caught in the noose.

In many such ways the cave men got food for themselves and their families.

The Sun was very much surprised to see how quickly the cave men had begun to learn.

"They are smarter than any of the other animals on Earth," he said.

"Yes," said Mother Nature. "They are smarter, because they have begun to use their brains, to think, just as I told you they would. But they have really only just started. If you watch them carefully, you will see many surprising things, in the next two or three thousand years."

"They seem very cold," said the Sun, "even with their caves, and their fur coats. I have a hard time to keep them warm, in the Winter."

"I will attend to that," Mother Nature told him. "I am about to send them a very wonderful thing."