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

by Frederic Arnold Kummer

Tul looked at the leg, smelt it, and then being hungry, began to eat. It was the first time that he or any other man had ever eaten cooked food, and the taste of it pleased him, so he told Ni-Va to eat the other leg. This Ni-Va did, and he too liked it very much, because it was much more tender than raw meat, and had a better taste. They took the body of the bird home and gave it to Ai-Ab, who was sitting beside the fire.

Ai-Ab, who was also hungry, smelt the cooked food, and when the boys showed him how they had eaten the legs, he tore off a great piece of the breast and devoured it. The rest he gave to some of the women.

Now Ai-Ab, although he was slow and lazy, was also very smart. When he tasted the cooked meat, and saw how good it was, an idea came to him. He did not say anything to the two boys about it, but when the men came home from hunting, bringing with them the bodies of two young deer, Ai-Ab took a large piece of the deer meat, and putting it on the end of a stick, held it over the flames of the fire.

The other men crowded about, laughing, because they thought Ai-Ab had gone mad and was burning up his dinner. But when the smell of the cooking meat came to them, they liked it, and stopped laughing. Soon Ai-Ab drew the hot crisp meat from the flames and began to eat it, and then they all wanted to taste it, but Ai-Ab told them if they wanted any to cook it for themselves. Some of the others followed his example, holding the bits of meat over the fire on the points of their spears, and it was not long before the whole tribe took to cooking their food instead of eating it raw. They kept the fire burning day and night, and Ai-Ab watched it, and kept it going, and he was the very first cook among Men.

"They have found that Fire is very useful to them," said Mother Nature, "for it not only keeps them warm, but it cooks their food. I must teach them to take better care of it." So she told Rain to sprinkle the fire a little, but not to put it quite out.

When the cave men saw that the rain was putting out their fire, they were very angry, for they did not want to lose it, but although they piled on more and more wood, the flames sank lower and lower, and at last the fire was nearly out.

Then Ai-Ab, who was the keeper of the fire, and had shown himself so smart, took a burning stick from the bottom of the pile, and ran with it into the cave where he and his people lived. It was a large cave, because Ai-Ab's father was one of the head men of the tribe, and had several wives and a great many children.

Ai-Ab took the burning stick into the cave and dropped it in the middle of the floor. Then he gathered some dry grass and leaves from the beds on which he and the others slept, and threw them on the coals. The fire blazed up at once, and his brothers and sisters ran out and got armfuls of twigs and branches, and although the twigs were wet, they finally began to burn.

When the other cave men saw what Ai-Ab had done, they made fires in their caves, as well, and if one went out, they would borrow some hot coals from a neighbour. Once, however, during the rainy season, when all the wood was wet, they came very near losing their precious fire, so after that, the head man of the tribe told two old men, who were not strong enough to go out after food, to watch the fire and keep it going in a cave by themselves, which they filled with dry wood, and while one watched, the other slept, and in this way the fire never went out. The Fire seemed something sacred to them, and after a time, they got into a way of coming to the cave and saying prayers or making wishes to it, and thought of it as a sort of god. And in worshipping Fire, or the Sun, or any of the other great forces that helped them, the cave men, although they did not know it, were really worshipping God, who made all these things for their use.