And the mother sings to the child:
"Though a baby,
Soon a-hunting after berries
Will be going."
Early men believed that since they themselves are alive and move, all other things that move also are alive, and have feelings and likes and dislikes as men have. The rustling leaves, the waving grass, a rolling stone, a drifting cloud, the rising moon—all are to them alive, and many of them are to be feared.
The speech of the cave and the shell men was made up of few words, and the meaning was helped out by motions of the hands and body. They knew little outside of their forest life, and probably could not count beyond three. But the power to grow was in them, and from such rude beginnings came the men who built the cities of Paris and London.
CHAPTER XIX
THE PEOPLE OF OUR TIME WHO WERE MOST LIKE THE CAVE MEN
Up to a short time ago, on the island of Tasmania, near Australia, there lived a people more nearly like the cave men than any people we know about. Their weapons were made of limestone and were without handles, because they did not know how to fix handles to them. Their boat was a raft of bark bundles and was pushed by a pole. They lived under shelters made of boughs, and made fire by twirling a stick on a piece of soft wood. They drew rude pictures on bark; and they were quick and cunning about hunting, but knew little more. They believed that the shadow of a thing was its other self—the self that traveled in dreams and that lived after the body died; and that the echo was the talking shadow. Like the cave men these people were hunters, without any tamed animal to help them.
