Now, we are sure that only men could have made and used such things, for birds and fish or other animals do not use hatchets or spears. We are also sure that these men must have lived long, long years ago before iron and steel were known, because it must have taken long, long years for these things to have become covered up so deep by dust and dirt. We have also found the bones of the people themselves, who must have died thousands upon thousands of years ago, long before any one began to write down history. So we know that the people who were living on the earth then were working and playing, eating and fighting—doing many of the same things we are to-day—especially the fighting.
This time in the pre-history of the world, when people used such things made of stone, is therefore called The Stone Age.
These First Stone Age People we call Primitive, which simply means First as a Primer means First Reader. Primitive People were wild animals. Unlike other wild animals, however, they walked on their hind legs.
These First People had hair growing, not just on their heads, but all over their bodies, like some shaggy dogs. They had no houses of any sort in which to live. They simply lay down on the ground when night came. Later, when the earth became cold, they found caves in the rocks or in the hillsides where they could get away from the cold and storms and other wild animals. So men, women, and children of this time were called Cave People.
They spent their days hunting some animals and running and hiding from others. They caught animals by trapping them in a pit covered over with bushes, or they killed them with a club or a rock if they had a chance, or with stone-headed arrows or hatchets. They even drew pictures of these animals on the walls of their caves, scratching the picture with a pointed stone, and some of these pictures we can still see to-day.
They lived on berries and nuts and grass-seeds. They robbed the nests of birds for the eggs, which they ate raw, for they had no fire to cook with. They were blood-thirsty; they liked to drink the warm blood of animals they killed, as you would a glass of milk.
They talked to each other by some sort of grunts—
“Umfa, umfa, glug, glug.”
They made clothes of skins of animals they killed, for there was no such thing as cloth. And yet, although they were real men, they lived so much like wild animals that we call such people savages.
Primitive Men were not pleasant people. They were fearful and cruel creatures, who beat and killed and robbed whenever they had a chance.