[WHAT THE EARLIEST MEN DID FOR US]
You are now going to read a chapter of history. It will help you to see how our ancestors learned some things that are very common to us today, but which had to be learned before the wonderful comforts we enjoy were possible.
You will like to study history if you keep in mind that it does not just tell of something that happened a long time ago, but that it shows how our civilization with its homes and schools and churches and government and our great railroads and steamships and factories came into existence. The thing we call civilization has grown and changed in thousands of years much as you have grown and changed in the few years that you can remember.
You will need to read this selection very carefully. Your teacher will ask you the questions at the end and probably a good many more. See if you can read it the first time so thoroughly that you can answer all the questions. It will help you very much if you will write topics as you go along. In the fourth paragraph you will find a list of things that man has always needed. If you use each of these things as a heading and under it make a list of the steps of man's progress, you will probably find that you have mastered the selection.
History is the story of what men have done in the past. It was not until men had learned how to write that they could keep a record of what they did. But men lived upon the earth for many thousand years before they knew how to write. In that early time they learned how to do many things which we are still doing and to make many things which we are still making and using. In these ways they did much to make life what it is for us.
How is it possible for us to know anything about what life was like in those ancient times when men could not write? Did you ever find an Indian arrow-head? Perhaps you have seen a collection of stone arrow-heads and axes. These relics and others like them tell us many things about the people who made them. Then there are people now living, like the natives of Australia or some of the tribes of American Indians, who still use, or used until very recently, these crude stone implements, and who live very much as our own ancestors lived many thousand years ago.
The earliest men lived but little better than the animals in the forest about them. They were without shelter or clothing and had only such food as they could find from day to day. Men have either found or made everything that we now have. Early man possessed a great advantage over all the animals because he had a better brain and a wonderful pair of hands with which he could make the weapons, tools, and other things that he needed.
Men have always needed food, shelter, clothing, and the means of protection against the dangers around them. It took our early ancestors many thousand years to learn how to provide themselves with these simple necessities of life.
At first men lived upon the roots, herbs, wild berries, and fruits in the forest. Sometimes they found birds' nests in the trees and ate the eggs or the young birds. Occasionally they found a dead bird or animal and thus learned to like the taste of flesh. They hunted for shellfish by the seashore and caught fish in the streams and lakes. Then they began to kill the smaller animals with stones or clubs and in this way they became meat eaters. When men had learned how to make knives, spears, and bows and arrows, they could kill the larger animals and get a better supply of food.
For a long time all food was eaten raw, because the use of fire was unknown. We do not know how man discovered fire. He may have kindled it first from a tree set aflame by the lightning. By and by he found that a spark could be produced by striking two stones together in the right way or that he could make a fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together.