The Silent Readers: Sixth Reader

by William Dodge Lewis; Ethel Maltby Gehres; Albert Lindsay Rowland

The making of fire was one of the most wonderful inventions in the world. Men could now cook their food. At first they roasted bits of meat before the blaze or in the hot ashes. Later, when they had learned how to make vessels that would hold water, they began to boil all kinds of food over the fire.

For a long time men procured their food by hunting, trapping, and fishing. During this time they began to capture and tame the young of some of the wild animals. Probably the dog was the first domestic animal. The cow was also domesticated at a very early period. Man used her meat and milk for food and her skin for clothing. He made tools and implements out of her bones and horns. No other animal has been more useful to him. The goat and the sheep, the hog and the ass, and later the horse, were tamed by early men long before real history began. After these animals had been domesticated by the hunters and trappers, some men became shepherds and herdsmen and wandered from place to place with their flocks and herds in search of the best pastures.

Presently another step was taken toward civilized life. Men had long known that the seeds of some of the wild grasses and plants were good to eat. Now some one noticed that if these seeds were sown they sprang up and brought forth many more seeds. Then it was discovered that the seeds grew better and yielded a more abundant crop if the ground were broken up and made soft before the seed was sown. Because of these discoveries some men began to be farmers. By cultivation, the wild grasses which grew in the fields or beside the rivers were developed into wheat, oats, barley, and rice, the great cereals of the world.

When men began to procure their food by cultivating the soil it became necessary for them to remain in the same place in order to gather the harvest when it ripened. They could no longer wander from place to place as they had done when they were only hunters or shepherds. They now began to live in permanent villages and to cultivate the land lying near by. In this way the beginning of farming led to a settled life and the making of permanent homes.

Probably the earliest men had only such shelter from the rain and protection from wild animals as the trees gave them. After a time men began to live in dens and caves in the earth. These people are called the "cave dwellers". Still later men built huts by bending young trees together, weaving branches between them, and covering the whole structure with leaves and bark. When the hut was built of poles covered with the skins of animals it became a tent. Many of the people who wandered from place to place with their flocks and herds dwelt in tents.

When men settled near the fields that they were beginning to cultivate, they built permanent homes of stone plastered with mud or of bricks made of clay and dried in the sun. The roofs were covered with brush or timber. Then fire places and rude chimneys were added to these simple houses, and in other ways man's dwelling place was gradually improved.

The first clothing was probably made from the leaves of trees or from grasses matted together. When man became a good hunter he wore the skins of the animals that he killed. The ancestors of all of us were once clad in skins. The women of those early days used to cure the skins of small animals by drying them. They then made garments of them by sewing them together with needles of bone and the sinews of animals for thread.

The women scraped and worked the large skins until they were soft and pliable. These they used for clothing, or for blankets, or for the covering of their tents. Still later, the women learned to spin yarn from wool sheared from the sheep and from the thread of the flax which they were beginning to raise. The next step was to weave the yarn and the thread into woolen and linen cloth.

It was because early man had the mind to invent and the hands to make the weapons, tools, and utensils which he needed that he was able to make such progress in procuring food, shelter, and clothing.

Man's first weapon was a club. A stone which he used to crack nuts with probably was his earliest tool. At first he simply found stones of the right shape for his purpose. Then he began to chip a piece of flint until it had a rough edge. Now he had a hatchet as well as a hammer. Because he held this hatchet in his hand it has been called a fist-hatchet. A great many of these fist-hatchets have been found. In the course of time man learned how to use thongs of rawhide to bind handles to his fist-hatchets. Now he had axes and spears.