The Development of Transportation
A long time later, after the animals had been domesticated and men had come to own flocks and herds and other things that we call property, the father became the head of the family, as we know it today. Our kind of a family with the father as its head existed before history began.
Words had to be invented, just as tools were. At first men had no language. Very slowly they gave names to the things about them and learned to talk to each other. Mothers sang jingles and lullabies to their babies. Around the campfire at night men told how they had hunted the wild beasts. Women talked as they gathered and prepared food or dressed the skins of the wild animals. Mothers wanted their children to be brave and wise, so they told them stories about the bravest and wisest of their clan in the olden time. Perhaps this is why children, and older people too for that matter, have always been fond of stories. In these ways languages grew and the simple beginnings of literature were made.
People have always been fond of ornaments. The earliest men wore necklaces of teeth and claws. Later they made beads of bronze or of gold. The women tried to make their baskets and their clothes as beautiful as possible by coloring them with natural dyes. Some of the men liked to draw pictures of wild animals upon pieces of bone or upon the walls of their homes in the caves. People learned to count upon their fingers, and to use various parts of their bodies, like the finger, the hand, and the arm, as measures of length. For example, the cubit of which we read in the Bible was the distance from the elbow to the end of the middle finger. Our arts and sciences have grown from such crude and simple beginnings.
Our early ancestors lived in fear of many things about them. They thought that fire, the rivers, the sea, the sun, and many other natural objects were alive and could harm them or help them. So they offered gifts to all these things and prayed to them for help. Early men also believed that the souls of their ancestors lived after death, and that these ancestors could help them or harm them. They thought that if they offered gifts of food, and drink at the graves of their dead, the spirits of the departed would be pleased and would protect the living members of their families. If, on the other hand, the dead were neglected or forgotten they would become evil spirits who might bring great misfortune upon the living. They also thought that if the dead were not properly buried they would become ghosts, haunting the places they had known when they were alive. Because of these ideas early men were very careful to worship their ancestors. The first religions of the world grew out of these beliefs and practices of primitive men with reference to nature and to their own ancestors.
—From "Our Beginnings in Europe and America",
by Smith Burnham.
Courtesy of The John C. Winston Co.
Questions
1. Make a list of the things in everyday life which we take for granted as necessities which the earliest men had to learn how to make.
2. What was the earliest important discovery made by man? Do you think this was as important as the discovery of electricity? Why? Name any inventions that have come into common use within your own or your parents' lifetime.
3. Before man discovered fire, what did he eat? Mention two steps by which he came to have better food to eat.
4. Mention in order five kinds of dwellings which the early men lived in, and three kinds of clothing which they wore.
5. What useful things did women do in these early days?
6. Why is your hand more useful than the paw of an animal?
7. From what source did each article of food on your dinner table to-day come? How many people had something to do with this food before it reached you?
8. Compare the clothing of people to-day with that of primitive man. Are we more or less dependent on others for food and clothing than primitive man?
9. We are still making new words. Make a list of words that have come into use since the World War began.