ebook - The Ancient World (1 of 7)

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Chapter One - Prehistoric Times The Old Stone Age

Chapter One - Prehistoric Times

Cave-Painting Of A Bison - It is about five feet long.

A. The Old Stone Age

History really begins when men were civilised enough to set down a record of their actions by cutting

marks in clay and stone, or by writing on paper and parchment. They first began to do this about six

thousand years ago, and we find them in these records already living in great cities, masters of arts and

crafts, and divided into humbly- and nobly-born, poor and rich, all subjects of powerful kings. But perhaps

you will be curious enough to ask whether we know anything about men's lives before written History

begins. Yes, we know something about that too, and our knowledge is the result of much clever and

patient study of the remains left by those very, very distant ancestors of ours, such as their own bones, the

bones of the animals they hunted or tended, bits of their pottery or clothing, and, perhaps the most

interesting of all, the wonderful drawings which they scratched on bones or painted on cave walls. The

study of pre-historic man is by no means complete yet, but we can at least take a few glimpses at the long,

long ago.

The first glimpse shows us the earth as it was from thirty to twenty thousand years ago, and you will

hardly want to go further back than that! The oceans and continents had not yet taken the shapes that we

know to-day. The land masses were less broken up by seas. The climate of Europe in those far-off days

varied in a mysterious way.

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Chapter One - Prehistoric Times The Old Stone Age

Reindeer And Salmon, Cut On A Piece Of Stag's Horn

For centuries it would be much hotter than it is to-day, then a long period of cold weather would set in,

there would be endless snow-storms, till a thick sheet of ice covered the "top" half of our hemisphere, and

even seas froze. Men would slowly retreat south before the advancing, pale-blue ice-wall, till a milder age

returned. Under such conditions Man made little progress for thousands of years. You can think of the

people of the early Old Stone Age, as it is called, as squat and hairy, with long, powerful arms and short,

thick legs. They have low foreheads with a ridge over the eyes, chins that slope backwards, flat, broad

noses and long, thick lips that barely cover their enormous teeth.

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Chapter One - Prehistoric Times The Old Stone Age

Man Of Early Old Stone Age Making Flint Implement.

If they wear anything at all, it will be some animal's hide. While the women perhaps look for roots and

berries, eggs or shell-fish worth eating, the men spend a good deal of their time hunting—for that is the

main source of their food—various types of hairy elephant and rhinoceros, hippopotamus, the huge saber-

toothed tiger, the boar, reindeer, bison and elk. At first their weapons were stone or wooden clubs and

stakes.

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Chapter One - Prehistoric Times The Old Stone Age

Old Stone Age Flint Hand-Axes

Old Stone Age Spear-Head

Then they learned how to knock sharp-edged flakes off flints and fasten them with sinews and vegetable

fibers into the split top of a branch so as to form a spear. The core of the flint lashed to a stout stick would

form a rough hammer or axe. You may not think such weapons would be of much help, say, against a

monster tiger or a fifteen-foot-high elephant, but often the quarry was first lured into some trap or pit. The

meat was roasted, for there were no pots of any kind for boiling or even storing water. But men had

already made the tremendous, all-important discovery of Fire. Thanks to that, they could survive the

bitterly cold weather that often prevailed for long periods, they could lighten the darkness with torches,

make their food more enjoyable, harden the points of stakes and wooden spears, and scare away the tiger

that prowled round the camp at night.

How the Old Stone Age people produced fire we can guess from the methods used to-day by primitive

tribes, who in many respects have not risen above the level of the earliest men. By studying the habits of

such tribes, we get much clearer ideas of how the first men lived. The usual method of making fire among

such people is to twirl a stick very quickly, either between the hands or by means of a thong, in a hole in a

block of wood. The friction heats the tiny splinters that break off, till they burst into flame. It is also

possible that quite early on some genius discovered that a shower of sparks could be produced by striking

a flint against certain metallic stones, and that dried moss could be set alight in this way. This method,

much later improved into the flint, steel and tinder outfit, became the usual way of producing fire right

down to modern times.

There seems to have been little difference of race at this period; men looked pretty much the same

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Chapter One - Prehistoric Times The Old Stone Age

everywhere. And we do not see signs of fighting on any large scale. Settlements were usually made on the

banks of rivers (for remember that there was nothing to carry water in), particularly if there was a good

supply of flints near by.

Point Of A Wooden Spear, Old Stone Age

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ChapterOne-PrehistoricTimesTheOldStoneAgeChapterOne-PrehistoricTimesCave-PaintingOfABison-Itisaboutfivefeetlong.A.TheOldStoneAgeHistoryreallybeginswhenmenwerecivilisedenoughtosetdownarecordoftheiractionsbycuttingmarksinclayandstone,orbywritingonpaperandparchment.Theyfirs begantodothisaboutsixthous...

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