The First Days of Man, as Narrated Quite Simply for Young ReadersKummer, Frederic Arnold
General
The First Days of Man, as Narrated Quite Simply for Young Readers
Kummer, Frederic Arnold
Cave dwellers -- Juvenile literature; Prehistoric peoples -- Juvenile literature
Cold and Rain laughed when they heard this, for they loved to make the
funny little creatures dance, so they poured down such a bitter cold
rain that Ma-Ra and the others were chilled to the bone.
Ma-Ra, his teeth chattering from the cold, looked at the skin he had
just stripped from a small bear. The skin was still warm, and without
thinking he wrapped it about his head and shoulders to keep off the
cold rain. His friends did not understand what he was about, at first,
but soon they saw that Ma-Ra was warm, while they were not, and they
tried to take the skin away from him, but he would not give it up.
When the rain was over, and the party had returned to the valley, Ma-Ra
took the skin of the bear with him and hung it up on the wall of the
cave.
The next day, when he went to get it, he was very much disappointed to
find that it had dried hard and stiff as a board, and seemed no longer
of any use to him.
Now Ma-Ra had begun to think quite a good deal, and he remembered
that when the skin was soft, the day before, it had been moist, so he
took it down to the bank of the stream and washed it over and over in
the water, scrubbing it with sand, and pounding it between two round
stones, until it had become quite soft again. Then he put it in the sun
to dry.
Again it dried stiff and hard, and Ma-Ra was about to throw it away.
Then he remembered how the grease and fat of the animals he killed
softened the rough hard skin of his hands, so he got a lump of grease
and rubbed the bear skin over and over with it, working the grease into
all the pores. This time, the skin stayed soft, and Ma-Ra, although he
did not know it, was the first Man to make leather.
He threw the heavy piece of fur about his shoulders, and fastened it
with a sharp thorn, and walked about very proud of his new fur cloak.
After that, the cave people did not call him Ma-Ra any longer, but Han,
which in their language meant the skin of an animal.
[Illustration: THE BEAR SKIN
Ma-Ra threw the heavy piece of fur about his shoulders, and fastened it
with a sharp thorn, and walked about very proud of his new fur cloak.]
Other very useful things, too, the cave people found in the bodies of
the animals they killed. Some of the bones, after they had cracked them
open and eaten the marrow, they used for knives, or for spear points,
and the women made coarse needles from them, with which they later on
sewed together pieces of skins for belts, to hold the men's clubs and
knives when hunting. Sinews, drawn from the animals' muscles, gave
them strong cords or thread, and after a time they made sandals, or
moccasins, out of the tough hides, to protect their feet when running
over the sharp stones. The teeth they often strung on bits of sinew and
hung around their necks, to show what great hunters they were.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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