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
The women they had brought with them had children, and these children
grew up and had more children, and before very long there were many
hundred people in the tribe, and their stone huts dotted the cliffs as
far as the eye could see. When they found there was not room enough
behind the first wall for the growing village, they built another and
longer wall, further back from the sea, for they were always afraid of
being attacked, on account of the way their former village had been
destroyed. Only the very oldest men remembered this now, but they told
the story to the younger men, around the fires at night, and when these
grew old, they told it to their children and grandchildren, so that it
became a legend in the tribe that they had come from another country,
where enemies lived who might attack them. A watchman stood day and
night on the cliffs, looking out over the sea, ready to light signal
fires, in case he saw boats coming toward them from across the water.
The island people found plenty of flint, out of which to make weapons
and tools for working wood, and they were very skilful fishermen, and
also great hunters with the bow and arrow. As they made hunting trips
far back into the country, they found many different kinds of wood for
making bows and small canoes, but no reeds were to be found, so they
forgot the art of making basket work. Neither did they find any clay,
for a long time, and when the few bowls and jars they had brought with
them were broken, they made drinking cups of the horns of animals, or
of wood. They still used smoked meat and fish, but they knew nothing
about planting and growing grains to make bread.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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