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
Another thing that came from this battle was the beginning of the use
of armour. One of the sea folk had struck Modor a heavy blow across the
arm, that would have cut it to the bone, had not the axe fallen upon
the thick band of gold Modor wore on his arm. After this, Modor hunted
for more of the gold, and when he found it, he made many more wide gold
bands, and put them on each arm from the elbow to the shoulder, and
this was the first use of metal armour. But it was a very long time
before men came to use heavy armour of brass, and iron and steel.
Modor loved adventure, and he made up his mind to gather a fleet of
ships, and cross the water to the land of the sea people, and attack
them. But he did not live to do this. One day, while hunting in the
marsh of the reeds, up the coast, a great beast like a rhinoceros, with
long woolly hair, and sharp horns on its snout, charged down on him and
his companions. They fought bravely, but Modor and two of his men were
killed, and the rest fled to their boat, afraid.
The whole village mourned Modor with songs and cries of grief, and the
next day a party went to the marsh and brought back his body. They
buried it in a grave on the plateau, with great stones over it to mark
the place. With his body they buried the dead chief's spear, and axe,
and his gold armlets and shield, for these people believed that the
dead would live again, and would need their weapons in the other world.
For hundreds and hundreds of years after this the island people lived
in peace. The tribe grew very large, and spread far inland, where they
found pleasant meadows, and forests, and banks of clay from which to
make pottery. They built many stone villages and temples, and made
armlets of gold, as Modor had done, and sewed plates of it to their
belts, and ornamented the handles of their spears and knives with it.
They also found tin, from which they made ornaments of a shining colour
like silver, and copper, from which they made spear heads, and axes,
beating them into shape with hammers of stone. With coloured clays, and
the juices of plants, they stained their bodies in strange patterns,
and coloured the shafts of their arrows and spears.
In the forests of the island were many wild animals, bears, great
horned deer, and savage wolves, while along the rivers that flowed
through the marshy country were huge beasts like the rhinoceros, and
wild boar and snakes. From fighting these enemies they became fierce
and brave, and when the bards sang of the men who came to attack them
from over the sea, they would beat their weapons on the ground, with
a loud noise, and talk of setting out to conquer them, as Modor had
planned to do. But it was not until long after, when a chief named Mor
came to be head of the tribe that they crossed the Great Water.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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