The Story of Ab: A Tale of the Time of the Cave ManWaterloo, Stanley
Science
The Story of Ab: A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man
Waterloo, Stanley
Prehistoric peoples -- Fiction; Science fiction
The doorway, for obvious reasons, was narrow and
there was a huge rock, long ago rolled inside with much travail, which
could on occasion be utilized in blocking the narrow passage. Barely room
to squeeze by this obstruction existed at the doorway. The sneaking but
dangerous hyena had a keen scent and was full of curiosity. The monster
bear of the time was ever hungry and the great cave tiger, though rarer,
was, as has been shown, a haunting dread. Great attention was paid to
doorways in those days, not from an artistic point of view exactly, but
from reasons cogent enough in the estimation of the cave men. But the
cave was warm and safe and the sharp eyes of its inhabitants, accustomed
to the semi-darkness, found slight difficulty in discerning objects in
the gloom. Very content with their habitation were all the family and
Red-Spot particularly, as a chatelaine should, felt much pride in her
surroundings.
It may be added that the family of One-Ear was a happy one. His life with
Red-Spot was the sequence of what might be termed a fortunate marriage.
It is true that standards vary with times, and that the demeanor of the
couple toward each other was occasionally not what would be counted the
index of domestic felicity in this more artificial and deceptive age. It
was never fully determined whether One-Ear or Red-Spot could throw a
stone ax with the greater accuracy, although certainly he could hurl one
with greater force than could his wife. But the deftness of each in
eluding such dangerous missiles was about the same, and no great harm had
at any time resulted from the effects of momentary ebullitions of anger,
followed by action on the part of either. There had not been at any time
a scandal in the family. The pair were faithful to each other. Society
was somewhat scattered in those days, and the cave twain, anywhere, were
generally as steadfast as the lion and the lioness. It was centuries
later, too, before the cave men's posterity became degenerate enough or
prosperous enough, or safe enough, to be polygamous, and, so far as the
area of the Thames valley or even the entire "Paris basin," as it is
called, was concerned, monogamy held its own very fairly, from the
shell-beds of the earliest kitchen-middens to the time of the bronze ax
and the dawn of what we now call civilization.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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