RA MAKES A NEW SPEAR
ADH had been dead a long time, now, and Ra was his
great-great-great-great-grandson. He was called Ra because that was the
word the Ape-Men used to mean big, or strong, and Ra was the strongest
boy in the valley.
He lived with his mother and father and several brothers and sisters in
a cave high up among the rocks, and because his father was lame, Ra had
to do most of the work for the family. He knew how to say a number of
words, queer little cries and grunts that meant things, and the hair on
his body was not as thick and shaggy as Adh's had been. The Ape-People
had been living in caves, protected from the weather, for a long time
now, and as they did not need so much hair to keep them warm, the great
law of Nature we have heard about before, had begun to take their hair
away from them. But it was not until Man began to wear clothes that he
really lost his coat of hair.
There were many Ape-Men in the valley now, descendants of Adh and
his wife, and they had hollowed other caves in the soft rock and
earth of the hillsides at the upper end of the valley, digging with
sharp-pointed sticks and stones. They lived on raw fish, and fruits,
roots and nuts, just as Adh and his family had done before them, and
the eggs of wild birds, and the young fledglings, which they found in
nests among the trees and rocks. They carried long wooden spears, and
clubs, and were quick and strong. And because there were plenty of fish
in the stream, and in the lake at the lower end of the valley, even
during the cold rainy season, they had never thought of storing up food
for the Winter. Of such things as clothes, or fire, they knew nothing
at all.
There were high, rough hills, covered with thick forests, all about
the valley, except at its lower end, where the great lake spread out,
pouring its waters into the country below through a narrow gorge
between two hills. Because the valley was protected in this way, few
enemies came into it to attack the cave men. When one appeared, as
sometimes happened, the hunters, with their clubs and spears, would
attack it in a body, and while it often happened that some of them were
killed, they usually were able to overcome the intruder in the end, or
drive him from the valley. The most terrible of these enemies was the
sabre-toothed tiger, larger than any tiger you have seen in the circus,
with two long sharp teeth or fangs, curving down like sabres from his
upper jaw. When this terrible beast appeared, the cave men usually hid
in their caves, afraid.
Once, when Ra was about twenty years old, a huge beast like an
elephant, with long shaggy hair and great curving tusks came splashing
up along the marshy shores of the lake, and began to strip and eat the
tender leaves and fruit from the young bushes and trees.
Ra, who was spearing fish at the upper end of the lake, had never seen
such a creature before, and when he caught sight of it coming towards
him he was very much frightened.
He quickly gave the alarm, and soon twenty or more of the cave men ran
up, and surrounding the huge creature, began to attack it by throwing
stones at it, at the same time making a loud noise, hoping to scare it
away.
The great creature did not mind the stones, at first, for he scarcely
felt them, as they bounced from his thick, hairy sides, but soon one of
the stones struck him near the eye and hurt him, and he turned on the
cave men with a snort of pain, waving his long trunk about in the air.
When the cave men saw him coming they did their best to get out of the
way, at the same time striking with all their might at his huge sides
with their spears. The spears, however, with their wooden points, while
strong enough to pierce a fish, were of no use against the elephant's
tough hide, and fell back blunted or broken. Ra, as he saw the great
beast coming toward him, its little red eyes gleaming, its long trunk
swinging to and fro, drove his spear with all his might at its flank
but the point was splintered from the blow and he barely escaped with
his life. Three of his companions were trampled to death by the savage
creature as they tried to escape, and two more were seized in its great
trunk and crushed. The cave men, frightened, ran back to their caves
and sat there, helpless, until the animal, unable to find them, had
eaten his fill of the leaves and fruit, and gone away, leaving a trail
of stripped and broken bushes and trees behind him.
[Illustration: THE FIGHT WITH A MAMMOTH
The cave men did their best to get out of the way, at the same time
striking with all their might at his huge sides with their spears.]
Ra worried a great deal about this fight. He was very angry with the
beast because it had killed one of his brothers, and he could not
understand why his spear had failed to pierce the elephant's hide. Its
point, rubbed sharp on a rock, had always been strong enough to kill
the largest fish, but now it was blunt and broken, and Ra did not like
it any more.
As he sat in the sun before the cave, trying to cut a new point to his
spear with a stone, an idea came into his head. Why could he not in
some way fasten the stone to the end of his spear? The stone, he knew,
was hard enough not to break against the toughest hide. It was a large
and clumsy stone, however, and Ra soon saw that he could do nothing
with it.
The thought pleased him, but he said nothing to any of his friends
about it. Instead, he hurried off to a place on the shore of the lake
where a few days before he had seen some very sharp flat stones, quite
different from the clumsy bit of rock he had found near the cave.
He gathered several pieces of this stone, and amused himself by
striking them against each other and breaking them. At last he got what
he wanted, a flat, narrow piece, shaped something like the leaf of a
tree, and about as long as his hand. The stone was very hard, and it
took him hours to chip and rub it down until it had a sharp point. When
at last it was done, he had another thing to think about. How was he to
fasten the stone to the end of the spear?
He took the spear and looked at it. The blow he had struck against
the elephant's side had split the end of it. After a great deal of
trouble Ra managed to force the thin flat stone into the split end of
the spear. It looked very well, he thought, but he knew it would not
stay there unless it were fastened in some way. Glancing about, he saw
some of the long, tough marsh grasses that he had often used to string
his fish together, when carrying them home. He took some strands of
this grass and wrapped them around the end of the spear in such a way
that the stone point was held tightly in place. It was a clumsy piece
of work, for Ra had never used the grasses in such a way before, but
it was strong, as he found out by spearing several fish in the shallow
water of the marsh. When he went home, he was very proud of what he
had done, and showed the new spear to his father, and to some of his
brothers.
[Illustration: THE BEGINNING OF THE STONE AGE
Ra's invention of the stone-pointed spear gave the cave men new courage
so that they became very fierce and bold.]
His father did not think much of it, and said wooden-pointed spears
were good enough for anybody, but his brothers chattered with pleasure,
and got Ra to show them where he had found the white stone, and how
he had chipped the spear point into shape, and fastened it on. Before
long, they too had stone-pointed spears, and as they made more and more
of them they made them stronger and better, using the twisted entrails
or guts of fish to bind the points in place, instead of the marsh
grasses. Soon all the men in the valley were armed with stone-pointed
spears, and some of them, taking Ra's idea, fixed stones in the ends of
their heavy clubs, and with the making of these stone-pointed spears
and axes, Man had begun what is known as the Stone Age.
Ra's invention was a great blessing to the cave men, for now they were
able to fight their enemies on much more even terms. This gave them new
courage, and they became very fierce and bold. But it was not only for
making weapons that they began to use the hard, sharp bits of flint Ha
had discovered. They soon found them useful for many other things. It
was easier, to cut a fish to pieces, with a sharp-edged stone, than
to tear it to bits with their fingers, so they began the use of flint
knives, and later on they made all sorts of tools out of stone, which
helped them very much in their daily lives. But these things came later.
"My new people have learned a great deal, since I have been away," said
Mother Nature to the Sun. "Now I am going to teach them to eat meat."
"How will you do that?" the Sun asked.
"By taking away their fish, so that when the Winter comes, they will be
hungry."
[Illustration: TYPES OF WEAPONS USED BY EARLY MAN]
"How can you take away their fish?" said the Sun.
"By taking away their lake," replied Mother Nature, "and for that I
shall need Wind and Rain."
So she called Wind and Rain to her.
"Wind and Rain," she said, "I want you to blow up a great storm, and
turn the little stream in the valley into a mighty torrent, and when
the torrent is strong enough, it will wash away the banks that dam up
the lake at the lower end of the valley, and carry the lake, and all
the fish in it, right down through the low country into the Ocean."
So Wind and Rain made a terrible storm, and the Lightning flashed, and
the Thunder roared, and all the cave men crept into their holes in
the rocks, afraid. For three days the storm swept through the valley,
tearing down the trees, stripping them of their fruit, and turning the
stream into a raging muddy torrent, that tore along in its course like
a flood.
When the Sun at last shone again, and the cave men came out of their
holes to see what had happened, their lake was gone, and in the
foaming yellow torrent that poured through the valley there was not a
single fish.
Of course there was some food remaining, fruit, and nuts, and eggs,
but with so many to feed it did not last long, and as the cold rainy
weather came on, the cave men, without any fish to eat, were soon very
hungry. Once more Mother Nature was about to teach them something new
by means of suffering and pain.