TOR-AD THE POTTER
TOR-AD lived many hundreds of years after Tul and Ni-Va made the
first boat. He was not called Tor-Ad at first, but just Tor, which in
the language of the cave people meant a Turtle. They called him this
because he was very slow and lazy, and liked to lie half asleep in the
sun while the other boys made spears, or practised throwing them at a
mark, to make themselves more skilful in hunting.
Tor did not care for throwing spears. He preferred to sit among the
rocks and dream. Sometimes he would sit still for hours, scratching
little lines on the flat stones with a sharp piece of flint.
[Illustration: THE FIRST ARTIST
Tor made large drawings on the walls of the caves that looked like
bears, and mammoths, and wild boars.]
Long before that, some of the hunters, in making handles for their
knives out of bone, or wood, had carved these handles into rude shapes,
that looked something like an animal, or a man, but Tor had never seen
any drawings, because none had been made. Sometimes he would find a
flat piece of rock with weather marks, or cracks on it that reminded
him of things he had seen—fish, or the heads of bears, or men. He
would look at these for a long time, and try to copy them with his
sharp bit of flint, but it was very hard for him to make anything that
looked like the objects he saw about him.
Still, Tor kept on trying, while the other boys laughed at him, because
he would not go with them to swim, or hunt, or look for fish in the
shallow pools at the head of the great marsh, but Tor did not mind, for
he was happy scratching on his rocks in the sun.
One day, after many trials, he at last drew something on a flat stone
that looked a little like a fish, and he ran to the cave with it and
showed it to his father. Tor's father, instead of being pleased, was
angry with him, and told him he had better go with the other boys and
learn to spear fish, and not waste his time trying to make pictures of
them. Tor's mother, however, liked the little drawing, and kept it in
the cave.
As Tor grew older he learned to draw many things with his sharp piece
of flint—figures of animals and birds, and some of them were so good
that his friends could tell what they were, and got him to scratch
others for them on bits of bone, or the handles of their knives. He
made larger drawings, too, on the walls of the caves, that looked like
bears, and mammoths, and wild boars.
After a time, he found a bed of smooth red and yellow clay along the
river bank, and used it, and the juice of berries, to colour the
figures he drew upon the cave walls. Some of these coloured drawings we
find even to-day, on the walls of caves in France and other countries,
and protected as they have been from the wind and rain, the colours of
these early crude pictures are as bright and clear as when they were
first made, fifty thousand years ago.
One day, while playing with some of the clay he had found along the
river bank, Tor began to roll a lump of it between his fingers, pleased
because it was so smooth and easy to shape. At first he made only round
balls, rolling them under his hand on the top of a flat stone, but
presently he found that he could press a hollow in the lumps of soft
clay, making something that looked like the cup-shaped shells of the
large nuts which the tribe used for carrying water. Very carefully Tor
smoothed and patted his lump of clay until he had formed a little round
bowl, thick and clumsy, but still large enough to hold several drinks
of water. The thought that he had made something new pleased him, and
he took it home with him and put it on a ledge of rock in the cave.
Then he forgot all about it.
When his mother found it, in the morning, it was quite hard and dry.
She did not know what it was, at first, but Tor told her how he had
made it from the river clay, and she was so pleased that she took it
down to the stream with her, and showed it to some of the other women,
who had come to fetch drinking water in bowls made of the shells of
large nuts. But when Tor's mother came back to the cave with the clay
bowl full of drinking water, it got soft and began to lose its shape,
which made the other women laugh at her, and at Tor, for trying to
make a drinking cup out of mud. Then Tor's mother became angry, and
threw the bowl into the fire which she had made before the cave, to
cook fish for breakfast. And Tor she sent away to the hills about the
valley, to gather eggs from the nests of the wild fowl which lived
there.
Tor felt very badly at the loss of his little bowl, and when he got
back to the caves that night, and his mother was busy with the eggs he
had brought, he took a stick and began to poke about in the hot ashes
of the fire, hoping to find the bowl again.
At last he discovered it, among the coals at the bottom of the fire,
and dragged it out with the stick, for it was too hot to touch with his
hand.
When it got cool, he took it up. A piece had been broken from one side
of it, when his mother threw it down, but otherwise it was not much
hurt. Tor was surprised to find, when he had brushed the ashes from it,
that while before it had been yellow, it had now turned a bright red.
This pleased him, although he did not understand it, so he took the
bowl down to the river-bank, and put it in the water, thinking to
soften the clay by wetting it, as he had often done before, and then
mould it over again into something else. To his surprise, the water
would not soften the clay, but it did wash it clean, and made it seem
redder and prettier than ever. Then he struck it against a stone, and
at once it broke into many sharp pieces, just as a flower-pot would be
shivered to bits, if you were to strike it against something hard.
[Illustration: THE FIRST POTTER
He worked all night, heating in the fire the clay bowl he had made.]
All this puzzled Tor for a long time, but he decided at last that the
heat of the fire had dried and burned his clay and changed it so that
it became hard and red. He made up his mind to make another bowl for
his mother, and this time to burn it in the fire first, before he gave
it to her.
Very early the next day he got another lump of clay, and made a larger
bowl, taking great care this time to shape it carefully, so that it was
round and smooth. Then he drew the picture of a turtle on one side, to
mark it with his name, and a fish on the other, and hid it away among
the rocks until he should have time to make a fire and burn it.
That night, when every one was asleep, he took some hot coals from
the fire before the cave, and carrying these coals in the clay bowl,
he made a new fire at a hiding place he knew of among the rocks. All
night he sat beside the fire, watching it, heaping on fresh wood to
keep it blazing hot. In the morning, very sleepy and tired, he took the
bowl out of the fire with a crooked stick, cooled, washed and dried it,
and filling it with water, carried it proudly to his mother.
At first she would have nothing to do with it, because the first one
had been such a failure, but after awhile, when she saw that the water
did not soften it, and that it had such a pretty red colour, she was
very much pleased, and called Tor's father and some of the others to
come and look at it.
They did not see much use in it at first, since the nut shells they
used for carrying water they thought quite good enough. They did,
however, like the pretty red colour of the pottery, and Tor's mother
was so proud of the bowl that she kept it in the cave, and would not
let any one drink out of it but herself.
Soon Tor found that he could make much larger bowls and jars out of the
smooth soft clay, and after a time, the cave people used these jars
for storing nuts, or roots, or berries, when they had more than they
needed at the moment. But still the thought had not occurred to them to
store away food for use during the winter. Even in the coldest weather,
they were able to kill animals, and fish, and they supposed they would
always be able to do so.
Tor also made queer little figures, out of the clay, and red beads,
with holes through them, which the women strung on bits of leather, or
sinew, and used for ornaments, about their necks. And because in their
simple language, Ad was the word for earth, or clay, they began to call
the clay worker Tor-Ad, instead of just Tor.
It took the cave dwellers many many hundreds of years to learn how
to ornament the bowls and jars they made with pictures and patterns
in colours, and a much longer time, to find out a way of making them
smooth and round by whirling them about on a flat wheel and pressing
their fingers, or a wooden tool, against them as they turned. We must
remember that the minds of the first men grew very slowly, and it often
took them a very long time to think out what seem to us very simple
ideas indeed. Even now, although many thousands of years had passed,
since the days of Adh, they knew nothing at all about metals; their
weapons and tools were made of stone, but as time went on, they made
them better and better, so that among the relics we find of the later
stone age are axes, beautifully polished and strong and sharp enough
to be used in working wood, knives, with keen edges, spear and arrow
heads, scrapers, for scraping the hair from hides in making leather,
and even such fine things as razors, all made of stone. Some of the
tribes during the latter part of the stone age were wonderful workers
in both wood and stone. With tools of the very hardest flint they cut
softer stones into great building blocks, built palaces and temples,
and monuments of all sorts, some of which are found even to-day, buried
in the sand or earth, and well preserved in spite of their great age.
Whenever men of science dig up the ruins of these ancient villages and
towns, they find weapons of flint and bone, the ashes of fires, and
many pieces of broken pottery, showing that the use of fire, the making
of stone implements, and the burning of clay pottery, were the first
three great steps taken by Man in his progress toward what we call
civilisation.