He did not, except in a few parts of Asia, take to the trees which were
a bit too small and unsteady for his purpose.
He cut down a number of logs. These he drove firmly into the soft bottom
of a shallow lake. On top of them he constructed a wooden platform and
upon this platform he erected his first wooden house.
It offered many advantages over the old cave.
No wild animals could break into it and robbers could not enter it. The
lake itself was an inexhaustible store-room containing an endless supply
of fresh fish.
These houses built on piles were much healthier than the old caves and
they gave the children a chance to grow up into strong men. The
population increased steadily and man began to occupy vast tracts of
wilderness which had been unoccupied since the beginning of time.
And all the time new inventions were made which made life more
comfortable and less dangerous.
Often enough these innovations were not due to the cleverness of man's
brain.
He simply copied the animals.
You know of course that there are a large number of beasties who prepare
for the long winter by burying nuts and acorns and other food which is
abundant during the summer. Just think of the squirrels who are for ever
filling their larder in gardens and parks with supplies for the winter
and the early spring.
Early man, less intelligent in many respects than the squirrels, had not
known how to preserve anything for the future.
He ate until his hunger was stilled, but what he did not need right away
he allowed to rot. As a result he often went without his meals during
the cold period and many of his children died from hunger and want.
Until he followed the example of the animals and prepared for the future
by laying in sufficient stores when the harvest had been good and there
was an abundance of wheat and grain.
We do not know which genius first discovered the use of pottery but he
deserves a statue.
Very likely it was a woman who had got tired of the eternal chores of
the kitchen and wanted to make her household duties a little less
exacting. She noticed that chunks of clay, when exposed to the rays of
the sun, got baked into a hard substance.
If a flat piece of clay could be transformed into a brick, a slightly
curved piece of the same material must produce a similar result.
And behold, the brick grew into a piece of pottery and the human race
was able to save for the day of tomorrow.
If you think that my praises of this invention are exaggerated, look at
the breakfast table and see what pottery, in one form and the other,
means in your own life.
Your oatmeal is served in a dish.
The cream is served from a pitcher.
Your eggs are carried from the kitchen to the dining-room table on a
plate.
Your milk is brought to you in a china mug. Then go to the store-room
(if there is no store-room in your house go to the nearest Delicatessen
store). You will see how all the things which we are supposed to eat
tomorrow and next week and next year have been put away in jars and cans
and other artificial containers which Nature did not provide for us but
which man was forced to invent and perfect before he could be assured of
his regular meals all the year around.
Even a gas-tank is nothing but a large pitcher, made of iron because
iron does not break as easily as china and is less porous than clay. So
are barrels and bottles and pots and pans. They all serve the same
purpose--of providing us in the future with those things of which we
happen to have an abundance at the present moment.
And because he could preserve eatable things for the day of need, man
began to raise vegetables and grain and saved the surplus for future
consumption.
This explains why, during the late Stone Age, we find the first
wheat-fields and the first gardens, grouped around the settlements of
the early pile-dwellers.
It also tells us why man gave up his habit of wandering and settled down
in one fixed spot where he raised his children until the day of his
death when he was decently buried among his own people.
[Illustration: PREHISTORIC MAN IS DISCOVERED.]
It is safe to say that these earliest ancestors of ours would have given
up the ways of savages of their own accord if they had been left to
their fate.
But suddenly there was an end to their isolation.
Prehistoric man was discovered.
A traveler from the unknown south-land who had dared to cross the
turbulent sea and the forbidding mountain passes had found his way to
the wild people of Central Europe.
On his back he carried a pack.
When he had spread his wares before the gaping curiosity of the
bewildered natives, their eyes beheld wonders of which their minds had
never dared to dream.
They saw bronze hammers and axes and tools made of iron and helmets made
of copper and beautiful ornaments consisting of a strangely colored
substance which the foreign visitor called "glass."
And overnight the Age of Stone came to an end.
It was replaced by a new civilization which had discarded wooden and
stone implements centuries before and had laid the foundations for that
"Age of Metal" which has endured until our own day.
It is of this new civilization that I shall tell you in the rest of my
book and if you do not mind, we shall leave the northern continent for a
couple of thousand years and pay a visit to Egypt and to western Asia.
"But," you will say, "this is not fair. You promise to tell us about
prehistoric man and then, just when the story is going to be
interesting, you close the chapter and you jump to another part of the
world and we must jump with you whether we like it or not."