Thus far fire
had been an enemy. Now it became a friend. A dead tree
was dragged into the cave and lighted by means of smouldering
branches from a burning wood. This turned the cave into
a cozy little room.
And then one evening a dead chicken fell into the fire. It
was not rescued until it had been well roasted. Man discovered
that meat tasted better when cooked and he then and there
discarded one of the old habits which he had shared with the
other animals and began to prepare his food.
In this way thousands of years passed. Only the people
with the cleverest brains survived. They had to struggle day
and night against cold and hunger. They were forced to invent
tools. They learned how to sharpen stones into axes and how
to make hammers. They were obliged to put up large stores
of food for the endless days of the winter and they found that
clay could be made into bowls and jars and hardened in the
rays of the sun. And so the glacial period, which had threatened
to destroy the human race, became its greatest teacher
because it forced man to use his brain.
HIEROGLYPHICS
THE EGYPTIANS INVENT THE ART OF
WRITING AND THE RECORD OF
HISTORY BEGINS
THESE earliest ancestors of ours who lived in the great
European wilderness were rapidly learning many new things.
It is safe to say that in due course of time they would have
given up the ways of savages and would have developed a
civilisation of their own.
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