American Museum of Natural History 



TOOLS AND WEAPONS OF THE STONE AGE 



Relics of the Old Stone Age (1, 2 and 3) are roughly shaped. New Stone Age man 

 had learned to chip his flints skillfully (4, 5, 6 and 7). Later he tried to smooth and 

 even to polish his stone creations (8 and 9) 



Tools, Weapons and Shelter The natives of Madagascar say that if 

 you throw a spear at a lemur, the animal will catch it and throw it back 

 with deadly precision. Monkeys will crack nuts by pounding them against 

 some hard object, and the gorilla will use a stick as a club in fighting. But 

 probably no gorilla or monkey ever carried a club or a stone about with 

 him to use in possible emergencies; and that is something that man has 

 done. Even among the oldest remains of human activity are stones which 

 men had chipped to serve as weapons or as tools (see illustration above). 



Many species of birds and of other classes of animals builci very neat 

 nests — much neater, probably, than primitive man built in the treetops. 

 But man has finally succeeded in building shelters so far beyond anything 

 other animals have made that it seems ridiculous to compare them. 



Fire What using fire has meant to man most of us cannot realize, 

 for we take the benefits of fire for granted from childhood. Fire enabled 

 man to get out of the trees and live in caves or tven in the open, for with 

 fire he could keep the beasts away. It made available to him food that he 

 could otherwise not use. And fire was probably helpful in many other ways 

 from early times. Fire enabled man to wander from the tropics, so that of 



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