Earliest Man 



121 



"He has learned that a stone helps 

 him to dig. Later he finds he can bur- 

 row more quickly or more easily with 

 some stones than with others. Some 

 really impede him. He cannot get on 

 with them at all. So gradually he gets 

 to know the kind best suited to his use. 



"Then at last the miracle comes. It 

 dawns on his feeble intelligence that a 

 broken and sharp stone is better suited 

 to his purpose than a smooth one, and 

 that he can produce such a stone as he 

 requires by breaking a big one. One 

 individual alone has found this out, and 

 the others make use of his discovery, 

 which is that if a broken stone cannot be 

 found, they must break one for them- 

 selves." 



Such stones, broken in greater or less 

 amount, are found in many places, and 

 called eoliths. "It was at the age of 

 eoliths that man's wider dispersal began, 

 and according to the evidence furnished 

 by the distribution of eoliths a big wave 

 spread in the direction of northwestern 

 Europe. In what other directions the 

 spread took place has yet to be found 

 out. It awaits further excavations on 

 an adequate scale in other parts of the 

 world." 



USE OF FIRE OF VAST IMPORTANCE 



It is by this time necessary that man 

 should have acquired knowledge of how 

 to use fire ; and he may have learned this 

 from either lightning or volcanic fire. 



"Earliest man, like the beasts of the 

 field, must have been for long ages 

 accustomed to fire before it ever dawned 

 upon any one individual to try to make 

 use of it. Their intellects had not 

 hitherto led them to that. It was uni- 

 versally regarded as an object of fear to 

 be fled from to save their lives. As a 

 great conflagration died down, some of 

 the more inquisitive animals such as 

 apes and monkeys may have gone to the 

 extent of warming themselves by some 

 smouldering tree after being chilled by a 

 sudden storm of rain. Early man may 

 even in times of dearth have tasted and 

 eaten the roasted remains of some 



small animal that failed to escape the 

 fire in its advance. It must, however, 

 be here noted that as a matter of fact 

 bush fires advance very slowly, certainly 

 in the grass country of Africa, and not on 

 a very broad front. For any animal to 

 be caught and burnt is therefore an 

 exceedingly rare occurrence. 



"From such tentative uses of fire 

 nothing could have resulted unless man 

 had already acquired the mental capac- 

 ity to make use of external material. 

 No improvement has resulted from the 

 acquaintance of animals with fire. Even 

 the intelligent dog, who is always with 

 man, and thoroughly understands the 

 warming properties of fire, makes no 

 attempt to further utilize it, and has not 

 the least capacity to make it up when it 

 sinks. It was not until, in the course of 

 ages, man with an intellect capable of 

 developing, had acquired the use of one 

 art after another, if only in a small way, 

 that he was sufficiently advanced to 

 recognize the properties of fire; and it 

 must, of course, be recognized that in 

 his mental development every addition 

 to the list of arts would react on his 

 mind and predispose it to further efforts. 



"As to the first stage, we have already 

 seen that he may have met in the track 

 of a grass fire the body of some animal 

 that had failed to escape and been burnt 

 to death. Having tasted it in the pos- 

 sibly ensuing dearth, and having found 

 it good, the attention of others may have 

 been drawn to it, and they too ate it 

 with appreciation. This appreciation 

 may take a dual form. The vegetable 

 food supplies on which they relied may 

 have been burnt up to a greater extent 

 than usual, and so the zest of hunger 

 would be brought to the newly found 

 food, besides its being liked for itself 

 alone as an occasional dainty. As 

 regards the question of the possibility 

 of a change of food being adopted, we 

 have only to remember the remarks 

 made earlier about the Kea parrot of 

 New Zealand when such possibilities 

 were discussed."^ 



Man might catch something for him- 



' As one of the best authenticated examples of how the lower Hving forms can change their 

 diet may be quoted the Kea parrot (Nestor notabilis) of New Zealand. Like other parrots this 

 species was formerly purely vegetarian. In the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the 

 English settlers introduced sheep. Apparently a time of scarcity of the parrot's own food came, 



