THE MIDDLE STONE’ AGE 
that that animal would be of any particular use to him. 
In order to take any conscious step 1n advance, man, both 
ancient and modern, must have the light of some previous 
experience to guide him. And hitherto he had known of 
animals only as something dangerous, to be avoided or else 
hunted and killed for their flesh and skins. 
So the likelihood that dogs might be of use to man 
could not by any possibility suggest itself to the lowly 
savages of the Middle Stone Age. In fact, to this day, 
among a great part of mankind, the dog is nothing more 
than an ownerless scavenger and hanger-on about refuse 
heaps, otherwise only useful for raising an alarm at the 
approach of strangers. And that is what he appears to 
have been at the beginning of his long association with 
man. Some have said, indeed, that it was not man who 
adopted the dog, but the dog which adopted man. In 
some region inhabited by man during this middle period, a 
species of wild dog seems to have found the pickings better 
about the haunts of men than elsewhere. In turn its 
human hosts doubtless ate the dog when they could catch 
it. Then litters of its young would be brought into camp, 
where, if not wanted at once for food, their presence would 
be tolerated for a time. Given this opportunity, the 
natural play instinct of both puppies and young boys 
would inevitably assert itself just as 1t does today. 
These habits of association once formed, in time groups 
of wandering hunters would naturally come to have their 
packs of half-domesticated dogs following them about 
from camp to camp. Valued at first merely as a source of 
food and for their usefulness in detecting the presence of 
lurking enemies, in time their aid in following game would 
be utilized. Thus man at length acquired a domestic 
animal. 
Little if any evidence exists to indicate that the men of 
the later Old Stone Age had any means of traveling over 
the surface of the water. Their culture, in some respects 
so like that of the modern Eskimo, gives no hint that they 
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