CHAPTER V 



THE SLING, BOW, AND OTHER WEAPONS 



Fight, gentlemen of England! fight, bold yeomen! 

 Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head! 



SHAKESPEARE, Richard III. 



We think of this modern age as the age of great inventions, 

 and justly so, for more inventions of major importance to civiliza- 

 tion have been made in the last hundred years than in any like 

 period. The aeroplane, automobile, gas engine, telephone, 

 telegraph, locomotive, steamboat, harvester, spinning jenny, and 

 many others occur to one on a moment's reflection, all belonging 

 to the years since 1 800. And yet we must not forget that our very 

 early forebears also made great discoveries and that we are 

 indebted to them for many of the most important inventions 

 that are fundamental to our activities. They discovered how 

 to produce and use tools, weapons, language, fire, how to plant 

 and cultivate crops, how to domesticate animals, how to cook 

 food, build houses, make clothing. Should not that savage who 

 first conceived and put into practice the idea of planting seeds 

 where he wanted them to grow instead of searching for his grains 

 and fruits where they had planted themselves, or that one who 

 first cultivated his garden patch with a sharp stick, be accorded 

 quite as great glory as he who perfected the harvester? I 

 wonder what savage first used a sharp-edged flake of flint to cut 

 the meat from the dead beast instead of tearing it off with fingers 

 or teeth, who first used a stone as a hammer, or first found he 

 could hurl a stone and kill his quarry. Such primitive tools and 

 weapons are a far cry from our modern machine tools and engines 

 of destruction, yet they were prime discoveries, and since their 

 invention we have merely improved them. 



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