CIVILIZATION 



1399 



CIVILIZATION 



do it. The story of civilization is the story 

 of how he learned to do it. The earliest chap- 

 ters tell how he used intelligence at first in 

 fighting the wild beasts and in taking what 

 he needed without thought of giving anything 

 in return. He was destructive because he was 

 ignorant. It is no wonder that he remained in 

 savagery tens of thousands of years. He did 

 make some progress, however, and we all owe 

 him a debt of gratitude, for it was man of 

 lowest savagery who first conquered fire. 



Before the conquest of fire, man undoubtedly 

 saw many forest fires, which may have been 

 kindled by lightning. It was a brave man 

 who first dared venture near the fire-monster. 

 And undoubtedly it was the desire to gain the 

 good will of the fire-monster that led to the 

 practice of "feeding the fire" by piling sticks 

 upon it. At any rate we know that the savage 

 worshiped the fire just as he worshiped the 

 powerful and much-dreaded beasts of prey. 



Man soon found out that fire was an in- 

 valuable ally. When he had fire at the foot 

 of a tree, wild animals kept away from the 

 spot. He was thus able to come down from 

 the branches and make his home at the foot 

 of a tree. Other tree-dwellers, seeing and hear- 

 ing something about it, were curious, and one 

 by one they came to the spot, and they soon 

 formed a clan. The fire needed attention, so 

 quite naturally the women with little children 

 stayed near the fire, while the men went farther 

 away in their search for food. When the 

 men returned from an exciting hunt, they 

 were eager to tell the women about it. Not 

 having a well-developed language, they gath- 

 ered around the fire and acted out the story 

 of the hunt and thus invented the dance, which 

 embodied music and poetry. 



Little by little it was found that fire could 

 be used in hunting, in making weapons and in 

 cooking. Each of these discoveries was the 

 result of thinking; each made the struggle for 

 existence a little easier than it nad been before. 

 The conquest of fire thus marks the entrance 

 of man from lower to middle savagery. 



Middle Savagery. The story of middle sav- 

 ' agery is the story of how man, armed with fire, 

 took possession of the caves; how, thus pro- 

 tected, he had more leisure and was able to 

 make better weapons; how people learned to 

 work together; how they gained courage to 

 meet the wild beasts in open combat; and 

 how, when they learned to cook fish, they be- 

 came free to wander up and down the streams 

 throughout the greater part of the world. This 



age has been called the rough stone age, be- 

 cause of its rough stone weapons. Among these 

 the stone ax and the spearhead are the most 

 characteristic forms. 



Higher Savagery. In lower savagery man 

 was afraid of wild animals; in middle savagery 

 he gained courage to meet them in open com- 

 bat; in higher savagery his courage grew and 

 he invented weapons he could hurl through the 

 air faster than the swiftest animal could run. 

 It was then that the animals became afraid of 

 man. At first weapons were thrown from the 

 hand. Then a throwing stick was invented, 

 and finally there appeared that epoch-making 

 invention, the bow and arrow. 



It was during this period that tools were 

 made, as distinct from weapons. Among these 

 were knives, files, saws and needles. The in- 

 vention of tools made it possible to use un- 

 shaped material such as bone, horn and ivory 

 in the manufacture of weapons. Many such 

 weapons, with beautifully-carved handles, were 

 made by the reindeer hunters of Western 

 Europe during the Glacial Period (which see). 



During higher savagery man had some ani- 

 mal pets, but no animal except the dog was 

 really domesticated. The dog proved to be 

 a great aid to man, not merely in hunting but 

 in the domestication of the grass-eating animals 

 in a later time. 



Lower Barbarism. The invention of pottery, 

 which gave man permanent cooking utensils 

 that could withstand the heat, was the dividing 

 line between savagery and lower barbarism. 

 Previous to this cooking was a tedious process, 

 and consequently much food was eaten in a 

 raw or partially-cooked state. But with per- 

 manent cooking utensils that could be carried 

 from place to place the custom of serving 

 well-cooked foods became established; and 

 man, being better fed, was not so irritable as 

 he was in savagery, when he was likely to 

 gorge in times of plenty and go hungry in 

 times of famine. 



The domestication of animals and the culti- 

 vation of plants mark the greatest change in 

 man as he passed from savagery to barbarism. 

 The savage, we have seen, was content to take 

 Nature's gifts, with no thought of giving any- 

 thing in return. Such destructive methods 

 resulted in exhausting the hunting grounds; 

 and so gradually the women learned to sow 

 seeds and make little gardens and to raise the 

 young animals brought home from the hunt. 

 They began to learn to protect the plants in 

 return for their fruits; they found that the 



