276 THE COMING OF MAN 



men talked together. But when they commenced 

 to think more clearly they found it necessary to 

 talk to others about their thoughts, and they needed 

 more than those simple sounds. So they helped t6 

 explain their thoughts with signs that they made 

 with their hands. 



That is the sign language, and it is still used by 

 persons who wish to speak together and yet do not 

 know the same language. All children enjoy play- 

 ing with sign language and trying to see how well 

 they can make each other understand what they are 

 talking about. 



Very gradually those cave men commenced to 

 make new sounds as a help in making themselves 

 understood. Perhaps they tried to tell about the 

 different animals they saw in their hunting by imi- 

 tating their cries. In that way they learned to 

 change the sounds by moving their tongues and 

 lips. This soon gave them words. With words they 

 could say much more than with sounds alone. With 

 words they could give names to the living creatures 

 and all the objects that they saw about them, and 

 when they began to make other words which de- 

 scribed people and things and told what they were 

 doing, then they began to have a spoken language. 



Now with a spoken language men seem to have 

 been content for a long, long time. They became 

 quite civilized without having known anything of 

 a written language. If they wished to record a fact, 

 they represented it by drawings, as the English 

 found our North American Indians doing when they 

 came here. 



