94 SAVAGE SURVIVALS 



During tliis stage the human species was small 

 in numbers, and was restricted in habitat to a 

 small area somewhere in the tropics. These chil- 

 dren of nature were very rude. They were the 

 first rough-drafts of men and women. But 

 they had one thing that no other animals on the 

 earth at that time had, and that was a simple, ar- 

 ticulate language. They could talk to each other. 



Some of the tribes of the interior of Borneo and 

 the Malay peninsula are still in this lowest human 

 stage. The Andaman Islanders use fire, but have 

 no way of producing it. They still get their fire 

 from nature — from fires caused by volcanoes, 

 lightning, and the lil^e — and carefully preserve it, 

 borrowing from one another when they get out. 



2. Middle Savagery, from the invention of the 

 art of fire-making and the acquisition of a fish diet 

 to the invention of the bow and arrow. 



It was during this stage that mankind spread 

 from its original habitat, somewhere in tropical 

 Asia or Africa, over a large part of the earth. 

 The ability to make fire artificially enabled men to 

 leave the regions of perpetual warmth and spread 

 to the colder parts of the earth. They could take 

 their climate with them. The spear and the club 

 were probably the only important inventions men 

 had made when they began to scatter over the 

 world, that is, the only ones besides fire-making; 

 because these are the only inventions common to 

 all the races of men. 



The native Australians and the most of the 



