THE BIGINNINGS
Prehistoric
man appeared on the scene approximately two million years ago. He was not as big, nor as strong, nor even as swift as many other animals. But he did have hands that were freed from the demands of locomotion. His thumbs opposed his fingers so that he could manipulate objects. Most important of all, he could reason to a greater or lesser degree. These were not many, but they were to prove sufficient.
STONE AGE MAN
Early man, like many primitive people today, was undoubtedly a food gatherer. His was a feast today and a famine tomorrow. Approximately a hundred and thousand years
ago an an ancestor of ours saw a rock naturally shaped to fit withen the palm of his hand. He picked it up to open a coconut, found it useful, and kept it. With that simple tool of all work, the Old
STONE Age opens.Other rocks were picked up and perhaps chipped a bit here tied to handles to make axes and hoves. Some long narrow teeth of hard stone were used as awls. And the invention and usage of
tools proliferated.
We must give our stone age forebears their proper due. Some of the most important human inventions of all were made by them. Consider the invention of language, the domestication of fire, the use of the wheel, social groupings into clans and tribes, and the greater security of food supply through the evolution of herding and agriculture.
Perhaps about ten thousand years ago man had developed a considerable skill with rock working. His tools and other rock objects were now polished and beautifully made. This is the Neolithic Age when
agriculture must have evolved. The grass seeds, which are our cereals where planted in holes in the ground, given varrying degrees of care and harvested the following season of food.
The primitive food gatherers could be single families who wandered afar seeking wild fruits and grains, following the game, or fishing in many localities. The care of herds of animals, howeever required more people, or even many related families, the tribe, came into being. The
tribes were nomadic, driving thier herds from pasture land to pasture land as the grass was exhausted. Agricultural fields on the other hand, were not portable. The early farmers established villages in the river valleys where they could tend and guard their crops.
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