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made this "king of metals" his servant, he traveled a long, long way on the road to civilization.

The men invented the weapons and some of the tools of the earliest ages. But it is probable that the women first made many useful tools and utensils. Women wove the first baskets to use in gathering and carrying berries, nuts, and other articles of food. By moulding clay over baskets so that they could be hung over the fire, women gradually learned how to make earthenware pots and bowls.

Women were not only the first basket-makers and potters. They were also the first spinners and weavers. They ground the first grain into flour with mortars and pestles of stone. Later they made simple mills for this purpose. In fact, women who lived before the dawn of history began nearly all the household arts and crafts, and in this way helped all the people who have lived since then.

Our earliest ancestors, like ourselves, found it necessary to carry things from place to place. But they lived long before the days of the railroad and the steamship. The first burdens were borne by the women. They followed the men who hunted, and carried the meat and the hides of the slain animals back to the camp. After the dog, the donkey, and the horse had been tamed, articles to be transported were packed upon their backs or dragged upon the ground behind them. Sleds were made in the northern lands. Canoes and boats were built by the dwellers by the rivers and the sea. Last of all, the wheeled cart was invented. We often call our own time the age of invention. The steam engine, the telegraph, and the many uses of electricity are all modern. These improvements have made wonderful changes in our ways of living. But these changes in our lives are not as remarkable as those made in the lives of our earliest ancestors so long ago by inventions like the fishhook and the bow and arrow, and such discoveries as how to make fire, how to make pottery, how to domesticate animals and plants, and how to smelt and work the metals.

There are many things that people can do better by working together. Many centuries were required for early men to learn to help one another. When they learned how to make fire,

the first family group began to be formed. This group, as it became larger, was called the clan. The clan simply means those who were kin to each other; that is, a number of men and women who believed that they were descended from a common ancestor. At first the common ancestor was a woman, the clan mother. In those days, relationship was usually counted on the mother's side. When a man married he went to live with the clan of his wife. In the course of time groups of clans came to be called tribes. A long time later, after the animals had been domesticated and men had come to own flocks and herds and other kinds of property, the father became the head of the family as we know it to-day.

Words had to be invented, just as tools were. Very slowly men gave names to the things about them and learned to talk to each other. Mothers sang jingles and lullabies to their babies. Around the camp-fire at night men told how they had hunted the wild beasts. Women talked as they gathered and prepared food or dressed the skins of the wild animals. Mothers, who wanted their children to be brave and wise, told them stories about the bravest and wisest of their clan in the olden time. Perhaps this is why children, and older people too for that matter, have always been fond of stories. In these ways languages grew and the beginnings of literature were made.

People have always been fond of ornaments. The earliest men wore necklaces of teeth and claws. Later they made beads of bronze or of gold. The women tried to make their baskets and their clothes as beautiful as possible by coloring them with natural dyes. Some of the men liked to draw pictures of wild animals upon pieces of bone or upon the walls of their homes in the caves. People learned to count upon their fingers and to use various parts of their bodies, like the finger, the hand, and the arm, as measures of length. For example, the cubit of which we read in the Bible was the distance from the elbow to the end of the middle finger. From such crude and simple beginnings our arts and sciences have all developed.

-Adapted from "Our Beginnings in Europe and America," by courtesy of the John C. Winston Company.

CLASS ACTIVITIES

Questions and Problems

1. Name five important gifts which we received from the earliest men. 2. Read the selection again. As you read, make a list of the chief steps

in man's progress in civilization, as follows:

a. The making of fire.

b. The domestication of animals.

Compare lists and agree on a final class list.

3. In your opinion, which item listed in answer to No. 2 was the most important step in man's advance in civilization? Give reasons.

Test in Thoroughness of Reading

1. What was the food of the earliest men?

2. What were probably the earliest occupations of men?

3. What were probably the first dwelling places of early men?

4. What is said to have caused men to adopt a settled life?

5. Of what were the first permanent houses probably built?

6. What was man's first weapon?

7. Of what is bronze made?

8. Who were the first burden-bearers?

9. How was relationship usually determined among early people? 10. How did primitive man first learn to count?

Give yourself ten points for each question which you answered correctly. What is your score?

CLASS-LIBRARY READINGS

DOMESTICATING ANIMALS

1. "Farmer John," J. T. Trowbridge, in Vocational Reader, 35-37. 2. “Bee-Keeping," W. J. Quick, in Opportunities of To-day for Boys and

Girls, 126-133.

3. "The Work of a Ranchman," H. Hagedorn, in The Joy in Work, 66–79. 4. "The Story in a Honeycomb,” in Wonder Book of Knowledge, 183–197. 5. "On the Situation, Feelings, and Pleasures of an American Farmer," H. St. John Crevecoeur, in The Promise of Country Life, 15-30. 6. "A Barn-Door Outlook," John Burroughs, ibid., 73–86.

7. "On the Graces and Anxieties of Pig Driving," Leigh Hunt, ibid., 114-116.

8. "Rab and His Friends," J. Brown, ibid., 127-141.

9. "The Wild-Beast Tamer," Careers of Danger and Daring, 293-347. 10. "In the Workshop of the Bees," Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, I: 359-364.

II. "Our Sagacious Comrade and Helper, the Horse," ibid., 4:1683– 1685; Book of Knowledge, 19: 6039–6048.

12. The Story of Animals," World Book, 1: 259–262.

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One of the most impressive ceremonies of the Camp-Fire Girls is the lighting of the camp-fire. When the fuel has been arranged and the girls are seated in a circle around the pile of wood, a torch-bearer applies the torch. The ceremony is completed by the singing of a song or by the recitation in unison of this ode. Do you think this poem presents truly what we owe to fire?

O Fire!

Long years ago, when our fathers fought with great animals, you were their protection.

From the cruel cold of winter, you saved them.

When they needed food, you changed the flesh of beasts into savory meat for them.

During all the ages your mysterious flame has been a symbol to them for Spirit.

So to-night, we light our fire in remembrance of the Great Spirit who gave you to us.

CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. Mention any facts given in preceding selections which show whether this poem describes truly our debt to fire.

2. Read this selection aloud in unison. Before you begin, look over the poem together and agree on the places where pauses should be made. 3. Volunteer report: Some girl tell about the ideals, activities, and ceremonies of the Camp-Fire Girls.

2. ROAST PIG

CHARLES LAMB

After you have read the first five paragraphs determine whether you think this is a true story.

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal. The manuscript goes on to say that the art of roasting, or rather broiling, was accidentally discovered in the manner following:

The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning to get food for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son, Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, let some sparks fall into a bundle of straw, which, kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry makeshift of a building), a fine litter of young pigs, not less than nine in number, perished.

Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, not so much for the sake of the hut, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches and the labor of an hour or two, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced.

What could it come from? Not from the burnt cottage he had smelled that smell before indeed this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through his carelessness. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think.

He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burned his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorching skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life, indeed, for before him no man. had known it) he tasted crackling!

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