Chapter 1 : How things Started

Once upon a time there was a boy—

Just like me.

He had to stay in bed in the morning until seven o’clock until his father and mother were ready to get up;

So did I.

As he was always awake long before this time, he used to lie there and think about all sorts of curious things;

So did I.

One thing he used to wonder was this:

What would the world be like if there were—
No fathers and mothers,
No uncles and aunts,
No cousins or other children to play with,
No people at all, except himself in the whole world!
Perhaps you have wondered the same thing;

So did I.

At last he used to get so lonely, just from thinking how dreadful such a world would be, that he could stand it no longer and would run to his mother’s room and jump into bed by her side just to get this terrible thought out of his mind;

So did I—for I was the boy.

Well, there was a time long, long, long ago when there were no men or women or children, NO PEOPLE of any kind in the whole world. Of course there were no houses, for there was no one to build them or to live in them, no towns or cities—nothing that people make. There were just wild animals—bears and wolves, birds and butterflies, frogs and snakes, turtles and fish. Can you think of such a world as that?

Then,
long, long, long

before that, there was a time when there were NO PEOPLE and NO ANIMALS of any sort in the whole world; there were just growing plants, trees and bushes, grass and flowers. Can you think of such a world as that?

Then,
long, long, long,
long, long, long

before that, there was a time when there were NO PEOPLE, NO ANIMALS, NO PLANTS, in the whole world; there was just bare rock and water everywhere. Can you think of such a world as that?

Then,
long, long, long
long, long, long—you might
keep on saying—
“long, long, long,” all day, and
to-morrow, and all
next week, and next
month, and next
year, and it would
not be long enough—

before this, there was a time when there was NO WORLD AT ALL!

There were only the Stars Nothing else!

Now, real Stars are not things with points like those in the corner of a flag or the gold ones you put on a Christmas tree. The real stars in the sky have no points. They are huge burning coals of fire—coals of fire. Each star, however, is so huge that there is nothing in the world now anywhere nearly as big. One little bit, one little scrap of a star is bigger than our whole world—than our whole world.

One of these stars is our Sun—yes, our Sun. The other stars would look the same as the Sun if we could get as close to them. But at that time, so long, long ago, our Sun was not just a big, round, white, hot ball as we see it in the sky to-day. It was then more like the fireworks you may have seen on the Fourth of July. It was whirling and sputtering and throwing off sparks.

One of these sparks which the Sun threw far off got cool just as a spark from the crackling log in the fireplace gets cool, and this cooled-off spark was—

What do you suppose?
See if you can guess—
It was our World!—yes, the World
on which we now live.

At first, however, our World or Earth was nothing but a ball of rock. This ball of rock was wrapped around with steam, like a heavy fog.

Then the steam turned to rain and it rained on the World, until it had filled up the hollows and made enormously big puddles. These puddles were the oceans. The dry places were bare rock.

Then, after this, came the first living things—tiny plants that you could only have seen under a microscope. At first they grew only in the water, then along the water’s edge, then out on the rock.

Then dirt or soil, as people call it, formed all over the rock and made the rock into land, and the plants grew larger and spread farther over the land.

Then, after this, came the first tiny animals in the water. They were wee Mites like drops of jelly.

Then, after this, came things like Insects, some that live in the water, some on the water, some on the land, and some in the air.

Then, after this, came Fish, that live only in the water.

Then, after this, came Frogs, that live in the water and on the land, too.

Then, after this, came Snakes and huge lizards bigger than alligators, more like dragons; and they grew so big that at last they could not move and died because they could not get enough food to eat.

Then, after this, came Birds that lay eggs and those Animals like foxes and elephants and cows that nurse their babies when they are born.

Then, after this, came Monkeys.

Then, last of all, came—what do you suppose? Yes—People—men, women, and children.

Here are the steps; see if you can take them:

What do you suppose will be next?

Chapter 2 : Umfa-Umfa and Itchy-Scratchy

How do you suppose I know about all these things that took place so long ago?

I don’t.

I’m only guessing about them.

But there are different kinds of guesses. If I hold out my two closed hands and ask you to guess which one has the penny in it, that is one kind of a guess. Your guess might be right or it might be wrong. It would be just luck.

But there is another kind of a guess. When there is snow on the ground and I see tracks of a boot in the snow, I guess that a man must have passed by, for boots don’t usually walk without someone in them. That kind of a guess is not just luck but common sense.

And so we can guess about a great many things that have taken place long ago, even though there was no one there at the time to see them or tell about them.

Men have dug down deep under the ground in different parts of the world and have found there—what do you suppose?

I don’t believe you would ever guess.

They have found the heads of arrows and spears and hatchets.

The peculiar thing about these arrows and spears and hatchets is that they are not made of iron or steel, as you might expect, but of stone.

Now, we are sure that only men could have made and used such things, for birds and fish or other animals do not use hatchets or spears. We are also sure that these men must have lived long, long years ago before iron and steel were known, because it must have taken long, long years for these things to have become covered up so deep by dust and dirt. We have also found the bones of the people themselves, who must have died thousands upon thousands of years ago, long before any one began to write down history. So we know that the people who were living on the earth then were working and playing, eating and fighting—doing many of the same things we are to-day—especially the fighting.

This time in the pre-history of the world, when people used such things made of stone, is therefore called The Stone Age.

These First Stone Age People we call Primitive, which simply means First as a Primer means First Reader. Primitive People were wild animals. Unlike other wild animals, however, they walked on their hind legs.

These First People had hair growing, not just on their heads, but all over their bodies, like some shaggy dogs. They had no houses of any sort in which to live. They simply lay down on the ground when night came. Later, when the earth became cold, they found caves in the rocks or in the hillsides where they could get away from the cold and storms and other wild animals. So men, women, and children of this time were called Cave People.

They spent their days hunting some animals and running and hiding from others. They caught animals by trapping them in a pit covered over with bushes, or they killed them with a club or a rock if they had a chance, or with stone-headed arrows or hatchets. They even drew pictures of these animals on the walls of their caves, scratching the picture with a pointed stone, and some of these pictures we can still see to-day.

They lived on berries and nuts and grass-seeds. They robbed the nests of birds for the eggs, which they ate raw, for they had no fire to cook with. They were blood-thirsty; they liked to drink the warm blood of animals they killed, as you would a glass of milk.

They talked to each other by some sort of grunts—

“Umfa, umfa, glug, glug.”

They made clothes of skins of animals they killed, for there was no such thing as cloth. And yet, although they were real men, they lived so much like wild animals that we call such people savages.

Primitive Men were not pleasant people. They were fearful and cruel creatures, who beat and killed and robbed whenever they had a chance.

A cave man got his wife by stealing a girl away from her own cave home, knocking her senseless, and dragging her off by her hair, if necessary. The men were fighters but not brave. They would kill other animals and other men if the others were weaker or if they could sneak upon them and catch them off their guard, but if others were stronger they would run and hide.

Their only rule of life was hurt and kill what you can, and run from what you can’t. This is what we call the first law of nature—every man for himself. They knew if they didn’t kill they would be killed, for there were no laws nor police to protect them.

These primitive cave people are our ancestors, and we get from them many of their wild ways. In spite of our religion and manners and education, there are many men still living who act in the same way when they get a chance.

Jails are made for such men.

Suppose you had been a boy or a girl in the Stone Age, with a name like Itchy-Scratchy. I wonder how you would have liked the life.

When you woke up in the morning, you would not have bathed or even washed your hands and face or brushed your teeth or combed your hair.

You ate with your fingers, for there were no knives or forks or spoons or cups or saucers, only one bowl—which your mother had made out of mud and dried in the sun to hold water to drink—no dishes to wash and put away, no chairs, no tables, no table manners.

There were no books, no paper, no pencils.

There was no Saturday or Sunday, January or July. Except that one day was warm and sunny or another cold and rainy, they were all alike. There was no school to go to. Every day was a holiday.

There was nothing to do all day long but make mud pies or pick berries or play tag with your brothers and sisters.

I wonder how you would like that kind of life!

“Fine!” do you think?—“a great life—just like camping out?”

But I have only told you part of the story.

The cave would have been cold and damp and dark, with only the bare ground or a pile of leaves for a bed. There would probably have been bats and big spiders sharing the cave with you.

You might have had on the skin of some animal your father had killed but as this only covered part of your body and as there was no fire, you would have felt cold in winter, and when it got very cold you might have frozen to death.

For breakfast you might have had some dried berries or grass-seed or a piece of raw meat, for dinner the same thing, for supper still the same thing.

You would never have had any bread or milk or griddle-cakes with syrup, or oatmeal with sugar on it, or apple pie or ice-cream.

There was nothing to do all day long but watch out for wild animals—bears and tigers; for there was no door with lock and key, and a tiger, if he found you out, could go wherever you went and “get you” even in your cave.

And then some day your father, who had left the cave in the morning to go hunting, would not return, and you would know he had been torn to pieces by some wild beast, and you would wonder how long before your turn would come next.

Do you think you would like to have lived then?

Chapter 3 : Fire! Fire!! Fire!!!

The first things are usually the most interesting—the first baby, the first tooth, the first step, the first word, the first spanking. This book will be chiefly the story of first things; those that came second or third or fourth or fifth you can read about and study later.

Primitive People did not at first know what fire was. They had no matches nor any way of making a light or a fire. They had no light at night. They had no fire to warm themselves by. They had no fire with which to cook their food. Somewhere and sometime, we do not know exactly when or how, they found out how to make and use fire.

If you rub your hands together rapidly, they become warm. Try it. If you rub them together still more rapidly, they become hot. If you rub two sticks together rapidly, they become warm. If you rub two sticks together very, very, very rapidly, they become hot and at last, if you keep it up long enough and fast enough, are set on fire. The Indians and boy scouts do this and make a fire by twisting one stick against another.

This was one of the first inventions, and this invention was as remarkable for them at that time as the invention of electric light in our own times.

People of the Stone Age had hair and beards that were never cut, because they had nothing to cut them with, even had they wanted them short, which they probably didn’t.

Their finger-nails grew like claws until they broke off.

They had no clothes made of cloth, for they had no cloth and nothing with which to cut and sew cloth if they had.

They had no saws to cut boards, no hammer or nails to fasten them together to make houses or furniture.

They had no forks nor spoons; no pots nor pans; no buckets nor shovels; no needles nor pins.

The People of the Stone Age had never seen or heard of such a thing as iron or steel or tin or brass or anything made of these metals. For thousands and thousands of years Primitive People got along without any of the things that are made of metal.

Then one day a Stone Age Man found out something by accident; a “discovery” we call it.

He was making a fire; and a fire, which is to us such a common, every-day thing, was still to him very wonderful. Round his fire he placed some rock to make a sort of camp-fire stove. Now, it happened that this particular rock was not ordinary rock but what we now call “ore,” for it had copper in it. The heat of the fire melted some of the copper out of the rock, and it ran out on the ground.

What were those bright, shining drops?

He examined them.

How pretty they were!

He heated some more of the same rock and got some more copper.

Thus was the first metal discovered.

At first people used the copper for beads and ornaments, it was so bright and shiny. But they soon found out that copper could be pounded into sharp blades and points, which were much better than the stone knives and arrow-heads they had used before.

But notice that it was not iron they discovered first, it was copper.

We think people next discovered tin in somewhat the same way. Then, after that, they found out that tin when mixed with copper made a still harder and better metal than either alone. This metal, made of tin and copper together, we now call bronze; and for two or three thousand years people made their tools and weapons out of bronze. And so we call the time when men used bronze tools, and bronze weapons for hunting and fighting, the Bronze Age.

At last some man discovered iron, and he soon saw that iron was better for most useful things than either copper or bronze. The Iron Age started with the discovery of iron, and we are still in the Iron Age.

As people who lived in the Bronze and Iron Ages were able, after the discovery of metal, to do many things they could not possibly have done before with only stone, and as they lived much more as we do now, we call people of the Bronze and Iron Ages “civilized.”

You may have heard in your mythology or fairy tales of a Golden Age also, but by this is meant something quite different. The Golden Age means a time when everything was beautiful and lovely and everybody wise and good. There have been times in the World’s History which have been called the Golden Age for this reason.

But I am afraid there never has been really a golden age—only in fairy-tales.