Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/26

2 mere animals. Nevertheless the earliest man possessed, among other advantages, three things which lifted him high above the animals. He had a larger and a more powerful brain than any animal; he had a pair of wonderful hands such as no other creature possessed, and with these he could make tools and implements; finally, he had a throat and vocal organs such that in the course of ages he would learn to speak.

At first man must have roamed the tropical forests without any clothing, without huts or shelter of any kind, with no tools or weapons, eating roots, fruit or berries where he found them. Occasionally he may have found a dead bird or animal killed by some other creature, and thus learning the taste of flesh he would be led to pursue the less dangerous animals and to lay them low with a stone or a club. His food was of course all raw, for he could not even make a fire, nor did he know that roasted flesh was better food.

Men so completely uncivilized as this no longer exist on earth. The most savage tribes found by explorers have learned how useful fire is and they understand how to make it. The people whom the English found on the island of Tasmania a century or so ago were among the lowest savages known to us. They wore no clothing; they had not learned how to build a hut; they did not know how to make a bow and arrows, nor even to fish. They had no goats, sheep, or cows, no horses, nor even a dog. They had never heard of sowing seed nor raising a crop of any kind. They did not know that clay will harden in the fire, and so they had no pottery jars, jugs, or dishes for food.

Naked and houseless, the Tasmanians had learned to satisfy only a very few of man's needs. Yet that which they had learned had carried them a long way beyond the earliest men. They could kindle a fire, which kept them warm in cold weather, and over it they cooked their meat. In order to secure this meat they had learned to construct very good spears, though without metal tips, for they had never heard of metal. These