Savage of the Stone Age - Public domain book illustration

Savage of the Stone Age
Identifier: popularhistoryof00brya (find matches)
Title: A popular history of the United States : from the first discovery of the western hemisphere by the Northmen, to the end of the first century of the union of the states ; preceded by a sketch of the prehistoric period and the age of the mound builders
Year: 1876 (1870s)
Authors: Bryant, William Cullen, 1794-1878 Gay, Sydney Howard, 1814-1888
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : Scribner, Armstrong, and Company
Contributing Library: Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection
Digitizing Sponsor: The Institute of Museum and Library Services through an Indiana State Library LSTA Grant



Text Appearing Before Image:
ons, for whose possession these early men doubt-less contended with the cave-lion, the cave-bear, and the cave-hyena;by the sea-shore in the Kjokken-Moddings of Denmark; in the hutsof the Lake region where they put water between themselves and alldanger from wild beasts or other enemies, their history is read in thesimple implements of the infancy and childhood of the race. When the human creature learned that he could avail himself ofhis hands in a way and with an intelligent purpose to whichof the prim- no othcT animal had attained, and of which mere paws andclaws seemed incapable, his first use, probably, of that dis-covery was to hurl a stick or a stone at an enemy or a wild beast in IMPLEMENTS OF THE STONE AGE. 5 defence or attack. Observation and experience would soon lead himto some contrivance better than a mere missile, and to combine thestick and the stone into an artificial weapon. So, also, from bruisingor crushing with a pebble, the transition is equally natural to a rude
Text Appearing After Image:
Savage of the Stone Age. hammer or hatchet, — the stone prepared, in some way, to receive ahandle, or sharpened at one end to an edge, so that a blow could bestruck to break or cut with careful limitations. In the first period ofthis early age, therefore, when man is supposed to have begun to learnthat he had the faculty of invention which might make him superiorto all other animals, are found the first rude weapons and implements,arrow-heads and spear-heads, knives, hatchets, hammers, and toolssharpened to edges of different shapes and for various purposes, allmade of stone or bone, but all only roughly chipped, unground, andunpolished. It must have taken generations, it may have taken centuries, beforeeven this much of culture was secured by the man, whose wants werefew, whose intellect was as feeble as the intellect of a modern child,but whose mere brute force of muscular strength and whose power ofendurance were probably so great as alone to suffice, for the mostpart, to satisfy