WE know very little about the first ``true‘’ men. We have never seen theirpictures. In the deepest layer of clay of an ancient soil we have sometimesfound pieces of their bones. These lay buried amidst the broken skeletons of otheranimals that have long since disappeared from the face of the earth.
Anthropologists (learned scientists who devote their lives to the study ofman as a member of the animal kingdom) have taken these bones and they havebeen able to reconstruct our earliest ancestors with a fair degree of accuracy.
The great-great-grandfather of the human race was a very ugly andunattractive mammal. He was quite small, much smaller than the people of today.The heat of the sun and the biting wind of the cold winter had coloured hisskin a dark brown. His head and most of his body, his arms and legs too, werecovered with long, coarse hair. He had very thin but strong fingers which madehis hands look like those of a monkey.
His forehead was low and his jaw was like the jaw of a wild animal whichuses its teeth both as fork and knife. He wore no clothes. He had seen no fireexcept the flames of the rumbling volcanoes which filled the earth with theirsmoke and their lava.
He lived in the damp blackness of vast forests, as the pygmies of Africado to this very day. When he felt the pangs of hunger he ate raw leaves and theroots of plants or he took the eggs away from an angry bird and fed them to hisown young. Once in a while, after a long and patient chase, he would catch asparrow or a small wild dog or perhaps a rabbit. These he would eat raw for hehad never discovered that food tasted better when it was cooked.
During the hours of day, this primitive human being prowled about lookingfor things to eat.
When night descended upon the earth, he hid his wife and his children in ahollow tree or behind some heavy boulders, for he was surrounded on all sidesby ferocious animals and when it was dark these animals began to prowl about,looking for something to eat for their mates and their own young, and theyliked the taste of human beings. It was a world where you must either eat or beeaten, and life was very unhappy because it was full of fear and misery.
In summer, man was exposed tothe scorching rays of the sun, and during the winter his children would freezeto death in his arms. When such a creature hurt itself, (and hunting animalsare forever breaking their bones or spraining their ankles) he had no one totake care of him and he must die a horrible death.
Like many of the animals who fill the Zoo with their strange noises, earlyman liked to jabber. That is to say, he endlessly repeated the sameunintelligible gibberish because it pleased him to hear the sound of his voice.In due time he learned that he could use this guttural noise to warn his fellowbeings whenever danger threatened and he gave certain little shrieks which cameto mean ``there is a tiger!‘’ or ``here come five elephants.‘’ Then the othersgrunted something back at him and their growl meant, ``I see them,‘’ or ``letus run away and hide.‘’ And this was probably the origin of all language.
But, as I have said before, of these beginnings we know so very little.Early man had no tools and he built himself no houses. He lived and died andleft no trace of his existence except a few collar-bones and a few pieces ofhis skull.
These tell us that many thousands of years ago the world was inhabited bycertain mammals who were quite different from all the other animals--who hadprobably developed from another unknown ape-like animal which had learned towalk on its hind-legs and use its fore-paws as hands--and who were mostprobably connected with the creatures who happen to be our own immediateancestors.
It is little enough we know and the rest is darkness.