The Tree-Dwellers Part 10

How many kinds of knives have you seen?

How do you think people cut their food before they had knives?

What do you think they used for their first knives?

_Bodo's Hammer and Knife_

Bodo had never had a warm dinner.

He had no fire to cook his food.

Much of his food was hard and tough.

He had not learned to soften it with fire.

He had not learned to crush or grind it with stones.

His teeth did all of this work.

The teeth of all the Tree-dwellers were large and strong.

They were fitted to cut and grind tough food.

They were fitted to crack the sh.e.l.ls of nuts.

Bodo often cracked nuts with his teeth.

But sometimes he found nuts that he could not crack.

He had never seen or heard of a hammer, so he threw a hard nut against a rock.

The nut did not crack.

So he kept on trying different ways.

At last he struck the nut with a stone.

Its hard sh.e.l.l broke.

How glad Bodo was!

He ate the kernel and then cracked some more nuts with the stone.

This stone was his first hammer.

Sometimes he used a rough stone.

Its rough edges hurt his hand, so he hunted for a smooth stone.

At other times he wrapped one end of a rough stone in gra.s.s.

The gra.s.s protected his hand.

This was the first handle to his hammer.

Bodo liked to use this hammer.

He liked to use smooth hammer-stones.

But sometimes the smooth stone slipped or bounded back and jarred his hand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Bodo cracked nuts with a stone_"]

One day he found a smooth stone that had a little pit on either side.

He put his thumb and finger into the pits and cracked a hard nut with the stone.

This was just what he needed.

It neither slipped nor jarred his hand.

Some of the other Tree-dwellers tried it.

They wanted one like it, so they began to hunt for pitted stones.

They could not always find such stones, but they never thought of making the pits.

People lived many years before they learned to do that.

Tree-dwellers simply used things that they found on the spot.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The chipped pebble_]

They seldom changed their shape.

We have only a few weapons that we know they made.

They were found years ago deep down in some gravel.

They had lain there many long years.

Here is a picture of one.

It is only a chipped pebble.

Such a weapon is used nowadays only in play, but then it was used in real work.

For a long time the Tree-dwellers did not have even this.

They used their teeth and nails instead.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _An antler used as a wedge_]

Some animals had larger and sharper teeth.

The Tree-dwellers found such teeth in the sand.

They found sharp claws there, too.

They often found sharp bones and horns.

They used such things for cutting for many long years, but at last they made a knife.

It happened when Bodo was cracking a bone.

In some way he broke his hammer.

He picked up the pieces and looked at them.

They were sharp enough to cut with, but the edges hurt his hand.

So he found a smooth pebble and chipped flakes from one end.

Before long he had a sharp point.

He never hafted it; but he left one end smooth, so that it would not hurt his hand.

It was such a weapon as this that was found in the gravel.

You can see that it is something like a spear-head.

Bodo used it when he hunted small animals.

He used it to skin them and to hack off strips of flesh.

Many things had been used as knives before, but this was the first knife that we know man made.

THINGS TO DO

_Hunt for some smooth hammer-stones. If you can find one with pits on either side, try both kinds and find out which one works the better._ _See if you can find a good stone for a knife._ _Strike the edge to see if it crumbles._ _Find one that will not crumble._ _Do you know whether stones have names?_ _What stones have you that you would like named?_

XX.

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

Have you ever seen wild animals protect their little ones?

How do they do it?

When the mother goes away, in what kind of a place does she leave them?

Do you know whether the young animals mind their mothers?

_What Bodo and One-Ear Found in the Alders_