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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 them together still more rapidly, they become hot. 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. Native Americans and Boy Scouts and Girl 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.
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.
A cave man discovering copper
He was making a fire; and a fire, which is to us such a common, everyday thing, was still to him very wonderful. Round his fire he placed some rocks to make a sort of campfire 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, for 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.
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. We call the time when men used bronze tools, and bronze weapons for hunting and fighting the Bronze Age.
At last somebody discovered iron, and soon people saw that iron was better for most useful things than either copper or bronze. The Iron Age lasted three thousand years.
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.
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.