The First Human Family

63:2.1Af­ter An­don and Fonta had de­cided to flee north­ward, they suc­cumbed to their fears for a time, es­pe­cially the fear of dis­pleas­ing their fa­ther and im­me­di­ate fam­ily. They en­vis­aged be­ing set upon by hos­tile rel­a­tives and thus rec­og­nized the pos­si­bil­ity of meet­ing death at the hands of their al­ready jeal­ous tribes­men. As young­sters, the twins had spent most of their time in each other’s com­pany and for this rea­son had never been overly pop­u­lar with their an­i­mal cousins of the Pri­mates tribe. Nor had they im­proved their stand­ing in the tribe by build­ing a sep­a­rate, and a very su­pe­rior, tree home.

63:2.2And it was in this new home among the tree­tops, one night af­ter they had been awak­ened by a vi­o­lent storm, and as they held each other in fear­ful and fond em­brace, that they fi­nally and fully made up their minds to flee from the tribal habi­tat and the home tree­tops.

63:2.3They had al­ready pre­pared a crude tree­top re­treat some half-day’s jour­ney to the north. This was their se­cret and safe hid­ing place for the first day away from the home forests. Not­with­stand­ing that the twins shared the Pri­mates’ deathly fear of be­ing on the ground at night­time, they sal­lied forth shortly be­fore night­fall on their north­ern trek. While it re­quired un­usual cour­age for them to un­der­take this night jour­ney, even with a full moon, they cor­rectly con­cluded that they were less likely to be missed and pur­sued by their tribes­men and rel­a­tives. And they safely made their pre­vi­ously pre­pared ren­dezvous shortly af­ter mid­night.

63:2.4On their north­ward jour­ney they dis­cov­ered an ex­posed flint de­posit and, find­ing many stones suit­ably shaped for var­i­ous uses, gath­ered up a sup­ply for the fu­ture. In at­tempt­ing to chip these flints so that they would be bet­ter adapted for cer­tain pur­poses, An­don dis­cov­ered their spark­ing qual­ity and con­ceived the idea of build­ing fire. But the no­tion did not take firm hold of him at the time as the cli­mate was still salu­bri­ous and there was lit­tle need of fire.

63:2.5But the au­tumn sun was get­ting lower in the sky, and as they jour­neyed north­ward, the nights grew cooler and cooler. Al­ready they had been forced to make use of an­i­mal skins for warmth. Be­fore they had been away from home one moon, An­don sig­ni­fied to his mate that he thought he could make fire with the flint. They tried for two months to uti­lize the flint spark for kin­dling a fire but only met with fail­ure. Each day this cou­ple would strike the flints and en­deavor to ig­nite the wood. Fi­nally, one evening about the time of the set­ting of the sun, the se­cret of the tech­nique was un­rav­eled when it oc­curred to Fonta to climb a near-by tree to se­cure an aban­doned bird’s nest. The nest was dry and highly in­flammable and con­se­quently flared right up into a full blaze the mo­ment the spark fell upon it. They were so sur­prised and star­tled at their suc­cess that they al­most lost the fire, but they saved it by the ad­di­tion of suit­able fuel, and then be­gan the first search for fire­wood by the par­ents of all man­kind.

63:2.6This was one of the most joy­ous mo­ments in their short but event­ful lives. All night long they sat up watch­ing their fire burn, vaguely re­al­iz­ing that they had made a dis­cov­ery which would make it pos­si­ble for them to defy cli­mate and thus for­ever to be in­de­pen­dent of their an­i­mal rel­a­tives of the south­ern lands. Af­ter three days’ rest and en­joy­ment of the fire, they jour­neyed on.

63:2.7The Pri­mates an­ces­tors of An­don had of­ten re­plen­ished fire which had been kin­dled by light­ning, but never be­fore had the crea­tures of earth pos­sessed a method of start­ing fire at will. But it was a long time be­fore the twins learned that dry moss and other ma­te­ri­als would kin­dle fire just as well as birds’ nests.