flint

63:1.3While still liv­ing with his par­ents, An­don had fas­tened a sharp piece of flint on the end of a club, us­ing an­i­mal ten­dons for this pur­pose, and on no less than a dozen oc­ca­sions he made good use of such a weapon in sav­ing both his own life and that of his equally ad­ven­tur­ous and in­quis­i­tive sis­ter, who un­fail­ingly ac­com­pa­nied him on all of his tours of ex­plo­ration.

68:5.42. The hunt­ing stage. The in­ven­tion of weapon tools en­abled man to be­come a hunter and thus to gain con­sid­er­able free­dom from food slav­ery. A thought­ful An­don­ite who had severely bruised his fist in a se­ri­ous com­bat re­dis­cov­ered the idea of us­ing a long stick for his arm and a piece of hard flint, bound on the end with sinews, for his fist. Many tribes made in­de­pen­dent dis­cov­er­ies of this sort, and these var­i­ous forms of ham­mers rep­re­sented one of the great for­ward steps in hu­man civ­i­liza­tion. To­day some Aus­tralian na­tives have pro­gressed lit­tle be­yond this stage.

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.

63:5.6The An­don­ites were fear­less and suc­cess­ful hunters and, with the ex­cep­tion of wild berries and cer­tain fruits of the trees, lived ex­clu­sively on flesh. As An­don had in­vented the stone ax, so his de­scen­dants early dis­cov­ered and made ef­fec­tive use of the throw­ing stick and the har­poon. At last a tool-cre­at­ing mind was func­tion­ing in con­junc­tion with an im­ple­ment-us­ing hand, and these early hu­mans be­came highly skill­ful in the fash­ion­ing of flint tools. They trav­eled far and wide in search of flint, much as pres­ent-day hu­mans jour­ney to the ends of the earth in quest of gold, plat­inum, and di­a­monds.

80:3.5These Cro-Magnon peo­ples were a brave and farsee­ing race. They main­tained an ef­fi­cient sys­tem of child cul­ture. Both par­ents par­tic­i­pated in these labors, and the ser­vices of the older chil­dren were fully uti­lized. Each child was care­fully trained in the care of the caves, in art, and in flint mak­ing. At an early age the women were well versed in the do­mes­tic arts and in crude agri­cul­ture, while the men were skilled hunters and coura­geous war­riors.

69:4.6Mod­ern writ­ing orig­i­nated in the early trade rec­ords; the first lit­er­a­ture of man was a trade-pro­mo­tion doc­u­ment, a salt ad­ver­tise­ment. Many of the ear­lier wars were fought over nat­u­ral de­posits, such as flint, salt, and met­als. The first for­mal tribal treaty con­cerned the in­ter­trib­al­iz­ing of a salt de­posit. These treaty spots af­forded op­por­tu­nity for friendly and peace­ful in­ter­change of ideas and the in­ter­min­gling of var­i­ous tribes.

69:3.9The early spe­cial­ists in in­dus­try were the flint flak­ers and stone ma­sons; next came the smiths. Sub­se­quently group spe­cial­iza­tion de­vel­oped; whole fam­i­lies and clans ded­i­cated them­selves to cer­tain sorts of la­bor. The ori­gin of one of the ear­li­est castes of priests, apart from the tribal med­i­cine men, was due to the su­per­sti­tious ex­al­ta­tion of a fam­ily of ex­pert sword­mak­ers.

69:6.4Though An­don, the dis­cov­erer of fire, avoided treat­ing it as an ob­ject of wor­ship, many of his de­scen­dants re­garded the flame as a fe­tish or as a spirit. They failed to reap the san­i­tary ben­e­fits of fire be­cause they would not burn refuse. Prim­i­tive man feared fire and al­ways sought to keep it in good hu­mor, hence the sprin­kling of in­cense. Un­der no cir­cum­stances would the an­cients spit in a fire, nor would they ever pass be­tween any­one and a burn­ing fire. Even the iron pyrites and flints used in strik­ing fire were held sa­cred by early man­kind.

63:1.2The par­ents of this first hu­man cou­ple were ap­par­ently lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the av­er­age of their tribe, though they were among its more in­tel­li­gent mem­bers, that group which first learned to throw stones and to use clubs in fight­ing. They also made use of sharp spicules of stone, flint, and bone.

64:4.3The rein­deer was highly use­ful to these Ne­an­derthal peo­ples, serv­ing as food, cloth­ing, and for tools, since they made var­i­ous uses of the horns and bones. They had lit­tle cul­ture, but they greatly im­proved the work in flint un­til it al­most reached the lev­els of the days of An­don. Large flints at­tached to wooden han­dles came back into use and served as axes and picks.