tools

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.

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.

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.

81:2.10In the prema­chine age the only way in which man could ac­com­plish work with­out do­ing it him­self was to use an an­i­mal. Do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals placed in his hands liv­ing tools, the in­tel­li­gent use of which pre­pared the way for both agri­cul­ture and trans­porta­tion. And with­out these an­i­mals man could not have risen from his prim­i­tive es­tate to the lev­els of sub­se­quent civ­i­liza­tion.

81:6.207. Ef­fec­tive­ness of me­chan­i­cal de­vices. The prog­ress of civ­i­liza­tion is di­rectly re­lated to the de­vel­op­ment and pos­ses­sion of tools, ma­chines, and chan­nels of dis­tri­bu­tion. Im­proved tools, in­ge­nious and ef­fi­cient ma­chines, de­ter­mine the sur­vival of con­tend­ing groups in the arena of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

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.

69:3.42. Mod­i­fi­ca­tion con­se­quent upon age and dis­ease. These dif­fer­ences de­ter­mined the next di­vi­sion of la­bor. The old men and crip­ples were early set to work mak­ing tools and weapons. They were later as­signed to build­ing ir­ri­ga­tion works.