of the earth.

In the first place it was necessary that man clothe himself lest
he freeze to death. He learned how to dig holes and cover them with
branches and leaves and in these traps he caught bears and hyenas, which
he then killed with heavy stones and whose skins he used as coats for
himself and his family.

Next came the housing problem. This was simple. Many animals were in the
habit of sleeping in dark caves. Man now followed their example, drove
the animals out of their warm homes and claimed them for his own.

Even so, the climate was too severe for most people and the old and the
young died at a terrible rate. Then a genius bethought himself of
the use of fire. Once, while out hunting, he had been caught in a
forest-fire. He remembered that he had been almost roasted to death by
the flames. Thus far fire had been an enemy. Now it became a friend. A
dead tree was dragged into the cave and lighted by means of smouldering
branches from a burning wood. This turned the cave into a cozy little
room.

And then one evening a dead chicken fell into the fire. It was not
rescued until it had been well roasted. Man discovered that meat tasted
better when cooked and he then and there discarded one of the old habits
which he had shared with the other animals and began to prepare his
food.

In this way thousands of years passed. Only the people with the
cleverest brains survived. They had to struggle day and night against
cold and hunger. They were forced to invent tools. They learned how to
sharpen stones into axes and how to make hammers. They were obliged to
put up large stores of food for the endless days of the winter and they
found that clay could be made into bowls and jars and hardened in the
rays of the sun. And so the glacial period, which had threatened to
destroy the human race, became its greatest teacher because it forced
man to use his brain.

HIEROGLYPHICS

THE EGYPTIANS INVENT THE ART OF WRITING AND THE RECORD OF HISTORY BEGINS

THESE earliest ancestors of ours who lived in the great European
wilderness were rapidly learning many new things. It is safe to say that
in due course of time they would have given up the ways of savages and
would have developed a civilisation of their own. But suddenly there
came an end to their isolation. They were discovered.

A traveller from an unknown southland who had dared to cross the sea
and the high mountain passes had found his way to the wild people