s, heat, cold, hunger, and disease.

The first people, like the other animals, used only their hands and
teeth in hunting and in fighting their enemies. Finally some of the
brighter ones discovered that a stick or club served better than the
bare hands.

The use of flint knives may have been brought about through some one
cutting himself accidentally upon a piece of flint sticking out of the
ground. If he happened to be very bright, he would at once see the value
of such a piece of stone tied on the end of an arrow or club. By such
means, perhaps, implements of wood, bone, and stone came into use.

We have discovered the sites of many of the villages as well as the
caves in which the ancient inhabitants of the earth lived. The
implements of bone and stone which we have dug up in such places enable
us to learn a great deal about their lives.

There was a time when people did not know the use of fire. What a
fearful thing fire must have seemed to them, at first. Their knowledge
of it probably came from lightning or from hot lava flowing from a
volcano. After they had learned to control fire, and to make it by
rubbing two sticks together, they must have felt rich indeed. The
discovery of fire was one of their greatest triumphs. It kept the cold,
damp cave warm and dry, even though it filled their eyes with smoke. It
was a means of keeping them safe from the dangerous wild beasts when
they had to sleep out in the open. It was useful in cooking their food,
and by and by it was to prove valuable in still other ways, when they
began to _make_ things as well as to _find_ things.

They began, by and by, to build rude shelters,--huts and wigwams, low
houses of dried mud, and dugouts in the hillside. They learned to weave
simple coverings out of the fibers of certain plants, or hair or wool,
to protect their bodies against the cold and the wet. They learned,
somehow, to tan the skins of animals, so that they would not first
stretch and grow slippery. They learned to hold things together by
sewing, using sharp bones for needles and the sinews of animals or
fibers of plants for thread.

[Illustration: _American Forestry Association_
The Laplander of the far North uses the reindeer to pull his sled, its
flesh for food, its skin for clothing, and its horns for various
purposes.]

How did men discover that they could travel on the water? Some one may
at first have made use of a log to cross a river and, afterwards, have