Читать книгу From Monkey to Man, or, Society in the Tertiary Age онлайн

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The Apes also broke off branches of trees, with which they pounded the savage beasts, not only by throwing them from the trees as missiles, but by using them as clubs, until they became skilled in the art of pounding, as well as of making clubs. When catamounts, bears and other climbing beasts attacked them on the trees, and fought paw to paw with them, they used the stones as knives, and often cut their assailants fatally, having learned to select sharp stones for this purpose, and, in time, to sharpen them specially. Before the war they had used stones only to crack nuts. But now they learned both to use them for many other purposes, and to make them into the size and shape which best suited them.

The first manufactures of the Apes were thus of military implements, their necessity being the mother of invention. In time of peace, however, they found new uses for these implements, like their descendents who afterwards beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks. The missiles with which they had attacked the tigers they soon used for hunting, and in time for building. When they came down from the trees, and lived more on the earth, they knocked cocoanuts down, instead of climbing after them; they killed birds and rabbits by throwing stones at them, instead of lying in wait for them, and they speared fish with their clubs which they had learned to sharpen. They could thus act at a greater distance, and so had more power, both to defend themselves from wild beasts, and to obtain food.