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

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Many precautions were, from time to time, taken against the snakes. Some of the Apes persisted in still sleeping in the trees. Most of them, however, sought holes in the ground and caves in the rocks, which they fortified by piling brush and earth at the entrance; while others, not finding holes conveniently at hand, dug them and covered them with brush, so as to form a mound. The race had thus begun to build, and one of the first arts—architecture—was founded. The home originated in a fight against the serpent.

The snakes, however, soon attacked these homes, and all the more eagerly because of the food stored in them. For the Apes found that they could put their structures to many uses not before known. They would hold their provisions, as well as themselves, and would protect such provisions from the weather, as well as from the snakes, and so preserve them for a longer time. Their homes accordingly became store-houses, and this facility for keeping provisions by storage stimulated the collection of them. Instead of gathering only what they wanted to eat at the time, the Apes now picked up all they could find, and placed it in their dug-outs. They soon learned to allow nothing to go to waste, and became economical. They even collected when they did not want anything, from the mere fact that they could store it, and thus became provident. They believed they might want in the future, and so often stored large quantities; for some Apes early became avaricious. They got in time to be as proud of their possessions as of their homes, and often gathered from a feeling of ambition. Shoozoo claimed that he had enough fruits in his mound to feed all the Apes of Cocoanut Hill for a lifetime; which nobody of that generation believed, and nobody of the next doubted.