14 THE BEGINNING OF CIVILIZATION
It is surprising that something as simple as lightning was so important in the beginning of civilization, because without the lightning that storms and fires produce that follow, the progress of technology would have taken many more thousands of years to develop occur. Because it was lightning that made it possible for primitive men to know fire without which they would not have been able to melt metals, make bricks for buildings, ceramic utensils or cook. It was the discovery of fire that made possible the great revolution of the stone age, then came the era of metals and then the technological and industrial. Surely, without the discovery of fire, the current development situation would also have been reached, but it would have been necessary to first discover the chemical properties of atomic elements by comparing the different substances offered by nature until it was possible to produce fire or electric current artificially, but that would undoubtedly have taken many more thousands of years to achieve than if fire was already available.