Umfa-Umfa and Itchy-Scratchy
HOW do you suppose I know about all these things that took place so long ago?
I don’t.
I’m only guessing about them.
But there are different kinds of guesses. If I hold out my two closed hands and ask you to guess which one has the penny in it, that is one kind of a guess. Your guess might be right or it might be wrong. It would be just luck.
But there is another kind of a guess. When there is snow on the ground and I see tracks of a boot in the snow, I guess that a man must have passed by, for boots don’t usually walk without some one in them. That kind of a guess is not just luck but common sense.
And so we can guess about a great many things that have taken place long ago, even though there was no one there at the time to see them or tell about them.
Men have dug down deep under the ground in different parts of the world and have found there—what do you suppose?
I don’t believe you would ever guess.
They have found the heads of arrows and spears and hatchets.
The peculiar thing about these arrows and spears and hatchets is that they are not made of iron or steel, as you might expect, but of stone.
Now, we are sure that only men could have made and used such things, for birds and fish or other animals do not use hatchets or spears. We are also sure that these men must have lived long, long years ago before iron and steel were known, because it must have taken long, long years for these things to have become covered up so deep by dust and dirt. We have also found the bones of the people themselves, who must have died thousands upon thousands of years ago, long before any one began to write down history. So we know that the people who were living on the earth then were working and playing, eating and fighting—doing many of the same things we are to-day—especially the fighting.
This time in the pre-history of the world, when people used such things made of stone, is therefore called THE STONE AGE.
These First Stone Age People we call Primitive, which simply means First as a Primer means First Reader. Primitive People were wild animals. Unlike other wild animals, however, they walked on their hind legs.
These First People had hair growing, not just on their heads, but all over their bodies, like some shaggy dogs. They had no houses of any sort in which to live. They simply lay down on the ground when night came. Later, when the earth became cold, they found caves in the rocks or in the hillsides where they could get away from the cold and storms and other wild animals. So men, women, and children of this time were called Cave People.
They spent their days hunting some animals and running and hiding from others. They caught animals by trapping them in a pit covered over with bushes, or they killed them with a club or a rock if they had a chance, or with stone-headed arrows or hatchets. They even drew pictures of these animals on the walls of their caves, scratching the picture with a pointed stone, and some of these pictures we can still see to-day.
They lived on berries and nuts and grass-seeds. They robbed the nests of birds for the eggs, which they ate raw, for they had no fire to cook with. They were blood-thirsty; they liked to drink the warm blood of animals they killed, as you would a glass of milk.
They talked to each other by some sort of grunts—
“Umfa, umfa, glug, glug.”
They made clothes of skins of animals they killed, for there was no such thing as cloth. And yet, although they were real men, they lived so much like wild animals that we call such people savages.
Primitive Men were not pleasant people. They were fearful and cruel creatures, who beat and killed and robbed whenever they had a chance.
A cave man got his wife by stealing a girl away from her own cave home, knocking her senseless, and dragging her off by her hair, if necessary. The men were fighters but not brave. They would kill other animals and other men if the others were weaker or if they could sneak upon them and catch them off their guard, but if others were stronger they would run and hide.
Their only rule of life was hurt and kill what you can, and run from what you can’t. This is what we call the first law of nature—every man for himself. They knew if they didn’t kill they would be killed, for there were no laws nor police to protect them.
These primitive cave people are our ancestors, and we get from them many of their wild ways. In spite of our religion and manners and education, there are many men still living who act in the same way when they get a chance.
Jails are made for such men.
Suppose you had been a boy or a girl in the Stone Age, with a name like Itchy-Scratchy. I wonder how you would have liked the life.
When you woke up in the morning, you would not have bathed or even washed your hands and face or brushed your teeth or combed your hair.
You ate with your fingers, for there were no knives or forks or spoons or cups or saucers, only one bowl—which your mother had made out of mud and dried in the sun to hold water to drink—no dishes to wash and put away, no chairs, no tables, no table manners.
There were no books, no paper, no pencils.
There was no Saturday or Sunday, January or July. Except that one day was warm and sunny or another cold and rainy, they were all alike. There was no school to go to. Every day was a holiday.
There was nothing to do all day long but make mud pies or pick berries or play tag with your brothers and sisters.
I wonder how you would like that kind of life!
“Fine!” do you think?—“a great life—just like camping out?”
But I have only told you part of the story.
The cave would have been cold and damp and dark, with only the bare ground or a pile of leaves for a bed. There would probably have been bats and big spiders sharing the cave with you.
You might have had on the skin of some animal your father had killed but as this only covered part of your body and as there was no fire, you would have felt cold in winter, and when it got very cold you might have frozen to death.
For breakfast you might have had some dried berries or grass-seed or a piece of raw meat, for dinner the same thing, for supper still the same thing.
You would never have had any bread or milk or griddle-cakes with syrup, or oatmeal with sugar on it, or apple pie or ice-cream.
There was nothing to do all day long but watch out for wild animals—bears and tigers; for there was no door with lock and key, and a tiger, if he found you out, could go wherever you went and “get you” even in your cave.
And then some day your father, who had left the cave in the morning to go hunting, would not return, and you would know he had been torn to pieces by some wild beast, and you would wonder how long before your turn would come next.
Do you think you would like to have lived then?