Man is the tool-using, fire-making animal. From the outset of his
terrestrial career we find him supplementing the natural strength and
bodily weapons of a beast by the heat of burning and the rough implement
of stone. So he passed beyond the ape. From that he expands. Presently
he added to himself the power of the horse and the ox, he borrowed
the carrying strength of water and the driving force of the wind, he
quickened his fire by blowing, and his simple tools, pointed first
with copper and then with iron, increased and varied and became more
elaborate and efficient. He sheltered his heat in houses and made his
way easier by paths and roads. He complicated his social relationships
and increased his efficiency by the division of labour. He began to
store up knowledge. Contrivance followed contrivance, each making it
possible for a man to do more. Always down the lengthening record,
save for a set-back ever and again, he is doing more.... A quarter of
a million years ago the utmost man was a savage, a being scarcely
articulate, sheltering in holes in the rocks, armed with a rough-hewn
flint or a fire-pointed stick, naked, living in small family groups,
killed by some younger man so soon as his first virile activity
declined. Over most of the great wildernesses of earth you would have
sought him in vain; only in a few temperate and sub-tropical river
valleys would you have found the squatting lairs of his little herds, a
male, a few females, a child or so.
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