The first evidences of man's achievements that we have are rude implements of stone and flint, evidently shaped by some force guided by some intelligence;--doubtless the force of human hands, guided by the intelligence of human minds. Many such have been found in caves and gravel-beds over all the world. They were rough and crude, and indicate a rough and crude but nevertheless actual stage of civilization. Some call this the Old Stone Age and others call it the Early Stone Age. Besides stone and flint, bones, horns and tusks were used. Among the implements made were daggers, fish-hooks, needles, awls and heads of arrows and harpoons. One of the most interesting revelations of those rude and immeasurably ancient implements is the fact that man, even in those times, possessed the artistic sense; for on some of them can be seen rough but clear engravings of natural objects, and even of wild animals.
[Illustration: Carvings in Ivory (1 and 3-7) and in Stone of Cavern Walls (2), made by the Hunters of the Middle Stone Age]
Men naturally supported themselves mainly by hunting and fishing, as savages do now; and it was because they had invented suitable implements and weapons for practicing those necessary arts, that their efforts were successful. The first weapon was probably the fist-hatchet, a piece of sharpened flint about nine inches long, that he grasped in his hand. At some time during the centuries of the Old Stone Age, someone invented a much finer weapon, that continued to be one of the most important that was known, until the invention of the gun, and is used even now in savage lands--the bow and arrow. What a tremendous advantage this weapon was in fighting wild beasts (and also men not possessing it) it is not hard for us to see; for the arrow tipped with flint or bone, could be shot over distances far greater than the spear or javelin could be thrown, and with sufficient force to kill. The club and spear had probably been devised before, for they were simpler and more easily imagined and constructed.
How the bow and arrow came to be invented we have no intimation. The invention of the club and spear did not probably involve much creative effort, so simple were those instruments, and so like the branches that could be broken from the trees. Yet, to the untrained mind of the primeval savage, the idea of sharpening a straight branch of wood into a fine point at the end, in order that penetration through the skin might be facilitated, must have come as an inspiration. No such thing as a spear exists as a spear in nature, and therefore the making of a spear was a creative act. To us, the use of the spear as a projectile may not seem to have required the inventive faculty--unless the hurling of stones may also be supposed to have required it. It may be, however, that with the dull mind of primeval men, even the idea of using stones or javelins as projectiles was the result of a distinct, and perhaps startling inspiration.