Читать книгу From Monkey to Man, or, Society in the Tertiary Age - Austin Bierbower - Страница 6

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In the course of the contest with the tigers, which lasted several years, many improvements were made in the art of warfare, which afterwards served the Apes in time of peace. After the experience of Shamboo and others, who attacked unarmed the savage beasts, they found it advisable to fight at a distance. Taking their position on trees, which was done for safety, the problem was how to reach the enemy. They commonly showered cocoanuts and other large fruits upon them, which, while annoying to small animals, had little effect on tigers. They next carried stones up the trees for missiles, which they dropped with some effect. In time they became expert at throwing, and could strike a tiger’s head ten paces off. Shoozoo claimed to have killed a hyena at a distance of many alligators’ lengths with a rock larger than his head; but Shoozoo had a reputation for lying, which was greatly developed during the war.

The Apes also broke off branches of trees, with which they pounded the savage beasts, not only by throwing them from the trees as missiles, but by using them as clubs, until they became skilled in the art of pounding, as well as of making clubs. When catamounts, bears and other climbing beasts attacked them on the trees, and fought paw to paw with them, they used the stones as knives, and often cut their assailants fatally, having learned to select sharp stones for this purpose, and, in time, to sharpen them specially. Before the war they had used stones only to crack nuts. But now they learned both to use them for many other purposes, and to make them into the size and shape which best suited them.

The first manufactures of the Apes were thus of military implements, their necessity being the mother of invention. In time of peace, however, they found new uses for these implements, like their descendents who afterwards beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks. The missiles with which they had attacked the tigers they soon used for hunting, and in time for building. When they came down from the trees, and lived more on the earth, they knocked cocoanuts down, instead of climbing after them; they killed birds and rabbits by throwing stones at them, instead of lying in wait for them, and they speared fish with their clubs which they had learned to sharpen. They could thus act at a greater distance, and so had more power, both to defend themselves from wild beasts, and to obtain food.

Shoozoo, the liar just mentioned, told some wonderful stories of a stone which he sharpened and the exploits he performed with it. He saw a lion, he said, sleeping at the foot of a tree, when, throwing the stone, he cut the tree from its stump, which, falling on the lion, killed him; and he would have brought the dead lion to verify the story, but it was so big that all the monkeys of Cocoanut Hill could not have carried it away; but he showed the sharpened stone as evidence.

He related also that when hunting owls at night, after killing all that were in the forest, and having nothing more to throw at, he threw his stone at the moon, and hit it with such force that he cut off a piece; and, as evidence of this, he pointed to the moon, which was, indeed, seen to have a large piece gone, so that many Apes believed him for once, though they knew he was habitually a liar. For the evidence of their senses was generally deemed enough for the Apes. Shamboo, however, doubted the story and asked Shoozoo why he did not bring home the other piece of the moon. “When I cut it off,” he replied, “it fell into the Swamp and was swallowed by an alligator. I expect to catch that alligator, and then I will show you the rest of the moon.”

The Apes of Cocoanut Hill, however, who placed little confidence in Shoozoo’s stories, placed less in his promises; although the next generation, which accepted him as the founder of their religion, believed him to be a better man, and accepted his stories as history and his promises as prophecy; so that what was incredible to contemporaries became indisputable to posterity; and the traditions that gathered about his name were sufficient to silence the doubts in a generation later which they had raised in a generation before. In course of time the bigger stories only gained credence, the rest being forgotten; so that what was received with most distrust was handed down with most confidence; and the farther they got from the time of their performance the easier it was thought to be to get at the truth about them.

For many generations every alligator that was killed was opened in order to find the moon; and, though it was often claimed to be found, there was never as much confidence in the story of its recovery as of its loss; for the Apes early learned to distinguish between religious stories, and only accepted those for which there was adequate evidence. The uninterrupted testimony of the fathers, which had come down in regular succession, and had never been doubted, was deemed the best evidence. Apes have accordingly differed about the incidentals of the story; for many accounts have come down about the details, which are not to be reconciled; but as to the great essentials—that the holy Shoozoo actually did knock off a piece of the moon, and that an alligator swallowed it—there is a substantial agreement; and as often as the moon, in generations later, appeared in crescent form, the festival of the Holy Crescent was celebrated by throwing sharpened stones in the air in honor of the great exploit of their Founder, Shoozoo.

But, though Shoozoo, who passed in one generation for a liar, and in the next for a God, left a questionable heritage to the Apes, they still retained out of his age something of substantial value. The use of implements was invented, and the arts of making and using them were handed down to Monkeys and Men.