“The Ice Age lasted for an unimaginably long time. Many tens of thousands of years, which was just as well, for otherwise these people would not have had time to invent all these things. But gradually the earth grew warmer and the ice retreated to the high mountains and people—who by now were much like us—learned, with the warmth, to plant grasses and then grind the seeds to make a paste they could bake in the fire, and this was bread. In the course of time, they learned to build tents and tame animals which until then had roamed freely around. And they followed these herds, as people in Lapland still do. Because forests were dangerous places in those days, home to large numbers of animals such as wolves and bears, people in several places (and this is often the case with inventors) had the same excellent idea: they built “pile dwellings” in the middle of lakes, huts on stilts rammed deep in the mud. By this time they were masters at shaping and polishing their tools and used a different, harder stone to bore holes in their axe-heads for handles. That must have been hard work! Work which could take the whole of the winter. Imagine how often the axe-head must have broken at the last minute, so they had to start all over again.”
Excerpted from: Gombrich, E.H. Trans. Caroline Mustill. A Little History of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
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