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I if : 'She Not Only Had to Do All I A( ' iV'lf ifce TFew, but She Couldn't I iRIwI Even Speak Her Mind, for I7 tf A Papa Setffed A ra- J , , merits With a Club m A typical pugnacious jawed male of the Eolithic Age, a low-browed individual in both senses of the word By Fairfax Downey A FTER mother has fed the children Z anil bedded them down and an- swered all recurrent rails for encores on good night kisses and drinks of water And after she has returned to the kitchen, which she scrubbed that morning, morn-ing, and there- applied heat to various foods, and incidentally to herself And after she has served dinner in the dining room, which she dusted that afternoon, to father, who came home with a grouch And after she has cleared the table and bathed the dishes and put the darn things away and sunk into a chair in the house-cloaned sitting room, and been asked by father to figure the accounts ac-counts for the month and by the eldest offspring to write her school theme on "Autumn" It is unlikely that mother will then r burst out into some such joyous exclamation exclama-tion as "This is the life!" It Is much more likely that she will dumbly wonder why in the world history terms the unpleasantness of 191-1-1918 "The Great "War for Civilization," and was it worth fighting? To restore the poor lady's peace of mind may bo recommended a recent book that treats of the days when there was neither history nor civilization as wo know them. The bopk is "The Old Stone Age," by Marjonc and C. H. B. Quennell (pub- Ilished by G. P. Putnam's Sons) Besides its general interest, it contains real comfort com-fort for tired mothers of to-day. It reveals re-veals what poor mamma had to contend with in thoso rough prehistoric days when she married and commenced light cave-keeping. The authors have made history of eras that were prehistoric by the aid of "pick and shovel" historians. Literally dug up were their facts, and, of course, that involved a lot of hard work on the part j of the archaeologists, and still there are many gaps. As the authors write: "The lower animals in a kindly fashion fash-ion teemed to arrange that their bodies might 6ink in the water, Bettle in tho mud and become beautiful fossils. . . . Man did not do this; he was too busy or too careful and died out in the open, just dropped in his tracks and did not think how convenient it would be for ue this neglect on his part to become fossil." Such thoughtlessness of posterity may indeed have been due to care taken by prehistoric man. And much more surely sure-ly was it dne to the very busy existence o prehistoric woman. Hers was tho gtrenuous life. I The papas among the first human 1 dwellerR on the earth were very low brow persons, in both senses of the word. They had prominent and pugnacious Jaws. They were, of course, physically stronger than the women. They would not listen to reason, because they prac tically had no reason to listen with. Their domestlo arguments were rather I heavy, since they consisted of clubs. In those days wives did not even have their proverbial privilege of tho last word, although in trying to Bay it it sometimes became their very last word. Man's making of implements is taken as an evidence that ho is becoming civilized. civ-ilized. Tho early Eolith men fashioned varied implements from flint and Eolith woman used them, ju3t as woman to-day j uses the utensils which man provides I for the kitchen, but the early-day woman had far more difficulty with her rudo H m mjr I HI 1 ' I ' It f i ASh Lcft lUustratingthe wr wltLjBfl rif v ikh p"1 manncr in !( I ztkJ 1 1 y M(t a a' which mama insured ! JLkVII V y. (t meals for the family, ftfln Hi VVhuX 7v BStSt' ii L'J fective Pitfall simi-Vl) simi-Vl) (J VV$7VS; 1 tar to those used by makeshifts. Tt was (Z f K soon discovered thai ( ) V f from flint could be j y S Afl&A 10 produced fire, and f Jtf n that was another f , fytTte- Z I j laborious task given Sat - to early-day worn- IsW OD" J en, whose modern S . Jl descendants h n c C ,c ! ' succeeded in making k f ' ) the building of a ry- y fire in the furnace the man's job. Yes " "T mamma was respon- i t f iff" 1 1 T. sible for lighting Jfllii I ' B i (f ' and heating ,r- kxVy 'H h U VllllVMiAV It m.y truly U $&$ML ' ' vAfv said of those stem fir h V' w'fi" days that "woman's m '' j ft jK rjf Clw" work was never isxfar V V Niirvv done." Life was f''Xi ' f 0 F St iSl one blessed trial vv1' fX ' 'if' Jv . lFr after another. If it 'K''' Wff, . & " wasn't father or the I. '"( '' children that had to be tended to it was Above Cave woman preparing a fire with the aid time to Bpring-clean of a piece of flint the cave. Nor was Below The saber-toothed tiger whose ferocious na- it very restful for a ture added considerable zest to the afternoon stroll woman to pet away from home lor a while. If she got very far away from home she was likely to meet up with a sabre-toothed tiger. "If looks arc any criterion, the saber-toothed saber-toothed tiger, Iachaerodus, must have been an evil beast," tho authors write. "Man could have combated such animals ani-mals only by craft fire and traps were his weapons." Tho prehistoric mother had some very trying experience with thoso tigers. A lady who was cornered in her cavo home by one of them, growling and showing its saber teeth, might scream at the top of her lung3 for her husband to come to put the cat out for the night. And would he come? No, he would climb a tree. The matter of marketing had its complications com-plications in tho Stone Age. Man could attend to the hunting; that was sport. But women were allowed to help dig the big pits into which animals fell and were impaled on sharpened stakes. When peoples peo-ples ceased to be nomadic and became agricultural women were assigned to more digging and grubbing for roots. And in those days, when fishing was no matter of pleasure, but a means of avoiding starvation, the women wero compelled to do somo very serious-minded serious-minded angling. Of that practice tho noted painting reproduced on this page furnishes excellent ex-cellent illustration. Mamma is fishing for papa's dinner. Grubbing for shellfish shell-fish 6he finds back-breaking work, indeed in-deed a good deal worse than getting down on her kncc3 and scrubbing a floor. Ono can imapino that by dipping in that water so frequently and scraping rock bottom sho is going to make her hands frightfully rough and red. Dish water would bo a relief. In order not to waste any time papa is eating the fish right off the half-shell. Something in the picture would seem to indicate that he is going to be some time getting filled up. When he is through mamma, if she is not too exhausted, may be permitted to consume a little of the catch herself. While mamma led rather n hard life, grandmamma, according to the research of the authors, was even worse off in some of the primitive tribes. Darwin, the great naturalist, found the Fuegians to be a people whose mode of life bore resemblance in many respects to their prehistoric forebears as revealed by cave finds. "When driven by extremo hunger they (the Fuegians) killed and ate the old women before their dogs, because, be-cause, as they said, "Doggies cah h otters, ot-ters, old women no." There wn3 no argument there. And no grandmothers seem to have provided for a ripe old ago by learning to catch otters. Isolated Tasmania was discovered in 1(142 and its inhabitants found to be, to all intents and purposes, a pnmitivo people, Man scientists believe the Tas-manlans Tas-manlans to be remarkably like their Stone Age ancestors In the two following follow-ing trenchant paragraphs on the Tas-manians Tas-manians tho Quennells give what may be taken as a clear picture of tho lifo of prehistoric man and woman. "They ate the animals and birds they caught. Without any preliminaries these were thrown onto a wood fire, which singcl the hair and feathers and half-cooked the carcase. Then the bodies wero cut apart with a flint and gutted and the cooking finished off by spitting the joint3 on sticks and toasting over the fire. A little wood ash served, instead in-stead of salt. The meat was always roast, because there were not any pots to boil In . 1 i' I f -JLsBBV sssr Jim Famous painting of an infonr.al Stone Age dinner party, showing mama digging for shellfish while pap" penses with the crustaceous delicacies in summary fashion I "The Tasmanians ate shellfish as well, and these the women caught by diving into tho sea and searching trie rocks under water. They had not any nets, hooks or lines. The women were not treated very well and had to do all tho other work, while the men hunted They sat behind their lords at monls, who, reclining on ono arm in Roman fashion, fash-ion, passed the tougher morsels to their dutiful spouses." Breathes there a man to-day who could mako the wife go diving all afternoon, after-noon, wait on table at the clam bake in tho evening and then draw only the necks as her portion .' As for the matter of clothes for tho "little woman of the Stono Age," it is assumed that the prehistoric? may havo thought along the line of the native Australians, Aus-tralians, a very primitive people. Say the authors: "They have not any form of writing, but send news about by means of message mes-sage sticks. Such a stick resembles a short wooden lath, about three inches long, with zigzag cuts nnd notches. The meaning of the message is 'that the dogs are brine; properly cared orJB the writer wants clothes.' B2 would nut have worn more tha-1Bj cloak, with perhaps a hair frinjB( her waisl . ;:kve " TBj that her dress allowance ' ' " MS needed to be very consiuVrabjB That should clinch the argo (W the cave woman's lot wr.s B than that of her modern S1S,"H the girls of to-d..y no: only tctM the men have given up i" rfeS? 'gMfi for a few who have pone in ' m j K |