THE FIRST FLINT AXE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 47, 25 February 1939, Page 12

THE FIRST FLINT AXE

The sun’s rays beat down fiercely upon the earth, shrivelling the stunted bushes and the parched g rass. It was mid-day, and Mar and h.s sister, Nor-nee, were sheltering in a rocky cave that was really no more than a shallow hollow in the side of a steep hill.

They did not look very much like children of to-day. They wore clothes made from roughly-tanned skins; their hair was shaggy and unkempt, and their features much blunter and less attractive. They were smaller, too; Mar, though he was 12 years old, was no bigger than a boy oi eight or nine is nowadays. His small bony and

thin limbs, however, were very strong, and he could run swiftly, and climo

trees, and swing from limb to limb, and scale smooth surfaces that looked

almost unscaleable. Nor-nee and Mar talked a little, though their words were strange, and noi like those we use to-day, and as they talked Mar amused himself, like any boy, by throwing loose stones and sticks at a boulder some hundreds of yards from the cave. He picked up one rather long, thick piece of branch, and hurled it at the rock. It fell some yards short, but Mar noticed that it was resting at a queer angle, as though it had become stuck in the ground. Anything was enough to interest Mar tnai afternoon. He was not sleepy, and since it was too hot to run about gathering food, he was rather bored. He strolled across to the stick and picked it up. Then he saw what was making it stand up from the ground. One end had passed right through a hole in a lump of flint. It was a nice stick, and Mar decided he would keep it, so he tried to pull the stone off. but it would not move; the end of the stick had jammed in the narrow hole. At first Mar was rather annoyed, but, as in a last attempt to shake the stone from the stick, he whirled it round at arm’s length, something in the feel of it made him pause. He whirled it round again, but this time it slipped from his hand and crashed down on a fallen stump, the stone biting deep into the wood. With a cry of delight that woke the dozing Nor-nee. and brought her running to his side, he picked up the flint weapon and began chopping away at more of the wood. Both of the children knew that here was a weapon such as no one before had ever had, and which would serve them well. No

one knows what Mar called his weapfin, but we would call it a flint axe. In the middle of their happy play Nor-nee suddenly stiffened. She possessed wonderfully keen senses, and was a —.derful guard against danger. She motioned to a clump of trees some distance from the boulder, and without hesitating further both of them rushed towards the tall branches that spelled safety from danger. They had hardly reached the trees when a golden-coated animal slunk out from behind the hill. Mar thrust the axe into his waistband and climbed up a tree as quickly as he could. Nor-nee was already ■ safely perched on a branch. The tiger padded over to the tree in which Mar crouched, and began to jump up toward the lower branches, excited by the presence of a possible meal. He could not quite reach it, though, no matter how hard he tried, and Mar began to feel quite safe. But instead of keeping quiet and waiting for old sabre-tooth to go away, as a sensible person would have done, he began to jeer at the tiger, and excited the beast to fresh attempts. His leaps became stronger and higher, and Mar began to panic again, until he thought of his wonderful new weanon. Snatching it from his waistband he brandished it aloft, then, as the tiger leaped again, he brought it crashing down on the beast's head. The tiger fell back to the ground, a wound in its skull from the lump of the flint, and. to Mar and Nor-nee's surprise, and relief, did not rise again. In falling heavily, half-stunned, to the ground, its back had been broken by a tree stump. The two children quickly climbed down the tree, and examined the wonderful weapon again. Then they scampered off to find their people and tell them of the marvellous things that could be done with a flint axe. Soon all the people who roamed the earth made weapons of flint, and many such axes as Mar carried have been found by the men who seek in the ground for clues to the life that people led in past ages.