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[ti:未知] |
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Lesson 1 |
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Finding fossil man |
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Why are legends handed down by storytellers useful? |
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We can read of things that happened 5,000 years ago in the Near East, |
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where people first learned to write. |
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But there are some parts of the world where even now people cannot write. |
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The only way that they can preserve their history is to recount it as sagas |
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--legends handed down from one generation of storytellers to another. |
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These legends are useful |
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because they can tell us something about migrations of people who lived long ago, |
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but none could write down what they did. |
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Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestors of the Polynesian peoples |
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now living in the Pacific Islands |
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came from. |
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The sagas of these people explain |
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that some of them came from Indonesia about 2,000 years ago. |
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But the first people who were like ourselves lived so long ago |
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that even their sagas,if they had any,are forgotten. |
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So archaeologists have neither history nor legends to help them to find out |
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where the first 'modern men' came from |
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Fortunately,however,ancient men made tools of stone,especially flint, |
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because this is easier to shape than other kinds. |
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They may also have used wood and skins,but these have rotted away. |
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Stone does not decay,and so the tools of long ago have remained |
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when even the bones of the men who made them have disappeared without trace. |
