Before Adam Page #13

"Before Adam" by Jack London, published in 1907, is a unique blend of science fiction, evolutionary theory, and adventure. It explores the idea of genetic memory through a narrator who experiences vivid dreams of a prehistoric past.

• Action and Adventure
• Science fiction

								


Another time I found a dry gourd, inside of which the seeds rattled. I
had fun with it for a while. But it was a plaything, nothing more. And
yet, it was not long after this that the using of gourds for storing
water became the general practice of the horde. But I was not the
inventor. The honor was due to old Marrow-Bone, and it is fair to
assume that it was the necessity of his great age that brought about
the innovation.

At any rate, the first member of the horde to use gourds was
Marrow-Bone. He kept a supply of drinking-water in his cave, which cave
belonged to his son, the Hairless One, who permitted him to occupy a
corner of it. We used to see Marrow-Bone filling his gourd at the
drinking-place and carrying it carefully up to his cave. Imitation was
strong in the Folk, and first one, and then another and another,
procured a gourd and used it in similar fashion, until it was a general
practice with all of us so to store water.

Sometimes old Marrow-Bone had sick spells and was unable to leave the
cave. Then it was that the Hairless One filled the gourd for him. A
little later, the Hairless One deputed the task to Long-Lip, his son.
And after that, even when Marrow-Bone was well again, Long-Lip
continued carrying water for him. By and by, except on unusual
occasions, the men never carried any water at all, leaving the task to
the women and larger children. Lop-Ear and I were independent. We
carried water only for ourselves, and we often mocked the young
water-carriers when they were called away from play to fill the gourds.

Progress was slow with us. We played through life, even the adults,
much in the same way that children play, and we played as none of the
other animals played. What little we learned, was usually in the course
of play, and was due to our curiosity and keenness of appreciation. For
that matter, the one big invention of the horde, during the time I
lived with it, was the use of gourds. At first we stored only water in
the gourds—in imitation of old Marrow-Bone.

But one day some one of the women—I do not know which one—filled a
gourd with black-berries and carried it to her cave. In no time all the
women were carrying berries and nuts and roots in the gourds. The idea,
once started, had to go on. Another evolution of the
carrying-receptacle was due to the women. Without doubt, some woman’s
gourd was too small, or else she had forgotten her gourd; but be that
as it may, she bent two great leaves together, pinning the seams with
twigs, and carried home a bigger quantity of berries than could have
been contained in the largest gourd.

So far we got, and no farther, in the transportation of supplies during
the years I lived with the Folk. It never entered anybody’s head to
weave a basket out of willow-withes. Sometimes the men and women tied
tough vines about the bundles of ferns and branches that they carried
to the caves to sleep upon. Possibly in ten or twenty generations we
might have worked up to the weaving of baskets. And of this, one thing
is sure: if once we wove withes into baskets, the next and inevitable
step would have been the weaving of cloth. Clothes would have followed,
and with covering our nakedness would have come modesty.

Thus was momentum gained in the Younger World. But we were without this
momentum. We were just getting started, and we could not go far in a
single generation. We were without weapons, without fire, and in the
raw beginnings of speech. The device of writing lay so far in the
future that I am appalled when I think of it.

Even I was once on the verge of a great discovery. To show you how
fortuitous was development in those days let me state that had it not
been for the gluttony of Lop-Ear I might have brought about the
domestication of the dog. And this was something that the Fire People
who lived to the northeast had not yet achieved. They were without
dogs; this I knew from observation. But let me tell you how Lop-Ear’s
gluttony possibly set back our social development many generations.

Well to the west of our caves was a great swamp, but to the south lay a
stretch of low, rocky hills. These were little frequented for two
reasons. First of all, there was no food there of the kind we ate; and
next, those rocky hills were filled with the lairs of carnivorous
beasts.

But Lop-Ear and I strayed over to the hills one day. We would not have
strayed had we not been teasing a tiger. Please do not laugh. It was
old Saber-Tooth himself. We were perfectly safe. We chanced upon him in
the forest, early in the morning, and from the safety of the branches
overhead we chattered down at him our dislike and hatred. And from
branch to branch, and from tree to tree, we followed overhead, making
an infernal row and warning all the forest-dwellers that old
Saber-Tooth was coming.

We spoiled his hunting for him, anyway. And we made him good and angry.
He snarled at us and lashed his tail, and sometimes he paused and
stared up at us quietly for a long time, as if debating in his mind
some way by which he could get hold of us. But we only laughed and
pelted him with twigs and the ends of branches.

This tiger-baiting was common sport among the folk. Sometimes half the
horde would follow from overhead a tiger or lion that had ventured out
in the daytime. It was our revenge; for more than one member of the
horde, caught unexpectedly, had gone the way of the tiger’s belly or
the lion’s. Also, by such ordeals of helplessness and shame, we taught
the hunting animals to some extent to keep out of our territory. And
then it was funny. It was a great game.

And so Lop-Ear and I had chased Saber-Tooth across three miles of
forest. Toward the last he put his tail between his legs and fled from
our gibing like a beaten cur. We did our best to keep up with him; but
when we reached the edge of the forest he was no more than a streak in
the distance.

I don’t know what prompted us, unless it was curiosity; but after
playing around awhile, Lop-Ear and I ventured across the open ground to
the edge of the rocky hills. We did not go far. Possibly at no time
were we more than a hundred yards from the trees. Coming around a sharp
corner of rock (we went very carefully, because we did not know what we
might encounter), we came upon three puppies playing in the sun.

They did not see us, and we watched them for some time. They were wild
dogs. In the rock-wall was a horizontal fissure—evidently the lair
where their mother had left them, and where they should have remained
had they been obedient. But the growing life, that in Lop-Ear and me
had impelled us to venture away from the forest, had driven the puppies
out of the cave to frolic. I know how their mother would have punished
them had she caught them.

But it was Lop-Ear and I who caught them. He looked at me, and then we
made a dash for it. The puppies knew no place to run except into the

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