Excerpt from The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind A quarter of a million years ago the utmost man was a savage, a being scarcely articulate, sheltering in holes in the rocks, armed with a rough-hewn flint or a fire-pointed stick, naked, living in small family groups, killed by some younger man SO soon as his first virile activity declined. Over most of the great wildernesses of earth you would have sought him in vain; only in a few temperate and sub-tropical river valleys would you have found the squatting lairs of his little herds, a male, a few females, a child or so. He knew no future then, no kind of life except the life he led. He fled the cave-bear over the rocks full Of iron ore and the promise Of sword and Spear; he froze to death upon a ledge of coal; he drank water muddy with th clay that would one day make cups Of porcelain he chewed the ear of wild wheat he had pluc and gazed with a dim speculation in his ey the birds that soared beyond his reach. Suddenly he became aware of the scent another male and rose up roaring, his roars formless precursors of moral admonitions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.