Jerry makes sparks by hitting a chunk of pyrite with another stone. He learned fire-making as a scout and incidentally knows that pyrite is abundant in Spain - which maybe explains why this story is set there?
Before the advent of the stranger - sent by or identical with Old Father -, the Piths had:
chipped a rock to make a rough, edged shape;
used this "...unspecialized tool..." (p. 154) as a throwing weapon, as a butcher's knife and also to sharpen a stick into "...a blunt, soft spear." (ibid.)
Watching the stranger, they learn not only how to tend a fire but also how to fire-harden a branch into a spear strong enough to kill lions and hyenas. Thus, they foresee an end to hunger and will never let the holy fire from Old Father die. Of course, Jerry's original fire will die but the inner fire will not. This extra-temporal intervention has changed the course of prehistory.
Jerry thought that the Piths were cannibals because they kept a skull of one of their own kind on a pole like a trophy but his uncle suggests that maybe it was more like a Catholic relic. In fact, we know, from sharing a Pith's pov, that this was Old Father. Benefiting from reading Anderson's diverse fictional timelines, we also remember that the Tulat's attitude to their shaman reminded Wanda Tamberly of Catholics' attitude to their priests. The present was already present in the past - or the author reads the present back into the past?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
But Jerry's uncle thought the Pithecanthropines were already human, already had souls. So it's no surprise that some of the attitudes and thoughts of the Pith whose POV we see were so like those of modern humans. Such as being capable of learning and having a sense of reverence for relics like the skull of Old Father.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment