A Story of the Stone Age
A Short Story
Description:... A Short Story
A Story of the Stone Age
H. G. Wells
"A Story of the Stone Age" is a short story written in 1897 by H. G. Wells.
The story was featured in three parts between May and August 1897 in The Idler magazine, and was later released in collected editions. The story is set during the Stone Age, and tells of a caveman named Ugh-lomi, who bonds with the young woman Eudena and kills his rival, the de facto tribal leader Uya. Whilst in exile, Ugh-lomi becomes the first man to ride a horse, and to combine stone and wood to fashion an axe. He uses this weapon, along with his wits, to survive encounters with cave bears, hyenas and rhinos, and ultimately claim the position of tribal leader for himself.
'This story is of a time beyond the memory of man, before the beginning of history, a time when one might have walked dryshod from France (as we call it now) to England, and when a broad and sluggish Thames flowed through its marshes to meet its father Rhine, flowing through a wide and level country that is under water in these latter days, and which we know by the name of the North Sea. In that remote age the valley which runs along the foot of the Downs did not exist, and the south of Surrey was a range of hills, fir-clad on the middle slopes, and snow-capped the better part of the year. The cores its summits still remain as Leith Hill, and Pitch Hill, and Hindhead. On the lower slopes of the range below the grassy spaces where the wild horses grazed were forests of yew and sweet-chestnut and elm, and the thickets and dark places hid the grizzly bear and the hyaena, and the grey apes clambered through the branches. And still lower amidst the woodland and marsh and open grass along the Wey did this little drama play itself out to the end that I have to tell. Fifty thousand years ago it was, fifty thousand years -- if the estimates of the geologists are correct.'
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