We know very little about the first true men. We have never seen the

We know very little about the first “true” men. We have never seen their pictures. In the deepest layer of clay of an ancient soil, we have sometimes found pieces of their bones. These lay buried amidst the broken skeletons of other animals that have long since disappeared from the face of the earth. Anthropologists have taken these bones and they have been able to reconstruct our earliest ancestors with a fair degree of accuracy.

The great-great-grandfather of the human race was a very ugly and unattractive mammal. He was quite small, much smaller than the people of today. The heat of the sun and the biting wind of the cold winter had coloured his skin a dark brown. His head and most of his body, his arms and legs too, were covered with long, coarse hair. He had very thin but strong fingers which made his hands look like those of a monkey. His forehead was low and his jaw was like the jaw of a wild animal which uses its teeth both as fork and knife. He wore no clothes. He had seen no fire except the flames of the rumbling volcanoes which filled the earth with their smoke and their lava.

He lived in the damp blackness of vast forests, as the pygmies of Africa do to this very day. When he felt the pangs of hunger, he ate raw leaves and the roots of plants or he took the eggs away from an angry bird and fed them to his own young. Once in a while, after a long and patient chase, he would catch a sparrow or a small wild dog or perhaps a rabbit. These he would eat raw for he had never discovered that food tasted better when it was cooked.

Like many of the animals who fill the Zoo with their strange noises, early man liked to jabber. That is to say, he endlessly repeated the same unintelligible gibberish because it pleased him to hear the sound of his voice. In due time, he learned that he could use this guttural noise to warn his fellow beings whenever danger threatened and he gave certain little shrieks which came to mean “there is a tiger!” or “here come five elephants.” Then the others grunted something back at him and their growl meant, “I see them,” or “let us run away and hide.” And this was probably the origin of all language.

1. What is the primary purpose of the author in the passage?

(A) To provide one possible theory for the origin of language
(B) To describe the general appearance and some of the behavioural traits of Early Man
(C) To compare Early Man with modern-day pygmies
(D) To discuss the views of some anthropologists with regards to the origin of Early Man
(E) To discuss the food habits of Early Man


2. Which of the following assertions is best supported from the information in the passage?

(A) Some races of Early Man had fair complexion and blonde hair.
(B) Early Man had a lot of similarities with apes.
(C) Early Man made use of fire to cook food, though he ate most of his food raw.
(D) The Early Man is not the only species from his time that has disappeared completely from the earth.
(E) Pieces of the bones of Early Man have been found in the molten earth’s crust.


3. According to the information in the passage, which of the following could be one of the possible reasons for the origin of language?

(A) The desire to warn others of impending danger.
(B) The desire to share one’s joys and sorrows.
(C) The desire to have better camaraderie with other members of the species.
(D) The desire to collaborate in order to hunt animals more efficiently.
(E) The desire to understand one’s surroundings better.