Akaru-Ku sat under the night sky. He was still shaken by the sudden death of his dear friend Bauk-Shau. He sat on the flat rock surface outside his cave, which made for the courtyard. The trees standing beside the rocky platform glistened in the moonlight . He gazed at the stars in the night sky. He had never watched them so intently or persistently before. He was thinking. His normal daily activities never forced him to think. But the loss of a close friend was too deep an occurrence to be forgotten and move over, as happens in the animal kingdom. Death was seen as a happening. It was never mourned over. It happened to reindeers everyday, wild cats died every time there was a brawl, monkeys died of disease and birds died by being hunted by bigger birds. Death was natural, accurate and understandable, until it happened so close. Now, suddenly it did not make sense, seemed distorted and somehow unfair to somebody so young. He tried counting the stars, one at a time. He would start from the left, go over a formation to the right and then would start counting upwards and then downwards, but was still not sure how many made a formation. Then, he would start again and then give up.
As the Neanderthals were predominantly a hunting race, they were dependent on their tools. This tools were passed on every generation to be learnt, mastered and put to daily use. Tools of stone, which needed to be chipped off from the sides with another stone. It needed slow mastery, patience and a lot of dedicated effort to produce a rock worthy enough to cut through the leather of a bison, a boar or an elk. It was tedious work, but it was also part of the daily challenge to get food on the table. Akaru-Ku had watched his father and elders work on the tools, since he was a small boy, and wondered when he would get a chance to try his hand making one. He got to get started when he turned the age of 8. An age when most Neanderthal boys start their hunting and food gathering school to get lessons, before being able to take part in a real hunt. He was both amused and fascinated at how after many chips, the stone turned into a hard, sharp and lethal weapon enough to kill. He would try to count the number of times he chipped at the stone to make a hand stone knife. But every time he did so, he would be lost once again in the chipping and by the time it ended, he would have lost count. So he only had estimates of the number, but never the exact digit required for making a stone knife. He reasoned, the stone knife belonged to the ground from where it came, to the forest-where it belonged and to the animal whose body it would shear. Those were the ones, who would know the number, not the hunter, as it did not belong to him. He was merely a craftsman, wanting to put it to use. Hence, he did not have the knowledge of its number and the stone did not want to share it with him either.
As the Neanderthals were predominantly a hunting race, they were dependent on their tools. This tools were passed on every generation to be learnt, mastered and put to daily use. Tools of stone, which needed to be chipped off from the sides with another stone. It needed slow mastery, patience and a lot of dedicated effort to produce a rock worthy enough to cut through the leather of a bison, a boar or an elk. It was tedious work, but it was also part of the daily challenge to get food on the table. Akaru-Ku had watched his father and elders work on the tools, since he was a small boy, and wondered when he would get a chance to try his hand making one. He got to get started when he turned the age of 8. An age when most Neanderthal boys start their hunting and food gathering school to get lessons, before being able to take part in a real hunt. He was both amused and fascinated at how after many chips, the stone turned into a hard, sharp and lethal weapon enough to kill. He would try to count the number of times he chipped at the stone to make a hand stone knife. But every time he did so, he would be lost once again in the chipping and by the time it ended, he would have lost count. So he only had estimates of the number, but never the exact digit required for making a stone knife. He reasoned, the stone knife belonged to the ground from where it came, to the forest-where it belonged and to the animal whose body it would shear. Those were the ones, who would know the number, not the hunter, as it did not belong to him. He was merely a craftsman, wanting to put it to use. Hence, he did not have the knowledge of its number and the stone did not want to share it with him either.
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