Because forests were dangerous places in those days, home to large numbers of wild animals such as wolves and bears,

因为当时的森林是非常危险的地方，住着许多野兽，如狼和熊，

people in several places (and this is often the case with inventors) had the same excellent idea:

许多来自不同地方的史前人类（这里指的是有些擅长发明创造的人)都想到了同一个了不起的念头：

they built 'pile dwellings' in the middle of lakes, huts on stilts rammed deep in the mud.

他们把房屋建在水中央，建在打进地基的木桩上。

By this time they were masters at shaping and polishing their tools and used a different, harder stone to bore holes in their axe-heads for handles.

到这时，他们已经把他们的石头工具打造和磨制得十分精致，而且他们另外用一块更坚硬的石头在他们的斧头上钻孔做成把手。

That must have been hard work! Work which could take the whole of the winter.

这是一桩多么艰难的工作！他们多半要干一整个冬季。

Imagine how often the axe-head must have broken at the last minute, so that they had to start all over again.

想象一下斧头一定常常在中间就崩裂了，于是他们只得从头再来。

The next thing these people discovered was how to make pots out of clay, which they soon learnt to decorate with patterns and fire in ovens,

后来这些史前人类发现了如何把泥土烧成瓦罐，他们很快学会了在上面装饰花纹和在烤炉里烧制，

although by this time, in the late Stone Age, they had stopped painting pictures of animals.

虽然到这个时候，较后期的石器时期，他们已经不再画动物图画了。