From the domestication of fire to the invention of cooking, there was a big practical and conceptual gap for
ingenious imaginations to cross. In some climates fire can be quickly drilled. In some places, if suitable flints and
kindling are to hand, it can be struck with reasonable reliability. In very remote antiquity, however, most societies did
not enjoy ideal conditions of making fire. It had to be garnered and preserved, in the style of the sacred flame which
even in modern societies we sometimes keep alight, in memory, say, of our honored dead or celebration of our
“Olympic ideal.” For most of the past, in most places, it was easier and more reliable to keep fire alight and to carry it
around than to kindle it at need. Some peoples have lost or perhaps never had the techniques for igniting it—or maybe
they simply think of fire as too sacred to make themselves. This is said to be why some tribes in Tasmania, the
Andaman Islands, and New Guinea travel to beg fire from their neighbors, if it is extinguished, without trying to start it
by means of their own. 【題組】21 On what occasion will people in modern societies make fire and view it as something sacred?
(A) In the Olympic Games
(B) When fire can be quickly drilled
(C) When suitable flints and kindling are ready to be used
(D) In memory of our past honors
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