Prometheus stole from Hephaestus and Athena technical skill along with fire (for fire was essential to enable such skill to be acquired by anyone, or to be any use) and made these his gift to man. This is how man came by the skills required for the maintenance of life, but he did not yet have political expertise. This was in Zeus’ domain, and Prometheus ran out of time before he could penetrate Zeus’ palace, the acropolis; besides, Zeus’ guards were terrifying.
The consequences of man’s acquisition of a portion of divinity were, first, that humans were the only creatures to worship the gods and to set about establishing altars and images of the gods, and, second, that they soon used their skills to articulate speech and language, and discovered how to make houses, clothes, footwear, and blankets, and how to get food from the earth. Thus equipped, at first men lived all over the place, and there were no communities. And so they began to be killed by wild beasts, because they were weaker than them in all respects. Their creative skills were enough to support them where nourishment was concerned, but they lacked the ability to fight the wild beasts, because warfare is an aspect of political expertise, which they did not yet possess. They therefore tried to protect themselves by gathering together and forming communities, but once they had done so they began to wrong one another, because they did not yet possess political expertise; and so they scattered again and were killed by the wild beasts again.