Paragrapher (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} paragrapher) wrote,@ 2008-08-27 15:20:00 |
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Natural Selection's Losers
I'm reading the Cave Painters now, a book about the earliest known art on cave walls. Didn't know that the famous stone axes serve no known purpose: they're no good for hunting, not useful for any sort of domestic chore, and there are thousands of them surviving, often well-worn. The book states that they might be early man's first abstract idea, an object repeatedly constructed for the sake of itself. I'm thinking otherwise. I'm thinking early man each had one to defend themselves. God didn't make all men equal, Samuel Colt did - or his great-great-grandfather. Seems fairly obvious.
Natural Selection’s Losers
Basque separatists were hiding in the Spanish Pyrenees. Gregario knew it. This was the last place on earth the Neanderthals were able to live before extinction, so it was with the Basque. Just like their fellow primitives, the Basque were living in caves, plotting ways to destroy good people like Gregario. So Gregario would take the fight to them, and speed nature along. He went from ridge to ridge, firing his AK-47 in every cave entrance, then seeing if anyone was home. After pockmarking the twelfth empty cave, Gregario stopped firing and merely examined the cave entrance with his drawn rifle. That was his mistake. On his 27th cave, he casually waved the barrel in the sunlit entrance. A huge hand thrust from the dark and yanked the AK from his hand. Gregario turned and fled. A rock hit him in the back. Gregario collapsed, then rolled around and drew his hunting knife. He gasped when he saw the sloping brow and thick arms of the caveman he faced. The caveman was wearing a T-shirt that stretched at his neck, and shorts that reached midcalf on his stubby, hairy legs. The creature plucked the knife from Gregario’s hand, snapped the blade in his bare hands like a graham cracker, and began talking. He gave a reasoned defense of the Basque’s protection of their fellow politically voiceless Neanderthal, and why both Basque and Neanderthal should be granted their own countries. He then said there was an ancient Neanderthal way for keeping secrets. He picked up the AK-47, fitted his huge finger in the trigger, and fired.
I'm reading the Cave Painters now, a book about the earliest known art on cave walls. Didn't know that the famous stone axes serve no known purpose: they're no good for hunting, not useful for any sort of domestic chore, and there are thousands of them surviving, often well-worn. The book states that they might be early man's first abstract idea, an object repeatedly constructed for the sake of itself. I'm thinking otherwise. I'm thinking early man each had one to defend themselves. God didn't make all men equal, Samuel Colt did - or his great-great-grandfather. Seems fairly obvious.
Natural Selection’s Losers
Basque separatists were hiding in the Spanish Pyrenees. Gregario knew it. This was the last place on earth the Neanderthals were able to live before extinction, so it was with the Basque. Just like their fellow primitives, the Basque were living in caves, plotting ways to destroy good people like Gregario. So Gregario would take the fight to them, and speed nature along. He went from ridge to ridge, firing his AK-47 in every cave entrance, then seeing if anyone was home. After pockmarking the twelfth empty cave, Gregario stopped firing and merely examined the cave entrance with his drawn rifle. That was his mistake. On his 27th cave, he casually waved the barrel in the sunlit entrance. A huge hand thrust from the dark and yanked the AK from his hand. Gregario turned and fled. A rock hit him in the back. Gregario collapsed, then rolled around and drew his hunting knife. He gasped when he saw the sloping brow and thick arms of the caveman he faced. The caveman was wearing a T-shirt that stretched at his neck, and shorts that reached midcalf on his stubby, hairy legs. The creature plucked the knife from Gregario’s hand, snapped the blade in his bare hands like a graham cracker, and began talking. He gave a reasoned defense of the Basque’s protection of their fellow politically voiceless Neanderthal, and why both Basque and Neanderthal should be granted their own countries. He then said there was an ancient Neanderthal way for keeping secrets. He picked up the AK-47, fitted his huge finger in the trigger, and fired.
