Do NOT Ai (google) “The Dawn Of* Man”. The result isn’t pornographic or even humorous. Just lengthy. The exact time man “dawned” will never be known but it is fun to think about. Sometime in the past, somewhere where there were no cell phones, a hominoid stood up and said, in caveman language, “I am man.” It’s been a wild ride since. This post has elected to use “Man” as an asexual generic term referring to whatever it was(sic*) we were back in those days. Until fig leaves were found, we probably all looked similarly potato-ish* and hairy, until certain times when nature ordered us to procreate in the most attractive ways.

The idea of The Dawn of Man came up during a conversation with a friend of mine named Al. (Sidebar: the lowercase L and upper case I look the same on my qwerty. From now on Artificial Intelligence will be Ai, with a dotted “i”. Fixing first sentence, now.) Al’s name may or may not be his real name, but any friends reading this will know who he is. Al declined to engage in trying to imagine the time in history when we changed from walking hominoids closely resembling apes, to the eventual rulers/polluters of the world. His point is, well, he doesn’t have a point except that it’s a fruitless exercise and a native-born North Carolinian does not engage in fruitless exercises. When the Civil War was carelessly mentioned, he went off script, anyway, meandering around the Northern War of Aggression he still mentally fights to this day. His only contribution to my inquiry was to tell me he had to air fry some chicken, but then changed his mind to soup, adding “No one is ever going to know, anyway.”

The picture in my head of air frying soup lasted only a moment and the question of when man knew he was The Man, returned. Religion answers the question nicely, with titillating pics of Adam and Eve eyeing each other over a ripe apple. I can believe that because if God wanted it to be that way, that’s the way it would be. But I’m not sure God was that specific, in the early days. My guess is He was trying things out, seeing how they worked. Following this line of thought it’s easy to imagine Him looking at these two particular Hominoids* and saying “Yes, that’s it.” Then, maybe, a bolt of lightning into each brain and—voila—mankind is ready for dawning.

But the Robin Williams comedy lover in me sees a different scenario and it may not be that far from the truth. One hominoid kills a wooly mammoth in the middle of the summer with some shale-tipped spears and reckless abandon. He/She/Them knows the summer sun will rot the meat and comes up with the second, original idea: “I can’t eat all this today.”  He/She/Them thought this, of course, since there was no language and he/she/them had a third idea: “Give some to the others.” But how to express any of these thoughts? (PS the slate tipped spear was the first idea.) It’s my postulation that Sign Language was the first form of communication. Imagine our suddenly smart hominoid running back to the others and dragging them by the arm to the mammoth carcass. Mime may have been invented then, too. It makes sense. Our early ancestors were mimers.*

 We mark time in our history for those events we can chronicle and remember. How we got the ability to chronicle is the subject of many episodes of “Ancient Aliens”. But where the show sees alien encounters all around the world, the “evidence” is really proof of a higher power, a comprehensive, coordinated higher power. It feeds an often debunked but never forgotten evolutionary theory we are in an ant farm, and our lives are directed by the Ant Farm Owner. He/She/Them could make us do whatever he/she/them wants us to do. And somehow, they gave us just enough intelligence to contemplate free will versus fate. Genius.

So, the “Dawn of Man” is when we were dropped into the sand. And when we die (see last post) we get plucked out and thrown in the garbage bin. Unless our owner gives us a decent burial in a match box.

Make a movie about that, Stanley Kubrick.

Comments welcome, and sorry, Al for plopping your name in here.

         *Google grammar says all these are wrong. As if I care, anymore. I’m old.