Case History 2: Extinction of Wooly Mammoths leads to Mankind’s Extinction!
Posted: Monday, September 12, 2011
by Al Case
http://www.alcasebooks.com/
It’s 1000 BC, and it’s been an exciting few thousand years, has it not? Some of those pesky glaciers have receded, left us a bunch of cool swimming holes. Or fishing holes, whichever sport toots your flute.
Corn has been the big invention. We’ve got corn down to 120 days for growing. The last batch of corn, or maize, as some of the old fuddy duddies call it, took 180 days to percolate, or matriculate, or come to fruition, if you will.
And pottery is threatening to take the lead over chipping spearheads as the industry of choice. Sort of a woman thing, if you ask me, and even if you don’t. You have to admit though, it’s much more manly to sit around chipping your spearhead all day!
And we’ve got people carving animal heads up a tree trunk, people living in cliff faces down south, and some of those crazy Indian guys are wearing big, old long feathered head things. No hats yet, mind you, but headdresses aren’t a bad thing, you know. It’s better than wearing horns, or some of those crazy things the old guys used to do.
Anyway, the big problem is that the wheel hasn’t been invented yet. This is an age where people know that things roll. Rocks roll down hill, round rocks fly through the air better than, say, oblong ones, but the guys in engineering just can’t see to get it right. Well, you just wait, one of these days we’ll see somebody keeping their balance on a rolling log in a river, and somebody will get thinking, and the next thing you know somebody will try to keep their balance on a log while it’s rolling down hill.
A couple of other inventions have surfaced, however. One of the big ones is burying people. It appears that more and more people are getting all excited about being buried in the ground after they’re dead.
As if it matters. I mean, once you’re dead you’re dead! Heaven hasn’t been invented yet, and there’s so much land we could just leave people where they drop and nobody would care about the stink...and if they did maybe somebody could invent a log and roll them somewhere.
Now there’s an idea! Rolling things around on logs, I wonder if I could patent it? Well, that’s about enough for this cave wall, got to go East, heard there’s some guys floating around in giant canoes out beyond the edge of the world.
And check outThe Daily Neutron. It hasn’t been invented yet, but that’s no reason not to go there!
Corn has been the big invention. We’ve got corn down to 120 days for growing. The last batch of corn, or maize, as some of the old fuddy duddies call it, took 180 days to percolate, or matriculate, or come to fruition, if you will.
And we’ve got people carving animal heads up a tree trunk, people living in cliff faces down south, and some of those crazy Indian guys are wearing big, old long feathered head things. No hats yet, mind you, but headdresses aren’t a bad thing, you know. It’s better than wearing horns, or some of those crazy things the old guys used to do.
Anyway, the big problem is that the wheel hasn’t been invented yet. This is an age where people know that things roll. Rocks roll down hill, round rocks fly through the air better than, say, oblong ones, but the guys in engineering just can’t see to get it right. Well, you just wait, one of these days we’ll see somebody keeping their balance on a rolling log in a river, and somebody will get thinking, and the next thing you know somebody will try to keep their balance on a log while it’s rolling down hill.
A couple of other inventions have surfaced, however. One of the big ones is burying people. It appears that more and more people are getting all excited about being buried in the ground after they’re dead.
As if it matters. I mean, once you’re dead you’re dead! Heaven hasn’t been invented yet, and there’s so much land we could just leave people where they drop and nobody would care about the stink...and if they did maybe somebody could invent a log and roll them somewhere.
Now there’s an idea! Rolling things around on logs, I wonder if I could patent it? Well, that’s about enough for this cave wall, got to go East, heard there’s some guys floating around in giant canoes out beyond the edge of the world.
And check outThe Daily Neutron. It hasn’t been invented yet, but that’s no reason not to go there!
This Article has been viewed 207 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Love this series so far - a fun historical view of the "progress" mankind has made.... you should do a textbook - maybe then I would even begin to enjoy history a bit!
Marijo, what a nice thing to say about a mean, old curmudgeonly teacher type. I'm giving you an A for this comment. HAve a great day! Al
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.