Exciting
New Discovery Challenges Conventional Wisdom
By Jon N. Hall
Paleontologists have recently unearthed compelling new evidence suggesting that for most of the early Pleistocene, the instincts of Man’s proto-human ancestors were severely attenuated. Although there are still disagreements in the scientific community over certain particulars of the raw data, some researchers speculate that some members of Australopithecus africanus may not have even sensed, however dimly, that they were related to and belonged with the others in their group. How, you may well wonder, could scientists know such a thing? More importantly, how could creatures so bereft even survive, much less take part in the long evolutionary march that ended with us, Homo sapiens—Modern Man?
To answer those questions you must first appreciate how terribly difficult life was on the arid savannahs of East Africa where Man arose. Indeed, life was so grindingly hard in this epoch of severe drought and global warming that our hominid ancestors, it is theorized, were drained of the vital energy needed for instincts to fully arise.
Our Pleistocene forebears spent their days under the torrid equatorial sun feverishly searching for the roots and bark of the xerophilous plants that sustained them in their wretched existence. (On that point, the coprolite evidence is unassailable.) During this desperate ceaseless toil, males and females were utterly oblivious of each other.
There is now a consensus among top scientists that these creatures at dusk scurried separately to a communal cave shared with other non-threatening species and, utterly exhausted from non-stop foraging, collapsed upon a nest with their cave mates, falling into a deep dreamless sleep. And there, dozing in that clutch of intertwining herbivores, our ancient ancestors, against all odds, miraculously found each other, and the seeds of our species’ survival were precariously sown. (We must take care here, as the fossil record is not yet complete, but we do find vestiges of such somnambulistic coupling even today, primarily in the mating habits of the suburban middle class.)
Be that as it may, Man’s prospects for survival would soon brighten when an alpha male hominid discovered that the jawbone of an ass could be used to subdue one of the pesky tapirs crowding him at the waterhole. This discovery so shocked and amazed the hominid that he whacked the poor tapir again for good measure, killing it. It then dawned on the hominid that he, too, like the leopard he had once observed, could eat of the flesh of the tapir, and he ripped into it, greedily devouring it.
The flesh was more delicious than anything he had ever tasted, and with every mouthful, as the rich nutrients flooded his starving system, came a wave of well-being and strength such as he had never known. When he had gorged himself, for the first time in his life—indeed, for the first time in the history of his species—he reared up to stand on his hind legs. Then he flung the half-eaten tapir over his shoulder and walked back to his communal cave entirely on his hind legs, thus completing one of the most dramatic evolutionary leaps in all of Natural History.
It was later than usual when the hominid returned to his cave. The other cave residents were about to retire for the evening, but a strange creature loomed in the twilight shadows at the mouth of their cave. They dimly recognized one of their own, a fellow herbivore, but hideously transformed, standing on but two legs, clutching the jawbone of an ass, an indeterminate mass draped over one shoulder and, worst of all, sporting a fiendish leer that nary a one of them could interpret as that of an herbivore. Then, as it filled their nostrils, they realized that what matted the hair of the creature’s face and chest was blood and that the mass on his shoulder was a corpse, and they collectively gasped in horror. One by one, giving the fearsome new creature a wide berth, the antelope, sloth and all the cave’s diverse inhabitants scrambled past the hominid and out into the African night. All the creatures save one: a hominid female. Immediately, she grasped what the other creatures could not—tapir could be eaten.
As the male laid the carcass down upon the cave floor the hominid female raced for it, but he kicked her across the cave as though she were a mere tabby cat. When she came to, she began moaning from hunger. For the first time they were alone in the cave. Her whimpering and whining softened him and he noticed her for the first time. She was a creature much like him, who, like the leopard, could eat of the tapir. Being gorged, he decided to share the tapir with her; besides, there was more where that came from. He allowed her to approach him on all fours and threw her a haunch.
Her propinquity, as it were, gave him ideas, as his instincts, dormant since his kind had descended from the trees, began to assert themselves. While the female feasted upon tapir, oblivious to everything but its succulent flesh, the alpha male had his way with her. (The ability to mate while otherwise engaged, unique to the female of the species, survives to this day.)
When he had finished, sated and feeling the prehistoric equivalent of “it doesn't get any better than this,” he let go of a blood-curdling whoop of triumph that reverberated throughout the cave and startled even he himself. Just then an inquisitive leopard entered the cave. The hominid female cowered in terror, but the male cracked the leopard’s skull with his trusty ass’s jawbone and smote him. From that moment on, herbivores throughout the veldt shunned the pair, and the cave would be theirs alone.
Thus, millennia ago on the arid plains of East Africa was forged the bond—nay, the contract—between the sexes that has stood the test of time down through the ages, from prehistory through antiquity to the Space Age until, roughly, 1969.
That contract, which defined our gender roles and duties, stipulated that males provide meat, and that females provide, let me be delicate here—themselves. (Over the eons females gradually began to augment their part of the deal by gathering berries.)
But the contract that has served our species so well is now under siege. Females no longer need males. Tapir is no longer a problem. Females themselves can simply buy meat, as they have now entered the workforce and have the funds to do so. And females no longer need rely on males to protect them from leopard, either, as males have been extravagantly successful in reducing the number and range of all the big cats. Life is much safer and much easier than it was millennia ago in East Africa.
Where we see the schism between the sexes most vividly is in the ever-increasing number of females who bond not with males, but with other females. That unit, the traditional family, that is the basis of all cultures and economies, is now threatened. We see how boys who grow up without fathers have spawned a new crime wave. Is it in our species’ interest for this once great institution, the family, to become extinct? Wasn’t there anything to keep the sexes together besides tapir?
Besides the newfound independence of women, the family is also threatened by a new ideology of separatism espoused by women not genetically disposed to forming families who have sold a bill of goods to women who are so disposed. Lesbians are defining the terms and setting the agenda for all women. It’s time for these Women’s Studies theorists to drop trou and show which side their bread is buttered on, time for a little truth in advertising.
The perniciousness of this ideology that men are the source of all evil is percolating up through the entire culture and is poisoning that most sweet and especial thing between the sexes: romance. We men need to rise up on our hind legs and disabuse salvageable heterosexual women of this hateful new ideology and bring them back into the fold.
Women could be utterly independent from us men were it not for one nagging little thing: our essence. Therefore, men should henceforth deny their precious bodily fluids to women who cleave to hateful ideologies. And so, I do hereby exhort all men making deposits in sperm banks to put this rider on their donations: “Only to be injected into the loins of happily married heterosexual women.” Why should we men take part in the propagation of a race of Amazons that hates us?
Jon N. Hall of ULTRACON
OPINION is a programmer from Kansas City.
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