"Primitive" Man?

October 13, 2010

So, I was thinking (I forget why) about how “primitive” man really wasn’t. I mean, I know anthropologists used to make it sound like they discovered everything by accident—fire, for example—but I venture to suggest that they had just as many observant folks as we do. They noticed certain things happened, and they figured out how to make them happen when they needed to. Want to kill a mammoth? Figure out how to make your stone sharp. That red dirt may not be any good as fuel, but hey! it turns hard in the fire. Somebody figured out a way to use it as a pot.

And do you think somebody just randomly cut some flax one day, left it soaking in water for 3 days, whacked it around and said, “Hey, there’s thread in here!” I mean, who does that?

I’m sure they had their share of unobservant folks; but they also had the ones who looked, made the connections, and moved society forward. So please don’t tell me that they did it by accident.

(October 19—I didn’t post the above because I thought maybe I was behind the times, and that primitive man was getting more credit than he did when I was growing up. But I just read another article about an “amazing” discovery about primitive man. So here it is.)