Quote (bentherdonethat @ Nov 20 2012 12:53am)

Oof, you're half right. I was wrong, but so were you. We were both careless here

It's 11.

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Book of life: If the less than two hundred thousand year history of human beings (Homo sapiens) were in a two hundred page book, each page would represent a thousand years. For more than one hundred and sixty pages (one hundred and sixty thousand years), most of our history, you would just read about wild animals doing what wild animals do. We did not do anything different than any other wild animal for more than three-fourths of the time we have been in these bodies.

Our brains were the same size they are now, and we looked exactly as we do now. The only difference is how we lived. We had no permanent shelter other than caves, no weapons other than sticks and stones. We could not make a fire.

We were food: Try to imagine you and your friends running around naked in a hot jungle or grassland with only sticks and stones for protection. For most of our history on this planet, we were eaten alive by big cats, bears, big lizards, and even big birds. The Haas eagle had claws as big as a tiger’s, and was eating us for more than ninety percent of the book. We were like big, slow rabbits to them.

Being eaten alive sounds horrible, because it is horrible, as bad as it gets. It was horrible to live on earth up until just recently. It was worse for us than any other animal, and it was the worst for our children. Most of them did not grow up.

Caves: The strongest people lived in cold, dark, dirty and insect filled caves. If you were the biggest and strongest, you were lucky, because you could take and keep the best places to live. Caves gave you a little protection from the animals that tried to eat you, but you constantly had to fight other humans for the cave. Only the biggest, strongest, and healthiest humans lived in them. Most people lived outdoors in small groups. Most people were out in the open, and when it got dark, you did not sleep well. Most of the real life monsters that ate us alive snuck up in the dark when you tried to sleep. We were defenseless until recently.

Tonight when you are lying in bed in the dark, imagine you are laying on the ground in pitch darkness, with no walls and doors, and thousands of insects and other strange creatures are out in the dark making loud noises. Imagine there were predators many times your size, with large fangs and claws, that can see in the dark and smell where you are sleeping. You were there.

Beasts like the Saber Tooth Tiger lived in the same places we lived up until about ten thousand years ago, and they were just one of many creatures that would kill and eat us alive. Remember, this is the way it was for 90% of our history.

Fire: We could not make a fire up until about sixty thousand years ago. That means for about a hundred and forty thousand years, we had to go to sleep without a fire burning. For most of the time we lived on earth, we feared the night.

Not too long ago, seeing a rabbit running around would have made you hungry. You would try and kill it and eat it raw. We did not get rabbit very often; they were hard to catch. We would eat whatever we could catch, mostly insects and lizards.

For at least 140 pages of the 200 page book (140,000 years), we could not make a fire, and we ate other animals raw.

You lived like that for a lot longer than you have been in a warm, safe house with food in the fridge. The truth is hard to believe, but it is the truth that sets you free.