reading ranting writing

So, at some point, mankind diverged from chimpanzees, some one and a half to three million years ago, when we were using the first tools we ever had, known as Oldowan. There are artifacts from as long as 2.6 million years ago that have been found. Did we even have thumbs yet? Then we used the same primitive shit for like a million years(literally) before we got innovative. Correction; oldowan or the oldest recognizable tools, just rocks and stick don't count I guess.

The pocket may have been the greatest thing ever invented. So useful. Bong's are pretty impressive too. It seems though that a sharp edge proved invaluable to primitive human kind. For the working of animal carcasses certainly. Eventually woodworking and clothes-making made use of sharps. Ropes and strings certainly came in handy.

It's amazing to think how far we've come from our beginnings. How long was it before we developed a water-skin? Or a jar? So common and so obviously useful. Imagine if you had no way to carry liquids. Craziness. A cup would have been first I imagine, dug out of wood. Then maybe a lid for it, so you could carry it without having to worry about spilling it. Again, pockets, so useful. Bags and a backpack, wow do they make carrying things more efficient. Imagine no bags! If you want to bring something, you'd need to carry it in your arms or balance it on your head or shoulders, or kick it along I suppose.

These early tool-makers were predominantly right-handed. Interesting to note how old lateralization is.

The notion of foraging and saving food for the future and an awareness of time's passing and a preparation for it must have taken quite some time to work out. Save meat for the future, get sick die. Whoops, wrong thing there. Play with fire, cook meat, save some, get sick, but live. Learning.

We watched birds and bugs until we figured out flying.

Imagine the first person to paint a picture. They probably accidentally touched something with dirty hands. Hey, that looks like the food-animal I eat. I'll just touch it here, and there we go, meat-beast portrait. I can imagine someone accidentally drawing the face of a dead loved one, and being terrified. What a strange feeling it would be, having never seen a picture, to draw something yourself. What kind of madness would it have seemed to continue producing this earliest art amidst the chaos of everyday life?

Writing the first song.

Plucking the first string instrument.

Beating the first drum.

Blowing the first horn.

These things happened. People did this.

Look how far we've come. Standardization of language and technology have allowed us to communicate in ways never before possible. We don't even realize the wealth of knowledge we are born upon, our history, how far we've come. We've barely mapped out the last five thousand years, let alone the million before that we were crawling around this rock figuring out how our thumbs work.

Who knows what kinda crazy shit went down back in the day.

Then again, I'm reading wikipedia. Maybe I should go eat a bag of salt.

Really, how much of our knowledge is based on exposure? We've seen wheels and fire and television and electric light and refrigeration, we don't have to invent these. Could we if left to our own devices? If we were placed on another planet like earth but without humans, what would it look like in a hundred years? The Earth of today? Our current projection of the future? Or something entirely different? Would we lose our technology, our understanding, without the artifacts we all take for granted? Roads, garbage, old movies and tv, making ours look new in comparison. We see a progression in our current technology, but not the progression from the wild to domestication. The inventions of society, myth, and culture. Marvellous though they may be, we might be wise to recognize them as inventions. Not to dispel them necessarily, but to expand them, to allow them to grow and evolve, so that we and they might be better equipped to face the future.

I know, I'm getting a little intense here.

"Who is this, doin' this, synthetic type of alpha beta psychedelic fuck it"
Well, at least that's what I think he's saying. Lately I seem to only listen to music when I've been drinking. It's been about a week since I've listened to any music.

It's weird, lately, when I'm drinking, I've been listening to old songs I used to listen to, and finally hearing the lyrics clearly for the first time. It's quite strange. I experienced the same thing last weekend with some Gorillaz song. Oh man, does Elektrobank ever kick in heavy at the end. I forgot about that. So bassy. All my bass are belong to them.

Much reading to be done. May random find you well.