How We Got Here
Some people imagine the world began in fire,
that volcanoes created the world we know
or a meteor smashed its way through
the atmosphere still burning at the front,
its icy tail encasing its precious cargo
of microbes or micro-organisms needed
to fertilise the bubbling cauldron of Africa.
4000 million years give or take an epoch.
Only people recognised as deranged even by
fellow Bible-bashers in Deep South enclaves
where Deliverance is everyday naturalism
hold out for Bishop Ussher's 4004 years;
only in Oxford could that 9am Monday morning
High Table witticism be taken seriously.
No. I say our world began on water.
The first people were sailors & fishers.
Up the Nile and into the centre of the world
then out on the greatest voyage of discovery.
Imagine being the first true human to set foot
on another continent and be proved right.
A journey our cousins could not conceptualise.
You can teach a gorilla 1000 words of sign language,
and chimps can learn to manipulate sticks,
but they could never build a raft or canoe.
The opposable thumb is our advantage.
Language is a performance-enhancing drug.
Watch the river flow; ask where it goes.
Life is a 2nd order consequence of geology.
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