Chapter 8, Part 3 (and the end really)

By Patrick F. Cannon

                       Sail on, sail on, sail on

                        Said Captain Chris from his perch on the poop

                        Sail on, for riches await

                        The crew, it must be said

                        Weren’t buying what Chris was sailing

                        And sometimes wished that he were daid

                        (Anon. But one has suspicions.)

Now that the Portugeezers had established a watery route to India, we can return to Christopher Columbus, who thought he had a better way. Looking at Ptolemy’s map as he often did, he decided it was foolish to go all the way around Africa, when it would be much faster to simply sail west and arrive at the same place.

Being a proud Italian, he tried selling the idea to the local princes first, but most were short of money as they were continually fighting among themselves and having their portraits painted. He then went to France, but soon discovered that the French felt they had already found heaven and couldn’t imagine why anyone would wish to go anywhere else. Columbus pressed on to Spain, where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were just about to toss the last Moors out of their country. With the booty they had taken from their retreating enemies, they were flush with cash and looking for new worlds to conquer. Timing is everything and Columbus rang the castle bell just when the monarchs were in a good mood.

They provided cash for three ships and crews, with the understanding that any lands discovered would be theirs, along with most of the gold, jewels and spices. Columbus figured that his share would be more than enough to greatly improve his standard of living, so he was content.

He set sail on August 3, 1492, full of confidence. “If we just keep going west,” he told his crews, “we’re bound to bump into something, most likely Japan.” “OK,” they responded prudently, “just as long as we get paid.”

We have to remember that in those days people who got on ships generally expected them to arrive somewhere other than their port of departure. Nowadays, of course, we’re perfectly content to sail around aimlessly for a week or two and arrive back where we started, just so long as we’re fed five times a day.

As the weeks went by with no sight of land, the crews became understandably concerned, particularly since the late night buffet consisted mainly of hard biscuits and even harder salt pork, washed down with water that was, to put it nicely, a bit cloudy.

When they expressed their misgivings to Columbus, he invariably replied: “Sail on.” This soon became tiresome, and mutinous mutterings became the order of the day. In the event, Columbus was saved, when on October 11 land was sighted. It was an island Columbus called San Salvador. He planted the flag of Spain on the beach, watched warily by a group of naked natives, who wondered why anyone would wear heavy clothes in such a climate.

Columbus himself was somewhat confused at the nakedness of his greeters, having assumed that the Japanese wore clothes just like everyone he had met heretofore. Perhaps Marco Polo had failed to mention it? He asked the natives if he could look around for gold. They didn’t seem to mind, although one must assume that their Spanish was minimal.

No gold was found, so Columbus began wandering around the area. He planted so many flags that the crew was soon busy making new ones. Before he ran out of fabric, he had discovered what is now Cuba (which he thought was China) and Hispaniola. The natives there actually had a few bits of gold, and told Columbus (using sign language?) that the gold was found up in the hills, where it has largely been found ever since.

But fate intervened (as it almost always does) and the Santa Maria was wrecked before they reached the gold. Columbus decided they would need a lot more people and shovels if they were to get at the gold, so he decided to return to Spain, leaving behind 39 men to hold the fort (which they also had to build).

When he returned with many more ships, some empty to hold the expected gold, he discovered that the natives had wised up and killed his men. Setting a precedent that held true for hundreds of years, he enslaved the natives and set them to work digging for gold. They didn’t find much, but did discover that the Europeans returned with a variety of diseases, both venereal and funereal.

The hapless Columbus never gave up, traveling back and forth from Spain to what he continued to think was the Indies. He finally died in 1506, still claiming that he had found the Indies. By then, sadly, he was commonly known as Crazy Chris. Although he never set foot in what is now called the United States, in recognition of his dogged determination, that country established October 11 as Columbus Day. While many are happy to celebrate it as a welcome day off, others believe Columbus should be condemned as a gold-happy native killer. So far, the day off has prevailed.

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Copyright 2018, Patrick F. Cannon

Chapter 8, The Age of Discovery, Part 2

By Patrick F. Cannon

The record of discovery becomes clearer in the 15^th Century, when the remarkable Prince Henry the Navigator appears on the stage. He was the son of King John of Good Memory of Portugal. His father got this name because he never forgot who owed him money, thus making Portugal one of the most prosperous countries in Europe.

If you get your atlas out, you’ll see that Portugal is a long, skinny country. Its coast faces both west and south. Being at the very edge of Europe, its people were forced to look either out to sea or towards Spain. Since mountains obscured the view to a country they didn’t much like anyway, the average citizen preferred the ocean view.

Since his father took care of the money, Prince Henry was at leisure to dream of what lay beyond his narrow domain. To make things easier, he built at castle right at the bottom corner of his country so he could, on alternate nights, dream west then south.

Everyone, of course, knew that Africa existed to the south, but didn’t have a clue how far south it might extend. It did seem a better bet for exploration, since one could hug the coast rather than sailing off into the unknown (except to the Vikings, but they didn’t care any more). Somewhat complicating Henry’s ambition was the indisputable fact that the further south you sailed, the hotter it got.

The timid felt that if you got too far south, the water would get so hot it would boil. While this might permit mariners to catch already-cooked fish, it could also melt their ships caulking, putting the crew “in the soup” as it were.

They also thought, with some logic, that you might turn black. Because they were sometimes seen in North Africa, the Portuguese knew that the peoples who lived in the south were black or at least dark brown. The Portuguese did a lively trade with the English, who were very fair skinned. Since they knew that the Sun rarely if ever shone there, and that they were darker than the English because it often did in Portugal, it just seemed sensible to assume that the further south they went, the darker they would become. Would their friends and relatives even recognize them when they returned?

As he stood on his lofty battlements, it occurred to Henry that these were risks worth taking, particularly since he could afford to send someone else. As it happened, two young worthies named John Concalves and Tristan Vaz came looking for work.

Being careful not to mention the boiling water and black skin theories, Henry convinced them that riches awaited them along the African coast. So off they went, only to be blown west by a storm, ending up in what is now known as Madeira. Deciding to leave well enough alone, they returned. Henry, it must be said, was a trifle disappointed, but decided to make a virtue out of necessity. He sent them back to colonize, thinking to make the island a way station for future explorations.

They took various seeds along, including grapes. Had they not, the now famous phrase “Have some Madeira, my deara” would not have entered the lexicon.

Henry might well have been known as the “Persistent” as well as the “Navigator” (had not the rules been so strict about such things) for he didn’t give up his dream of exploring the African coast.

Each year, his minions set forth, slowly advancing along the African coast. When they reached the farthest west point of the continent, they discovered that the currents met there and created the turbulence that the ignorant had thought was boiling water. This could easily be avoided. Nor did they turn black, although some of them got nasty sunburns.

As they landed along the coast, they found many of the natives trusting and welcoming. As so often happens in history, they turned this trust to their advantage. Luring the natives on board their ships with the promise of an afternoon’s sail, they promptly put them in chains and brought them back to Portugal as slaves. Needless to say, they didn’t turn white.

While Henry was pleased with this new source of income, what he really wanted to find out was whether, if he finally got around Africa, he could go east and find the Indies.

He knew that the Indies existed and were a source of the spices that Europe craved. Had not Marco Polo traveled over land as far as China?  Had not others retraced his steps and set up the famous Spice Roads that permitted him to have his favorite breakfast, cinnamon toast?  But had not the crafty Turks closed the roads to Europeans, creating a monopoly for themselves?

In 1488, Bartholomew Dias actually reached the tip of Africa, which he called the Cape of Storms, changed to the Cape of Good Hope by later tourism authorities. He wanted to press forward, but his crew had had enough and convinced him to turn back. The fits and starts method of exploration continued until 1498, when Vasco de Gama (bloody leg in English) finally got to India. The place he landed was later called Goa, since he left a few men behind to create a settlement, saying: “We goa back, you stay.”

(Next week, Part 3, if you can bear the wait.)

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Copyright 2018, Patrick F. Cannon

Chapter 8, The Age of Discovery

Part 1

(Author’s note: It’s not my fault that it took so long to discover stuff, but it did result in a longer than usual chapter, so I broke it down into three parts. By so doing, I hope that my readers will not be more than usually annoyed.)

By Patrick F. Cannon

In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two

Columbus sailed the ocean blue

It took so long, it must be said

That his crew would often wish him dead

He finally reached land, but found no gold

While others got rich, he just got old.

Anon. (understandably)

Because Christopher Columbus (or Cristiforo Columbo as he was known to his proud parents) “discovered” the Americas, he has become the best known of the explorers who changed the face of the world between 1450 and 1550 (more or less). This is particularly true in the United States, which would not exist were it not for Columbus. Of course, in China no one has ever heard of him.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. After all, Columbus just didn’t wake up one day and decide he’d like to discover new continents.

For thousands of years, people had looked at the heavens and wondered who and where they were. After language was discovered, they pretty much knew who they were, as names became quite common. The smarter among them, Aristotle for example, noticed that the Sun and Moon seemed to be round, and that when the Earth got between the two of them (what we now call an eclipse), it cast a curved shadow. He thus supposed that the earth was round too.

While everyone considered Aristotle a smart fellow for figuring this out, it didn’t seem to make much difference in their daily lives. While rich Greeks might take a boat ride across the Mediterranean to see the pyramids, that was about as far as they wanted to go. Frankly, while they might agree with Aristotle in public (even now, Greeks stick together), they had a nagging suspicion that if they traveled too far they might fall off and end up in Hades or some such place.

We now know this was nonsense. They actually would have ended up in the Sudan, which was bad enough and has often been called a “hell on earth.”

Some Greeks, Alexander the Great for example, were more adventuresome. He went as far as modern Kashmir before turning back. Because he had been a student of Aristotle, he probably was aware that if he just kept going east he would eventually end up back in Greece. While he admired his former teacher, he probably thought: why take the chance? And who can blame him? He had already met his share of Pakistanis and Indians and might have wondered what else might be in store.

Several hundred years later, Claudius Ptolemy was born to a mixed marriage. Because he was half-Roman and half-Egyptian, he was shunned by his schoolmates so had plenty of time for reflection. One of the first “geeks,” he became proficient in astronomy and mathematics and soon had the earth pretty much figured out. Not only did he know it was a sphere, but he knew where all the continents were. He also decided that the place he lived was on the top half of the sphere (human nature at work), which he called North.

Even a lot of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, for it turns out Ptolemy was a little deficient in geometry. He calculated that the earth’s circumference was 18,000 miles, when we now know that it’s almost twice that. As we’ll see, this was to cause a good deal of trouble.

Long before the Portuguese and Spanish began their explorations, legend tells us that the Vikings and the Irish may well have discovered North America. We know that Eric the Red and his relatives and friends settled what are now Iceland and Greenland and may well have pushed further on to Nova Scotia. While their homelands were pretty cold, Iceland and Greenland were even colder, so Eric might have concluded these new areas weren’t really an improvement, especially considering the voracious Polar Bears wandering around. The evidence of their explorations is fairly convincing, but as they didn’t leave any signs behind saying “Eric the Red was here,” some historians have been skeptical.

Ancient Irish sagas tell stories of similar explorations, but are a bit vague, much as your typical Irishman is after a long night at the pub. While they apparently didn’t leave any convincing evidence, no one has ever adequately explained why there are so many Irish in Boston.

(Next week – Henry begins navigating!)

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Copyright 2018, Patrick F. Cannon

Chapter 7

The Three “Rs” – Renaissance, Reformation and Rugby

By Patrick F. Cannon

(Editors Note: You will notice the curious title of this chapter. The author makes the dubious claim that Rugby was invented in 1567. I have found no evidence to support this claim. Mr. Cannon has generally been scrupulous in his researches, but has failed in this instance, or so it seems to me. You have been warned.)

The most curious fact about the Renaissance is that it originated in Italy but is described with a French word. It of course means “rebirth.” In Italian it’s “rebirtho,” so maybe that’s why the French is preferred.

At any rate, as we have learned, when the Dark Ages dawned, monks had spirited copies of the ancient Greek and Roman texts to Ireland. They had not only protected them, but also made many copies. When the coast was clear, they began travelling to Europe and wherever they went established great universities and bookshops.

By the 14^th Century, they had managed to teach the previously loutish priests in Europe to read and write Latin. This strengthened the church, since they could now correspond from country to country with their temporal rulers being none the wiser. As often happens, one of the priests spilled the beans to King Louis the Learned of France, who demanded to learn the ancient tongue (or the distraught priest wouldn’t have one of his own). After that the genie was truly out of the bottle and soon the upper classes were chattering away in the language of the Caesars.

The Irish priests were soon doing a brisk business. Readers were truly astonished to discover that civilizations that were long dead had in fact been more advanced than their own. Instead of slogging through turds and urine in the streets, it appeared that the Romans had invented something called the sewer to carry the smelly stuff away underground into nearby rivers. If they could duplicate this marvel, they could start wearing nicer shoes!

Time passed, as it almost always does, and soon everyone who was anyone was wearing Italian shoes and having their portraits painted.

This preoccupation with shoes and self-image has persisted right up to the present, so we owe a great debt to the Renaissance men. In philosophical terms, this is called humanism. Prior to then, people worried more about what God might think of them; ever after, keeping up with the Borgia’s became an obsession.

The names of the great artists of Italy ring loudly down the ages – Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, Brunelleschi and Titian. But we remember only their first names, thus starting a tradition of calling artists by only one of their given names that persists to this day. Who indeed knows the full names of Picasso, Monet, Degas and Dali? Or, in another realm, the full names of Elvis, Brittany and Beyonce? If someone is known by their full name – Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell, Lawrence Welk – you can be assured that their fame will be fleeting.

The one exception that proves the rule is, of course, Leonardo de Vinci. This was truly a Renaissance man! In addition to painting and sculpture, Leonardo dabbled in architecture, military engineering, poetry, philosophy and backward handwriting. His sketchbooks are full of wondrous things, including what appears to be an airplane. While much of this is amusing in its way, it did prevent Leonardo from doing what he did best – painting portraits of enigmatic young women like the famous Mona Lisa.

Unfortunately, his restless experimenting with new techniques ruined his other famous work, the Last Supper. Not content with the tried and true methods of fresco painting, he experimented with new paint formulations and the great painting began to deteriorate soon after it was finished. While attempts have been made from time to time to restore the work, it’s now very difficult to see who’s eating what.

The other great artist – immortalized by that great modern statue, Charlton Heston – was Michelangelo. He worked on the grand scale. His great David must be two stories high and David’s sex is not in doubt (although, curiously, women did not appear to have genitals until the 20^th Century). His other great work is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican in Rome. Done for Pope Julius II, the paintings best known image shows the finger of God waking up sleeping mankind. For hundreds of years, tourists have stared rapturously up at this stunning work, providing continuing work for street corner chiropractors.

Michelangelo was purported to be the first homosexual. While there is no direct evidence (his not getting married may only have shown good sense), it cannot be denied that the men in his works tend to be muscular and comely fellows, while the women tended to fat. On the other hand, Rubens’ women were certainly chubby and we know he was a happily married man with several children. Since he was also rather more surly than gay, Michelangelo’s sexual preference may never be known with certainty.

Lest we think that the Renaissance was limited to the arts, we should be reminded of the groundbreaking political scientist, Niccolo Machiavelli. In his famous book, The Prince, he laid out the path that politicians have been trodding to this day. While his ideas can be complex (and are written in Italian for some reason), they can be summarized as follows:

+All power corrupts, so you might just as well have as much as possible.

+Elections can be useful, but only if you can control the results.

+It’s OK to kill your opponents, but only if you can blame someone else.

+Damn with faint praise.

+Wage war on the weak; ingratiate yourself to the strong.

+Never give a sucker an even break.

The spread throughout Europe of these and other useful ideas was made possible through the coincident invention of the printing press by Johann Gutenberg. Prior to his invention of moveable type in the mid-15^th Century, books were hand lettered by the ubiquitous Irish monks. Now, you could carve letters in blocks of wood and move them around to suit. Once you had set a page in type, you could print many copies without recourse to multiple monks. Because spectacles had not yet been perfected, the size of the letters, and thus the books, tended to be rather large. It took a good man to carry a Gutenberg Bible! The Irish copyists soon became redundant and most returned to Ireland, where they took to the drink.

Had the monks been aware of what was going on in Wittenberg, they might have stuck around. It seems that an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther had gotten fed up with the Roman Catholic Church’s most lucrative fundraising scheme (bingo hadn’t yet been invented) – the selling of Indulgences. Simply put, Indulgences were pardons for your sins. Say you had spent your life whoring, gambling and cheating your fellow man. You could pop around to your local priest, confess your sins, do penance and promise to sin no more. What could be simpler? But what if the penance consisted of wearing sackcloth and ashes and crawling up the Matterhorn on your hands and knees?

If you had the cash, there was a better alternative. Go to the same priest, list your sins and assign a monetary value to each one. Then pay up like a man and wipe the slate clean. Then go and sin some more, and so on. The priest took his cut and sent the rest to Rome. The Pope could then afford to hire Michelangelo to paint the ceiling, thus encouraging the arts. Everyone benefited, which is the essence of economics.

For reasons of his own, Luther didn’t think this system was right. Perhaps he wasn’t getting his share. Nevertheless, he sat down one day in 1517 and soon had a list of 95 Theses (reasons) why the Church had gone astray. Instead of mailing them to Rome – he was a poor monk after all — he nailed them to the door of the local church. Most of the Wittenbergers couldn’t read, so they went about their business wondering who the crazy monk was. But agents of the Pope were soon on to him.

News didn’t travel fast in those days, so it was 1521 before the church leaders gathered for the Diet of Worms (named for the city, not the participants). Poor Luther was condemned as a heretic and excommunicated. One of those who most roundly criticized Luther was King Henry VIII of England. For his support, Pope Leo named Henry “Defender of the Faith.” Later, he had cause to regret this.

Not for the first time (or presumably the last) the Church misjudged public opinion. It turned out that only the wealthy few could afford to buy indulgences. The rest were tired of crawling on their hands and knees up stone staircases and decided to support Luther. Being simple people, they called themselves Lutherans instead of Anti-Indulgencers. It’s just as well, since few people would want to belong to a church call the Anti-Indulgencers, Missouri Synod.

Soon, others got on the Luther bandwagon and began to protest against the abuses of the Roman church. Indeed, there were so many protestors that the general term Protestants was coined to describe them, although each retained their own special name. Thus, the followers of John Calvin became knows as Calvinists. Less successful was Johannes Bigams, who espoused plural marriage. To this day, Bigamist has a naughty connotation.

It must be said that support for the Reformation was not entirely religious in nature. As usual, princes and other nobles saw an opportunity for feathering their nests by seizing church property. When Henry in England got wind of this, his anti-reformation zeal began to cool.

What really brought him around, however, was the Pope’s refusal to grant him a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, who had not given him an heir. Henry, it must be said, had never quite understood how some Italian in Rome could possibly be smarter and more powerful than he (and have more money) and decided that the Church in England needed a leader closer to home, and one who wasn’t adverse to divorce, namely himself.

He granted himself a divorce and married Anne Boleyn in 1533. Alas, she didn’t do any better than Catherine and was executed in 1536. He kept trying though and had six wives in all. Shakespeare immortalized Henry’s hapless quest for the perfect wife in his play, The Merrie Wives of Windsor. His many marriages and their expense may have hastened his seizure of Church property, which he accomplished with the Act of Supremacy in 1534. While some of the abbeys still stand in England, most have been converted into expensive country hotels.

With creativity flourishing in the arts, and people happily killing one another over religion, it might seem that little time was available for other amusements. Nevertheless, in precincts remote from the great centers of art and religion, young men were busy inventing amusements that have, in our day, assumed greater importance than either art or religion – sport.

Although the Olympic Games had fallen victim to Roman prudery, to be replaced by the clothed brutality of the Coliseum, young men in more primitive regions kept the sporting flame alive. After battle, for example, the winners often beheaded the vanquished, then would choose a likely head and toss it around for amusement. In Asia, with horses more available, they would toss the head around on horseback until one of the warriors reached an end line, by which time the head was somewhat the worse for wear. Another fresh head was usually available and so the game would continue. The man who tossed the head over the end line was called the “chucker,” a term still used in a modern variation called polo.

In Europe, only the nobles could afford to keep horses and indulge in the sport of jousting. The lower orders enjoyed watching the matches, but their sporting spirit was confined to placing a bet or two. Then one day in 1567 at a small school in the English village of Rugby, one of the lads came upon a pig’s bladder, left behind by the schools butcher. Being naturally curious, he picked it up and noticed that one could blow into one of the tube like appendages and capture the air within.

He tied the tube into a knot and happily threw the pigskin bladder into the air. His fellow students gathered round and soon were cheerfully throwing the pigskin back and forth. There were 22 of them, and being English they soon had things organized. The headmaster, a divine named Dr. Arnold, codified the rules and they have changed little since. One is permitted to run with the ball, kick it and throw it to ones teammates. Holding the ball has its dangers, since your opponents can tackle you. Although it’s unclear just why it’s done, every so often the referee takes the ball and has all the players grovel in the mud together for a bit, then throws the ball under them, whereupon the running, kicking and tackling begin anew.

Rugby was invented by the sons of the upper and middle classes, and was thought to be a gentleman’s game, despite the mud, but a variation was made available to the lower orders. Now called “football” (or soccer by ignorant Americans), it did not permit players to hold the ball and run with it. One could hit it with ones head or kick it. No tackling was permitted, since it was thought the poor were too weak and undernourished to stand the punishment.

Modern games such as American football, ice hockey, field hockey, La Crosse, and kick-the-can are familiar derivatives. Meanwhile, down the road at Eton College, the more intellectual students there had taken to whacking rocks about with small tree branches called “crickets.” Eventually, one of the boys would throw a rock to his fellow Etonian and he would hit it back. Due to their intellectual prowess, the boys soon made up rules that remain puzzling to this day.

Not to be outdone, over in the former colonies in North America, young men invented a variation called baseball, and made sure that the rules would be as incomprehensible to Englishmen and Cricket was to them.

Sport’s relationship with history is well known. Cricket gives us a good example. When the English expanded their Empire, they brought the game with them. Initially, the natives were as puzzled by it as Americans still are. Eventually, they began to catch on. When the Australians, Indians and Pakistanis actually beat teams from the mother country, it was considered that they were finally intelligent enough to govern themselves. And while the English later had second thoughts about this, it was too late.

And who can forget the Duke of Wellington’s remark that the Battle of Waterloo was won “on the playing fields of Eton.” Perhaps Napoleon was not so much defeated as confused.

(Next week – we’re discovered!)

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Copyright 2018, Patrick F. Cannon

Chapter Six

The Middle Ages

By Patrick F. Cannon

We historians constantly strive to keep things simple. When the profession was struggling to come up with a handy name for the period between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, one of our brighter luminaries (Carlyle, as I recall) said: “You know, it was a period midway between the birth of Christ and this very day, so why not call it the Middle Ages?” So there it is. What could be simpler?

Of course, like much of history, this may well have to be reevaluated in the future. Imagine the historian of the 30^th Century. He asks himself why everyone calls the Middle Ages the Middle Ages when to him the Middle Ages would have been the 15^th Century, which we now know as the Renaissance. One could of course get bogged down with such questions; so we must let the historians of the future do what we ourselves do today – change history to suit the needs of the times.

Such questions aside, when did it begin? Most competent authorities believe the Battle of Hastings was the true beginning of the Middle Ages, since it isn’t easy to think of anything important happening before 1066.

William the Conqueror, by the way, wasn’t always known as William the Conqueror. He started as simple William, Duke of Normandy. He often walked the beaches of his realm and wondered what lay beyond the horizon (actually, on a clear day he could see what lay there; it was England). As a young lad, he had heard tales of the strange goings on over the water and determined some day to extend civilization to the heathens there. When he heard they didn’t speak French, the die was cast.

Offering the usual incentives of plunder and free land, he gathered an army and set sail in 1066. After a trouble-free passage, he landed on the coast, which seemed the most sensible approach. King Harold, who had just defeated Tostig and Harold Hardrada (no relation) of Norway, soon learned of this new threat to his throne and turned to face the new invaders. The two mighty hosts met at Hastings. The Normans prevailed and Harold was killed in the battle. His son, known as Childe Harold, escaped and went into exile.

Harold was the first known victim of that well- known truism: always avoid war on two fronts. Poor Harold (as he’s come to be known) really can’t be blamed, since he simply wasn’t aware that William was on his way. When he found out, flush with his victory, he coined what has become a very popular British expression – “Bloody Frogs!”

It took William a few years to conquer the entire country. This was greatly facilitated by the construction of the Tower of London in 1067. When the Saxons rebelled in 1070, they chose as their leader Hereward the Wake, with predictable results. After their defeat, the Saxon nobles disappeared into Sherwood Forest, where they subsisted for the most part by robbing the rich and getting rich themselves. One of their numbers, Robin of Locksley, actually shared a bit of his ill-gotten gains with the poor and has been famous ever since, if more or less unique.

Relations between the Normans and Saxons improved somewhat under Richard I, who is known as the Lion Hearted. After returning from the Crusades (and a spell of captivity for ransom in Germany), Richard pardoned all the Saxons, making Robin Earl of Locksley. Other of his followers were handsomely rewarded as well. Friar Tuck became Bishop Tuck, and Little John became Big Bad John.

After the Lion Hearted died, his Brother John was crowned King and it rather went to his head. He was soon taxing all and sundry and generally making a nuisance of himself. In due course, the Barons had had enough and forced John to sign the Magna Carta (Big Letter) at Runnymede in 1215. This famous document limited the power of the King and enabled the Barons to get some of the spoils for themselves. Later Kings were quite annoyed that John had signed the letter, so his name was never used again in polite society. If his name had been Henry, then presumably there would not have been a Henry VIII, which would have changed the course of history.

A word perhaps needs to be said about chivalry. Since high born women of the time were not encouraged to have sex before marriage, their suitors were forced to worship them from afar (even if they got close, they often discovered the infamous chastity belt, or “iron maiden” as it was sometimes called). Naturally, they comported with women of the lower orders, but spent most of the rest of the time mooning after the remote maidens. Some swains composed poems and simple ditties. If they were brutish illiterates (as was often the case), they would hire a wandering poet/troubadour to do it for them.  A real highlight for them would be when their lady threw them a hanky (unused, one would hope) to tie to their lances before they lumbered into battle. This was considered a good luck token, but it appears to have worked only half the time.

Knights and nobles were always looking for opportunities to shine. Thus, when Pope Urban appealed to the Christian rulers in 1096 to free the holy places in the Holy Land (actually, Jerusalem and its environs), they jumped at the chance. Richard the Lion Hearted was foremost among them. Despite taking forever to get there, they finally rescued the holy places in 1099. Then, as now, killing your enemies in great numbers only made the holy places holier.

Alas, the Muhammadans had their own holy places in Jerusalem and seethed at their loss. They recaptured Jerusalem in 1187 under the mighty Saladin. Not to be outdone, the Christians set out on another crusade. When it didn’t work out, the children of Europe decided to take things into their own hands and 30,000 of the little tykes set out on the Children’s Crusade. It wasn’t anything like a Disney movie and the children who weren’t killed were sold into slavery.

But their noble sacrifice shamed their elders into trying again in 1228. They were successful, but were tossed out again in 1243. Had they persisted, the next crusade would have been the seventh and might well have succeeded once and for all, but they had lost count and suffered the consequences of faulty math. Not for the last time, history was the victim of politicians who couldn’t add.

Now that they had given up fighting the Muhammadans, the Europeans naturally took to fighting among themselves. While we might think that the six years of World War II was quite long enough, the English and French fought what has come to be known as the 100 Years’ War. One might quibble and point out that the wars actually lasted 107 years, but we can certainly agree that there was a certain animosity between them.

(Some might say that some of this animus persists. When the Channel Tunnel was

being built in the 1980s, an English clergyman was quoted as wondering why anyone would want to go to France at all, much less quickly.)

Alas, the rest of Europe behaved little better than the English and French. Most of Germany and Italy were carved into little Duchies and Principalities, which were endlessly squabbling among themselves. One of the consequences of so many petty states, particularly in Italy, was that the market for paintings and other decorations greatly expanded, since even the most petty prince wanted to grace his castle with pretty pictures, including one of himself. Artists who once didn’t have enough work to bother perfecting their talents all of a sudden were working overtime. One of them, Giotto, noticed one day that the people he was painting didn’t much look like the paintings themselves and was determined to do something about it.

While he was fiddling with noses and perspective, to the north a lusty young priest named Martin Luther had just about had it with the church’s main source of income – the selling of indulgences. And in the Celtic areas of France, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, the more sporting of the young men were inventing a new game to while away the cold and rainy days. In case you haven’t figured it out for yourselves, the Three Rs – Reformation, Renaissance and Rugby – were looming over the horizon.

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Copyright 2018, Patrick F. Cannon

Chapter IV

The Glory That Was Rome

By Patrick F. Cannon

Although the date is obscure, Rome was founded by two young babies named Romulus and Remus, who apparently were abandoned by their mother on the banks of the Tiber River. A wandering she-wolf heard their pitiable cries and stopped for a look-see. The little tikes were soon sucking away at her teats, which awakened her maternal instincts. They grew into big strapping fellows and protected the wolf in her old age. When she died, they buried her beneath what became one of the Seven Hills of Rome, the Canine.

The brothers eventually ventured forth and found wives, returning to found a settlement along the banks of the Tiber that eventually grew into a great city. The Romans were always grateful to them. Because Romulus was the elder, he became known as the Father of Rome; Remus became the Uncle.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but by 509 BC the republic was established. The very next year, Lars Porsena of Clusium assaulted Rome. He might have succeeded had it not been for the brave Horatio, who held them at the only bridge spanning the Tiber in those days. Lars was so devastated by the defeat that he kept retreating until he got as far as modern day Sweden.

For the next few hundred years, the Romans set about establishing a pretty big empire. Their main enemies were the Carthaginians, whose base was in North Africa. While the Romans were busy conquering the Greeks and the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Carthaginians were taking the great circle route through Spain and Southern France. In 217 BC, their great leader Hannibal crossed the Alps with his famous war elephants, striking fear into the hearts of the Romans. Because of this, the battles came to be known as the Panic Wars. Ultimately, the elephants died without seeing Rome and the tide of war swung to the Romans. The later battles were so small that they were styled the Punic Wars.

It should not be supposed that the Romans were merely good soldiers. They invented the paved road, the arch, and sanitary water and sewer systems. The first sanitary engineer was the great Commodius, who was troubled that he was drinking the same water from the Tiber that his fellow Romans were peeing in (and worse) upstream.

With better sanitation, Romans lived longer than their enemies, and despite the invention of the tenement, Rome was soon bursting at the seams. As is the case with modern Japan, it was decided that a portion of the population had to be out of the country at all times to reduce overcrowding. Their numbers were legion, which became the name of the resulting tour groups.

Regrettably, Rome’s neighbors weren’t ready for the influx of tourists and tended to resist their incursions. This led, after the Romans armed themselves, to the first tourist invasions. Eventually, they conquered most of what are now Western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. They built roads as they went and soon all of them led to Rome. Roman law was everywhere established and it was said that a Roman citizen was safe anywhere he chose to go, except perhaps Scotland.

Alas, the glory days of the republic were not to last. When Roman generals had conquered the entire known world, they became restless and out of sorts and began squabbling among themselves. Eventually, Julius Caesar, Pompey and Crassus were the only three left and ruled jointly. While Julius was away conquering part of the unknown world (Britain), Pompey seized power for himself. Caesar soon tired of the British fog and rain (which seemed to turn the natives blue) and returned to the Gaulish Riviera, where he was astonished to find a message from the Senate telling him that he had reached the mandatory retirement age. He took this badly and decided to confront the Senate. Taking his legions with him, he began his journey, only to get another message warning that if he crossed the Rubicon River he would be found in contempt of the Senate.

Since his legions were more numerous than the Senate, he crossed the Rubicon and burned his bridges behind him. There was now no going back and Caesar swept all before him. Pompey fled to Greece, was defeated there and ended up in Egypt. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, Cleopatra had him killed. As a reward, Caesar favored her with his amorous attentions. She had trouble with the birth of his child and it had to be delivered by opening an incision in her tummy, an operation that is now called a Caesarian section.

Back in Rome, Caesar became a virtual dictator. With the republic thus threatened, Brutus and Cassius (he of the lean and hungry look) assassinated Caesar, but made the mistake of letting Marc Antony give the funeral oration. When they reviewed the script, it seemed OK, but Antony delivered it with such dripping sarcasm that the mob soon turned against the hapless assassins and they had to flee to Greece. They forgot that this hadn’t worked for Pompey. As the poet Cicero so aptly said: “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Marc Antony was also to learn this bitter lesson. He formed a partnership with Octavian and Lepidus (known as the “beetle browed”), but made the mistake of going to Egypt and getting involved with the seductive Cleopatra. While Antony was dallying, Octavian squashed Lepidus like a bug and took ship to deal with Antony. He defeated Antony’s fleet at Actium in 31 BC. Not wishing to be dragged back to Rome in chains for the amusement of the mob, Antony committed suicide. Heartbroken, Cleopatra grabbed a handy snake and did the same.

Octavian changed his name to Augustus to suit his new stature and became the first Roman Emperor. His successors were a decidedly mixed lot. Caligula invented a new way to write Latin, but also had his horse made a Senator. As he said, “the place is full of horse’s asses anyway.”

Nero invented urban renewal, but took a shortcut and burned Rome before rebuilding it. Increasingly, assassination became to favored way to change governments. By 238 AD, it got out of hand. In that year alone, Rome was ruled by Maximus, Gordian I, Gordian II, Pupienus (a real shit), Balbinus and Gordian III, who finally cut the knot and ruled until 244 AD.

Many of the emperors had themselves named Gods, which somewhat cheapened the religion of the day. It must be said that the Romans already had more than their share of Gods. They had myth-appropriated all the Greek deities, simply changing their names, and added a few of their own. All of this created a great deal of work for sculptors and architects, but soon the highways and byways were clogged with shrines. Because they had at least to say a brief prayer at each of the shrines, the Roman Legions began taking longer and longer to reach their outposts facing the barbarians, with increasingly dire results.

Had they but known it, the answer to their prayers was close at hand. First, one of their subject peoples were the Hebrews, who long had espoused the one-God theory. The reason for this is unclear, but may have had something to do with their nomadic life. One God, after all, is pretty portable.

Since the Hebrews seemed content to keep their God to themselves, the Romans didn’t see them as much of a threat. But when the followers of a Hebrew named Jesus Christ – whom the Romans had crucified to keep peace with the Hebrew priests, who considered him a rabble rouser – began touting him as the Son of God throughout the Roman world, that was a bit much.

The Christians, as they called themselves, had a new wrinkle on the one-God idea. They still claimed there was one God, but he had three personas: God the father, God the son (the heretofore mentioned Jesus) and God the Holy Spirit. No one really knew what God the Father looked like. Jesus, on the other hand, was known to have been beardless and have long hair and blue eyes.  Oddly enough, he looked more like an Englishman than a Jew. The Holy Spirit didn’t look like anyone, because he was invisible.

Because it was less confusing than the Roman system of a God for every occasion, and you didn’t have to buy as many statues, Christianity appealed to the poorer elements in the Empire. While the Romans were inclined to be tolerant, increasing pressure from the sculptors and architect’s guilds convinced the Emperors that business was bound to suffer, so they outlawed the budding religion. It must also be said that Christianity didn’t encourage people, even Emperors, to suddenly decide they were Gods too.

History is often a matter of happy coincidences. The banning of the new religion coincided with the rise of a new entertainment industry in Rome. Chariot races had long been popular, as had battles to the death between Gladiators. As the Empire expanded, generals increasingly brought back wild animals like Lions and Tigers. Zoos were established, but weren’t too exciting, as the wild beasts slept most of the time, a problem at zoos to this day.

Many Christians were caught and simply crucified, with their bodies given to the zoos as cheap and convenient meat. The Lions and Tigers seemed to enjoy these treats and some unknown impresario put two and two together and came up with the idea of saving both the labor and materials used for crucifixions by feeding the Christians directly to the big cats in the Coliseum. The mob loved the new event and the culminating event of the season become known as the Supper Bowl.

Alas, the Emperor Constantine put the kibosh on this popular event by legalizing Christianity. He even became a Christian himself, although he prudently waited until he was dying, thus becoming the first known deathbed convert.

The majestic Coliseum sadly fell into disuse. It still stands today, but the cats that roam its ghostly precincts are more likely to be fed by the Christians than to eat them.

The Empire itself also began to decline as it increasingly depended on hired mercenaries to keep the barbarians at bay. It occurred to many of these bluff soldiers that the only way to get a raise was to take power, so they would march on Rome and kill the emperor. So much time was spent doing this that sufficient watch was not being kept on the barbarians, who were soon making inroads on the very roads the Romans had built to conquer them.

Among the many tribes marching on Rome were the Visagoths and Ostragoths. While the Romans were able to keep an eye on the Visagoths, the Ostragoths were a little sneakier. Eventually, they got together and sacked Rome in 476, thus ending the Western Empire. The Eastern Empire lasted another thousand years, mainly because it was pretty far away in Constantinople and the nearby tribes spent most of their energy fighting each other, much as they do today. When the Eastern Empire finally fell in 1456, it was the forces of Islam who did the deed. They treated the inhabitants so foully that they became known as the Turkeys. They rather liked this and have retained the name to this day.

When Rome itself fell in the fifth century, Europe entered what is now known as the Dark Ages.

(Next week, back to Arabic numerals for Chapter 5)

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Copyright 2018, Patrick F. Cannon

Chapter 3

Greece – Birthplace of Democracy and the Olive Burger

By Patrick F. Cannon

While the Sumerians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babbleonians and their ilk (including the pesky Israelites) were battling among themselves for supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean, to their left (if they were facing north) the great Greek city-states that would ultimately conquer them were developing.

The blind poet Homer was describing their exploits as early as 800 BC, so we know the famous Trojan War must have occurred before then. You will recall the bard’s description of the famous Trojan horse, left outside the gates of Troy, presumably as a peace offering, but in actuality containing a group of bloodthirsty Greeks. When the unwary Trojans dragged the horse into the city, the Greeks leapt out and laid waste to the hapless populace. Here, of course, we have the reason for the famous saying “beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” This has caused endless trouble ever since, particularly for those marrying into Greek families.

As the city states developed, they began inter-city sporting competitions called the Olympic Games, named after Mount Olympus, which was the nearby birthplace of the Gods, whose tickets were comped. Many of the events are still contested today, including foot races, discuss throwing, wrestling, the javelin toss and the rock (now shot) put.

Perhaps the most famous event was the Marathon race, named after the 490 BC battle of the same name. As you know doubt recall, General Militiades and his Athenian Hoplites (the first to use pogo sticks to gain increased mobility) were doing battle with the Persians under Datis and Artaphernes. Things became dire, and Militiades sent his trusted messenger Khenyi Etheopalae the 26.2 miles back to town to get some help. As he handed his message to the waiting citizens, he expired. As it happened, they didn’t send help after all, but it does make a nice story anyway.

Anyway, contestants, all men, wore no clothes because they were so proud of their muscles and other attributes. This unashamed nudity eventually became the downfall of the Olympiad, not because of public prudery (which was in any case strictly a Judeo-Christian concept) but because there was no place to put a sponsor’s logo. When the Olympics were revived in the later 19^th Century, the organizers made sure that everyone was fully clothed and fully sponsored.

Athens and Sparta soon became the dominant cities. The Athenians invented democracy, philosophy, art and the corner restaurant. Sparta invented only militarism, but it was generally enough to sway the balance in their favor

It is Athens we think of when we think of Greece. Its Golden Age is typified by the great orator, Pericles, whose wisdom brought forth the first flowering of democracy. Great architecture and sculpture appeared, not to be surpassed for the next 2,000 years, when the fig leaf was once again discarded. Drama, as we know it today, was perfected. To playwrights like Aeschylus and Sophocles we owe the basic tragic plot (hero makes love to mother, loses eyesight); to Aristophanes the essentials of comedy (hero makes love to mother, who thinks it’s a hoot).

The Greeks also invented mathematics, philosophy and the oliveburger. Socrates came up with the revolutionary idea that truth actually existed, or as he put it: “I walked into a tree and broke my nose; therefore I must concede the truth of the tree.” He was so busy declaiming his ideas, he didn’t have time to write them down. This chore was handled by his graduate teaching assistant, Plato, who later came into his own as the author of The Republic and teacher of Aristotle. Aristotle was a true Renaissance man, although no one was aware of it at that time. He made advances in biology and mathematics and was the inventor of logic. (Who can forget his apt example: if A hits B and B hits A, then A better hit B again or run away.)

Aristotle in his turn was the teacher of the greatest Greek of them all, Alexander III, conqueror of the known world. To the Greeks, of course, the “known” world included only Spain on the west and Persia on the east. Alexander didn’t know about India, so he declined to conquer it. He also didn’t know about China, although the Chinese knew about themselves, but not about the Greeks. To the Chinese, the known world was China, an attitude they retain to this day.

Alexander was the son of Phillip II of Macedon, who had united all Greece under his sway. Not everyone was willing to swing to his tune, so he was assassinated in 336 BC. Alexander inherited the throne and soon had all Greece swinging and swaying in perfect harmony. But like many young Greeks, he decided to emigrate, and in 334 BC took his army along for company.

Persia was Greece’s ancient enemy and Alexander set about conquering their extensive empire. Even though the Persian forces under Darius were far more numerous, Alexander’s brilliant generalship always seemed to catch them napping, or eating lunch. The campaign took 10 years, mainly because the Greeks expected regular time outs to rape, loot and pillage. Nevertheless, they got as far as modern Kashmir before Alexander’s soldiers had had enough. They had been away from their wives and families for 10 years and were understandably concerned about their wives constancy. They had also reached the frontier of the known world and were a little edgy. Even though Alexander wept that he had no more worlds to conquer, he wasn’t silly enough to go it alone, so he turned back.

Alexander died in 323 BC. It was believed he was poisoned, but without DNA testing, we’ll never know. What we do know is that his generals were soon squabbling among themselves with predictable results. While the empire soon broke up, they did leave behind many interesting ruins, a boon to tourism to this day.

(Next week, if you can stand the wait, Chapter IV)

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Copyright 2018, Patrick F. Cannon

Chapter Two

The Dawn of Civilization and the Rise of the Ians

By Patrick F. Cannon

It’s unclear when people began to speak to one another. Perhaps the first communications consisted merely of grunts and screams. Imagine a cave dweller cooking a hare over an early fire, then chewing on the result. He grunts with pleasure. His mate hears the grunt and it sounds just slightly different than the grunt when he uses the facilities. She tries the hare herself and grunts similarly.

She has also noticed – even then, women paid more attention to subtleties – that when he stubs his toe, he gives out a shriek. When he comes upon a large and toothy cat, he also gives out a kind of shriek, but it’s louder and more prolonged. Soon, people began to understand the differing sounds of annoyance and fear. They also noticed that in the former the sound almost always comes out sounding like “ouch.” In much the same way, the grunt of satisfaction is soon regularized into “good.”

While people were soon chattering away at breakneck speed, it didn’t yet occur to them to write the new words down. Actually, the use of pictographs came before the Palmer Method. The Sumerians (the first of the Ian civilizations) often traded goods among themselves. When one group had a surplus of alfalfa sprouts but a shortage of malt beverage, they would often do a trade. We know their level of sophistication because, to prevent pilfering enroute, they would fill a jar with pebbles coinciding with the number of baskets of sprouts, and then seal it with clay cylinders. At the other end, the recipient would break the jar and count the pebbles. If the pebbles and baskets matched, all was well. If not, woe betide the shipping company. In fact, this is where summery executions began.

Eventually, a thrifty shipper noticed that you could actually make marks on the clay stopper before it dried, using dots for each basket instead of putting pebbles in a jar. This eliminated the need for pebbles and jars; thus, the first recorded instance of improving the bottom line.

Every system has its faults, of course. It wasn’t long before the shipping companies discovered that they could make their own clay disks with fewer marks and enjoy a few sprouts on the trip without being discovered. Eventually, however, the shippers began to do elaborate drawings of the goods instead of simple marks. The shipping companies countered this by hiring talented artists to duplicate even the most sophisticated symbols. Not surprisingly, they were called “counter” fitters.

An interesting footnote: J. Pierpont Morgan, the celebrated American financier, began to collect these disks when their meaning became clear. Not only did the disks look nice in glass cases, but he was in a position to appreciate their relevance to his own business practices.

The Sumerians lived in what is now the Middle East. It was either merely hot or really hot all the year. Nearby, in a mountainous region where snow was not unknown lived a tribe called the Friesians, who lived in cedar forests (now part of Lebanon). They often traded their timber with the Sumerians, usually during the colder months in the mountains. They began to equate Sumeria with warm weather and soon began to refer to the warmer months in their own country as summer.

Another early civilization of note was the Assyrian, the so-called “donkey people.” Much later, after a particularly virulent outbreak of hoof and mouth disease wiped out the donkey population, they transferred their allegiance to the hardier camel and became simply the Syrians.

The Assyrians thought big. One only has to peruse the massive statuary and tablets displayed at the British Museum to be convinced of this. Indeed, the museum would be a much smaller place without them and the famous Elgin Marbles (see discussion of cultural piracy later in the book).

In case you get lost at the museum, the Assyrians are the ones with the wide beards. It’s the Egyptians who have the narrow ones. Also, the typical Assyrian beard seems braided, much like today’s dreadlocks. It would appear that they did not perhaps have razors quite so good as the Egyptians, but a much higher order of beard dressing.

They were also prodigious warriors (“the Assyrians came down like a wolf on the fold”). It must have been a daunting experience to see them charging their enemies on their famous war donkeys. Even the women participated in these battles, although they demurely rode sidesaddle, hence the word “asside.”

Now that their hieroglyphics have been deciphered, we know that the Assyrians had all the hallmarks of a developed civilization: language, art, trade, politics, and cities, subjugation of weaker neighbors, marriage and divorce.

In this, they resembled their rivals, the Hittites, who appear to have emigrated to Anatolia from the Balkans, and who can blame them? Before they disappeared, they conquered the Babylonians and fought the Egyptians to a draw, mainly because they discovered iron, which held an edge better than sticks and, heated up, could put a snappy crease in their uniforms. Ultimately, of course, the formula for iron was discovered by their enemies, who soon were hitting back with a will. We hear nothing about them after 1200 BC; maybe they went back to the Balkans, which might explain a lot.

While peoples in other parts of the world struggled along at the same time, we know little about them because they left no written record. In great part, what they left behind were big rocks. Later to become notably articulate (after the Roman conquest), the early Britains seemed capable only of constructing massive henges, the most notable of which is near the modern village of Stone on Stoke. What these circles of shaped stone actually signified is mere conjecture. The most plausible theory holds that they are a kind of astrological timepiece. This was all well and good for those at the henge. It appears, however, that if you were in Scotland, you couldn’t get the time of day.

The Assyrians were eventually conquered by the notably talkative Babblelonians, who also gave their name to the storied city. While they gave fits to the nearby tribes (the Israelites for example), they were also really keen gardeners. The famous Hanging Gardens of Babbleon were justly famous. It was while reclining in the gardens that the Great Hammurabi (or, as known locally, “the big hammer”) drafted his famous laws, the first fully codified system of government we know of. While he made sure the codes put him in full charge, they at least permitted one to appeal for mercy before being dragged six times around the city gates.

Before leaving the Dawn of Civilization, we must pay some attention to that other great Ian people, the Egyptians. During their heyday, they were called the “Profile People,” since the court painters didn’t seem able to draw faces straight on. Like other ancient peoples, the Egyptians worshiped nature and animals, thus the term animus. Their major deity was the Sun God, Rah. When his likeness was paraded in the temples, the worshipers were often heard to chant in unison “Rah, Rah, Rah.”

They believed strongly in the afterlife, so modern Egypt is dotted with tombs of various kinds, the most famous being the pyramids. These vast edifices contained the mummified bodies of notable Pharaohs, along with their treasures and all the food and comforts they might need in the afterlife. It wasn’t long before these tombs were looted, so many of these kings now reside in museums, which at least have climate control systems and functioning cafeterias (although one can’t, in conscience, recommend the food).

It should be mentioned that many of the later Pharaohs were actually Greeks, Cleopatra being of course the best known. By the time of her reign, Egypt was in decline and would soon become part of the great Roman Empire and thus related to the next great historical period: the Classical World.

(Next week, if you can bear the wait, Chapter 3)

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Copyright 2018, Patrick F. Cannon

Chapter One

Before History Began

By Patrick F. Cannon

I have always been puzzled by the word “prehistoric”, particularly since a good many people seem to write about what presumably happened before anything actually happened. How can something be called a prehistoric animal if we know all about it?

One supposes that what is really meant by prehistoric is that no-one around then was able to write things down, leaving it to later historians and archeologists to poke around in the rubble and try to figure out what might have gone on. Proper history only began when man began to scratch something intelligible on damp clay or a block of wood.

While I can’t actually vouch for the validity of what experts have written about prehistoric times, I’ll try to summarize their better guesses.

Prehistoric man lived in caves and wore animal skins. Since most animals don’t give up their skins willingly, we also presume that these early people were hunters. They used clubs and primitive spears. The human population was rather small in those days, so we know they didn’t succeed in all the encounters with their prey; indeed, it was sometimes hard to decide who was the prey.

In their hunting excursions, they naturally attempted to kill slow and toothless animals if at all possible. If they ran into a saber-toothed tiger or a wooly mammoth, they ran like the dickens.

There is a common misconception that man and the great dinosaurs lived at the same time. They did not, regardless of what Hollywood might indicate to the contrary. Man evolved later from the apes. Pro-magnum man evolved from the great apes and anti-magnum man from the chimps. Both rose in Africa and scattered around the world. For a more detailed description of how this happened, you might consult the classic Out of Africa.

Ultimately, of course, the two strains met and began to intermix. While you might not think that humans as diverse as the French and Swedes share the same ancestors, they really are the same under the skin. So, for that matter, are Danny DeVito and Shaquille O’Neil.

Why did people live in caves? Was it because they didn’t yet know how to build houses? Actually, houses had been tried, but did not prove to be strong enough to withstand the attentions of determined wooly mammoths or breathy wolves. Where caves were available, their openings were usually too small to admit the larger animals. They were also proof against wind and weather.

This was important because the prehistoric world was a pretty chilly place. Remember, the dinosaurs died out because their reptilian systems couldn’t abide the cold. There are many theories about why the earth suddenly turned cold. One posits that a giant comet hit the earth somewhere near Miami, tossing up a giant dust cloud that obscured the sun for hundreds of years. This makes some sense, since even now it generally seems a bit cooler when the sun goes down at night.

But whether it was the comet or a gigantic volcanic eruption, as another but more dubious theory holds, we know that much of the world was as cold as Northern Minnesota for quite some time. It was also pretty dark, but fortunately man had discovered fire. Without it, cave life would have been quite unpleasant.

We often read that civilization advanced greatly when man “invented” fire. How silly! Man of course did not invent fire, but he did notice that when fires burned they made things brighter at night and took the chill out of the air. One can imagine an early Frenchman walking through a dark forest one night with a Stag over his back when a sudden thunderstorm arose. Lightning flashed! Before him, a bolt hit a tree, setting it ablaze! All at once, the dark forest wasn’t so black! What if (he thought as he was dodging the flames) I could myself create lightning and use it to set pieces of wood ablaze? Then maybe one could create a fire in one’s cave and be actually able to see one’s fellows after dark. One could even draw pictures of animals on the walls to while away the dreary evening hours.

Of course, it wasn’t that easy. Like many great advances (e.g., Newton’s apple leading to gravity), it came about by accident. In those days, spears and other weapons had stones shaped into points at the business end. We’ll never know whom, but one day a hunter was in need of a new spear and cast about for some likely stones. He picked up two, planning to whack them together to see if he could make one pointy enough to pierce a sloth. Well, they turned out to be flintstones. When he struck them together, lo and behold, a spark! Not exactly lightning, but nonetheless suggestive.

He pondered this phenomenon for a bit, and somehow connected it with the lightning/trees effect. He gathered some dry leaves and kept hitting the stones together until the leaves caught fire. Pretty soon, cavemen all over Europe were picking up flintstones and starting fires. One unintended, but fortunate, consequence of the fires was the first instance of global warming, which put an end to the Ice Age.

When all that ice melted, it created many lakes and rivers. While the frigid winters were to stay for a quite long time in Northern Europe, in more Southern climes the newly abundant water soon created verdant river valleys, whose nomadic inhabitants saw that formerly scrawny plants seemed to grow bigger and faster. Through trial and error, they noticed that some were edible. It occurred to some that eating plants made more sense, and was eminently safer, than hunting the wooly mammoth, which in any case seemed to be dying out due to the increased heat.

As it turned out, the last prehistoric man was also the first historic one. For he was the first one to notice that the little grains of some plants, if buried in the ground, would soon create new little plants. This likely happened in the area between what are now knows as the Tigres and Euphrates Rivers in modern Iraq. The rest, as they say, is History.

(Next week – Chapter 2, unless my math is faulty.)

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Copyright 2018, Patrick F. Cannon