Let’s talk about the past…
I’ve always been fascinated by the past, but I mean, who hasn’t wondered what it was like when dinosaurs roamed the earth or when our ancestors lived in caves and threw spears at wooly mammoths? I’ve seen movies and read books and enjoyed almost all of them, especially the ones that take place in “modern” times where some remote island or underground world or hidden valley still holds secrets to the prehistoric past, I think because those give me hope that these secret worlds just might possibly exist today.
I love the old Godzilla movies with the terrible special effects and impossible creatures as much as the more modern and arguably realistic Jurassic Park series. Dinosaurs are fascinating creatures, aren’t they? Impossibly huge or horned or spiked or winged, it boggles the mind to think they once roamed or flew over the earth we now build cities on. What if they hadn’t died off? Would humans still be the dominant life form? Could there truly be a world where humans and dinosaurs live side by side as we do today with, say, bears and alligators?
What I don’t usually obsess with but still enjoy, though, are early humans. I mean, we’ve just evolved here, haven’t we, from hairy cave men? I have read a few books that focused on early man such as Jack London’s Before Adam and my all-time childhood favorite, Fire-Hunter by Jim Kjelgaard, which I’ve read over countless times, even as an adult. And who can forget the memorable opening scene to 2001: A Space Odyssey?
We still don’t really know how we evolved to Homo Sapien. There are theories, of course, some of which involve lizard people aliens, and my own book, Visitor, suggested our planet was “seeded” by a superior race for experimental purposes. But let’s assume we did evolve from an older species that is still undiscovered or overlooked. What about our extinct “cousins”, the Neanderthals? And what about this discovery of a fossil skull first uncovered in China in 1933 but recently analyzed with something called phylogenetic analysis, the previously undiscovered “Dragon Man”.
In fact, human genealogy goes back quite far and is very interesting to review. Did all these early versions of us really exist as we believe they did, and what happened to them? Why did we survive whereas the others did not? Were we smarter? Craftier?
More ruthless?
Without a time machine we may never know, but the complexity of our evolutionary tree and potential origin stories could be just as exciting as fire-breathing apex predator dinosaurs or gigantic, intelligent apes climbing iconic buildings. I may have missed a few, so if you’re aware of any really good books or movies that delve into this topic, please let me know.
These are my thoughts, but what do you think? Please comment below!
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