Friday, May 31, 2013

Ancient Meat Eaters...

Early Meat Eating 

the African savannahs, +/- 2 million years ago...

It was hot.  He wiped the sweat out of his eyes.  It was time for food and he was going to get it.  Noises had come earlier from the far tree, and he was making his way there now.  Slowly and carefully, so as not to surprise any predators into hunting him.  A snarl reached him from the far tree...good, that meant there was still food from it.
He held his sharp stone in his hand.  He took a step and then...
...a gazelle jumped in front of him.  He froze, knowing that such activity meant the gazelle was being chased.  She disappeared into the brush.  A moment later a large cat ran by, chasing the gazelle.  He waited...then followed the lion.  Close by the sounds of the fatal encounter came to a squealing halt.  Very slowly, he approached, making sure the wind was in his face.  The fresh blood and meat reached his nostrils and he inhaled slowly.  It was too much.
Bending down and picking up a fist-sized rock, he then charged into the cat's feast, screaming at the top of his lungs.
As the snarling cat turned to face him, he lobbed the rock into its face.  With a bitter scream the cat retreated a few feet, snarling as it did so.
He grabbed the warm gazelle, and the cat began to follow.  Screaming back at the cat he saw one of the legs was almost off, thanks to the cats teeth.  Quickly he ripped it off and tossed it at the approaching cat.
He lifted the remains of the gazelle onto his shoulders and ran for his life back to the others.  Blood running into his eyes was so much better than sweat, he thought.

I write rather quickly, correcting my errors as I go.  The result isn't always fantastic.  My big problem with writing this, is that of course a Homo Erectus wouldn't think, talk, or otherwise communicate in English, or even in the fully formed and reasoned sentences we do.  Hence, what follows is solely my interpretation of the same story, totally in the character's linguistic/communicative/thinking perspective...


Hot. Eyes sting. Hungry, hungry.  Far tree food noise...food noise.  Step slow, slow.
FREEZE!  Close food noise...slow slow step.  Danger...hungry hungry. DANGER! Throw! Danger...food, hungry.  Danger..hungry...danger food.  Step fast fast!  Hungry Hungry!
Food.. eyes sting.

3 comments:

  1. Hey Wenna, good stuff here, though "sting" seems a bit connotatively specific for someone with no linguistic skills;P

    Anyway, I was looking for a way to follow this blog, but I can't seem to find it. Maybe you can help me out with that?

    Keep it coming!

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  2. Thanks Mark! I thought about 'sting', which immediately suggests 'burn'. I guess I could go with an 'ouch'...but then if 'sting' is too much, so would eyes be, so would 'freeze' etc. So I'm going to leave it for now. I'm just too tied in to thinking with actual words to go to only concepts at this point.

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  3. Marck, I added a Follow by Email form up top, thanks for pointing that out to me.

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