Pleistocene Porsche

"Hey baby, wanna come back to my cave and see my Acheulean hand ax?"

This question was most certainly posed at more than one singles club beginning about 1.5 million years ago and, just like the excitement of comparing horoscope signs dwindled in the later 70s, probably got old about a million years later. Literally.

(If this stuff bores you, I understand. Just skip this post and come back later when I've written something relevant. But I find this to be fascinating. And don't blame me. It's school's fault. If I weren't trying so hard to be so damn educated none of this would be happening.)

Scientists had wondered why this brilliant tool, while the brains of prehistoric people were getting larger, stayed the way it was for so long without improvements. Isn't it the nature of humans, our pride, that makes us create things like Word 2007 and 100-Calorie packs? So why did the Acheulean hand ax stay so static for so long?

Sex. That's why.

The fact that this is all theory goes without saying, though I just said it, but this is what someone came up with: they were used as jewelry for men to impress women.

Now, these are our ancestors, so I will try to be delicate. It could have been your great-to-the-50th-power grandfather, so I won't make too much fun. Plus, things like steel and polyester hadn't yet been discovered. Still, I get a little kick out of thinking about some guy sharpening and sharpening his piece of flint for, I don't know, hours? days?, when these days all guys have to do is unbutton their shirts halfway down their chests, flash a wad of cash and pull up in a Porsche 911 to catch an eye. And those old guys didn't even give the jewelry to the girl - they kept it for themselves!

Maybe this is where the huge medallion came from.

Perhaps we haven't changed that much after all!!