Come in, come in, restless readers... Take a seat, but watch out for the chair, it comes apart if you stop reading hehehe. Read along with me this curious article from my crazy anthropology uncle Mark Wellington's old book, which looks interesting to say the least.
Given recent findings from Dr. Jules Cannavaro's team, the world of science, and especially the world of anthropology, would be as close to understand my approaches as the ink in my pen is to run out. And, unfortunately, I don't think I can buy another one. Bankruptcy is upon me.
Well, you see, dear readers, for decades, my colleagues have insisted on denying my ideas about a very beautiful, vast and fertile land that existed in Africa. About 1 million years ago the African land was fully alive with colors and smells. Like no botanical garden today or the dazzling creatures in the Amazon, Africa exhibited the most amazing flora and fauna that must have existed on the planet.
Huge trees from 200 to 300 meters high, impenetrable foliage, fruits as heavy as a family car, animals as elusive as a snow leopard and ten times stronger than an elephant. All this and more was a daily affair in that extraordinary area. However, the most surprising thing about it was that... oh, shoot, is the pen going to die already? Let's see, a few strokes... Ha! You're not leaving yet, you useless pen.
As I emphasized before, the most important thing that happened at that time was the appearance of a strange species. I believe it was a humanoid species that soon took over Mega-Africa and spread as fast and wide as a climbing plant would spread over a wall today. How do I know it was a humanoid species? Because there is 1% of our DNA that is not related to any of our ape ancestors. That singular percentage must come from that species and must have been the impetus at the time of our evolution, and I cannot conceive how we could have learned tool making, animal domestication and so on, without that inheritance from the humanoid species that, indeed, was able to do all what I mentioned before.
Although I do not know if that species was born in Mega-Africa, came from another continent or another planet, I suspect that its reign did not last long. There are three hypotheses to explain its weakening and disappearance shortly after it mingled with our ape ancestors:
Total consumption of the food-rich area of Mega-Africa.
Sudden glaciation.
Battle and defeat by a giant species of ants.
And yes, the winning hypothesis was obviously the third one because.... Oh, for God's sake, will you let me finish this writing, you stupid pen? Do you think you are so important? Let me complete this and I swear we'll be more divorced than a new forcibly married couple.
Continuing my story, I confess that the ant hypothesis won because thanks to the work of Dr. Cannavaro's team, pieces of humanoid art were found on strange metal where they are seen in conflict with ant-like bugs. Did the scientific world believe it would be otherwise? Only an invasive and collective species from Mega-Africa could fight another equally invasive and collective species.
The level of these giant ants was so high that they probably even built ant hills-palaces from where they watched over and dominated the whole of Mega-Africa. But they also disappeared. Naturally, the power conflicts between the ants were high and constant and they completely devastated each other, even taking with them what was once on the rich continent.
Their largest area of action was what we now know as the Sahara Desert. I suspect that both ant hills-palaces and more remnants of the ancient humanoid civilization lie beneath the Saharan sands, but we will never fully know since the dunes of such a desert are impenetrable. Dr. Cannavaro was lucky. But who knows, someday we may have the machines to do it and find out what is there.
