Mr. & Mrs. Erectus

Today morning, over a cup of coffee, I realized that I haven’t blogged in a while. I don’t regret though, because blogging under a compulsion of continuity can only result in solipsistic monologues. Sometime between my last outbursts on gay right violations and this post, I took a vacation to India and was back couple of weeks before. A friend of mine suggested that my coming back from India, without losing my passport or having a dependent tagged along, deserves a lunch in itself. Little did I know that the lunch was arranged at his house and I wasn't the only one invited to the party. Committing to a lunch without questioning its specifics is a folly and I truly repented for my sin by gracing the occasion with my presence.

There were few other folks piled up in his house for the party. I gathered some of them are his colleagues and others, his wife's acquaintances. One of his wife's acquaintances easily qualified as the prettiest Dravidian woman I have ever seen in my real life. And I do not know if it is my sexual charisma or random chance that she chose to sit next to me in the couch. For a moment I really thought it’s God's way of making up for the fact that I went to an all boys high school. But, over the conversation, it was revealed that she is training herself to be a wife-for-life to a total stranger and her parents are on a look out. Then, without any prodding whatsoever, she made a passing remark that she expects her husband to be religious because she cannot live with someone who isn't sensitive and caring.

One is compelled to see such a remark as thoughtless and flippant. But to appreciate the magnitude of its thoughtlessness and flippancy, one should have walked down the fossil beds of Koobi Fora in Kenya. In 1973, a paleontologist by name Alan Walker discovered the fossils of a Homo erectus woman in Koobi Fora. The fossil was 1.7 million years old. Walker observed several inches of pathological bone growth in the skeletal remains of that Homo erectus woman. Pathological bones are quick-and-dirty solutions triggered by our body when the regular bones become dysfunctional. Such conditions usually arise when there are serious bone diseases or injuries. Though pathological bones grow quicker than regular bones, they can be substituted to carry out only the metabolic functions of regular bones. Being a temporary arrangement, pathological bones are weak and are not capable of aiding in mechanical activities. The uniform pathological bone growth in the Homo erectus skeleton led Walker to conclude that the woman was incapacitated by a severe bone disease. The thickness of pathological bone in the specimen also suggested that the woman had battled her bone disease for several months even after she was totally immobilized by her illness.

The implication of this finding was astounding. Alone and immobilized, a Homo erectus woman would not have lasted more than two days in an African savanna. For her to survive over months, someone must have taken care of her. She must have been provided with food and water, protected from the prying carnivores and comforted through those long, dark, painful African nights for no good reason other than human concern and caring. The bones of Mrs. Erectus are, thus, a poignant testimony to the beginnings of strong ties between individuals that predates even the evolution of human beings. Compared to the epoch of Mrs. Erectus, our holy books and sacred cows are ridiculously recent. Even the crudest form of religious worship would not have started anytime before ten thousand years. The oldest sacred book, Enuma Elish, dates back only to seventh century BC. So, by all commonsensical means, the virtues of love, harmony and compassion would have evolved at least 1.7 million years (okay, 1.69 million years, if you are so picky) before our ancestors began putting together anything that can loosely be called as religion. Religion, like a cheap programmer, took credit for what was already in place. And, like a spineless project manager, the woman at my friend’s party appraised this undeserving programmer rather indulgently.

P.S: I read about this Homo erectus fossil (labeled KNM-ER 1808) in Allen Walker’s book, The Wisdom of Bones. It is an interesting read even if you don’t care much about paleontology.