cavemen part two

The opinions expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect the pinnacle of perfect, absolute truth one hundred percent of the time.

There have always been cavemen. There are cavemen today, and there will continue to be cavemen.

There’s always somebody who has no interest in living in a suburban home, driving a car, owning a television set, having a family.

Sometimes we call these people “homeless.” There are those who deliberately choose to live that way.

They do not play the game everybody else plays. They often domicile in some rough, semi-isolated residence, where most people would not want to live.

Millions of years from now, what will people say about us? Most of our homes will have completely dematerialized. What’s left standing after a million years?

Will they find any condominiums with newspaper clippings taped to the wall, buried under billions of tons of sedimentary rock?

What stories will they tell themselves about what they find?

I’ve read sufficient credible accounts of the existence of unimaginably advanced and populous ancient civilizations—existing so far back in the past it would make most anthropologists’ eyes roll right out of their heads, and described by people whose wisdom startles and humbles me—that I gravely doubt I’m being put on.

If you like books on really ancient history—I’m talking about many dozens of zeros B.C., the kind of stuff many respectable academics won’t touch for fear of losing their jobs—check out Forbidden Archaeology, or if you want an even fuller picture, go for the Srimad Bhagavatam.

I was “educated” in the U.S. public school system—the Chef Boy-ar-dee of Planet Earth’s learning institutions—but these days it’s not at all a stretch for me to imagine the following real-life “caveman” scenario:

What if the people we call cavemen—the ones famous for making cave drawings, the ones purported to be our knuckle-dragging, club-toting ancestors—were actually just a very few solitary hermits who lived in caves because they couldn’t stomach punching a clock in the civilized society of the day?

What if we believe that all early humans were illiterate neo-gorilla troglodytes scratching out hunt scenes only because practically all other evidence of advanced, multimillion-year-old civilization is completely buried under billions of tons of sedimentary rock?

If you want any kind of lasting fame, don’t go try out for American Idol. Find yourself a cave and get scratching. You’ll be discovered someday.