By Rix Quinn
We don’t give prehistoric people enough credit. These remarkable folks learned to walk
upright, discovered fire, and invented the wheel. Sadly, they made that wheel out of
wood, accidentally set it on fire…then had to start over again.
Tribes painstakingly carved mud huts out of the earth. That must have been tough,
especially if it rained and the kitchen cabinets flowed into the den.
One day at a hut housewarming, a neighbor said, “Cave Guy, your home really bores
me. Why don’t you put some original prints on the walls?”
And Cave Guy said “Footprints? If I could walk on walls, I would defy gravity before it is
invented.”
The neighbor said, “No, I mean pictures. You know…landscapes, impressionist works,
maybe portraits.”
Cave Guy then colored his walls with vivid scenes of ancestors and mythical creatures.
Years later, scientists concluded the paintings told important legends. But Cave Guy – a
practical person – realized he’d invented wallpaper.
Neolithic man, as you know, gets credit for building the first neighborhood. He realized if
he chased wooly mammoths all the time he’d never get “yard of the month.”
Well, pretty soon somebody built a hut next door, and one neighbor decided to construct
a fence to keep their pet lizard in, and the stray sabertooth out.
Yep, thanks to these early settlers, today we’ve got streets, carpooling, and
neighborhood associations.
In fact, if they’d known how to read, write, and medicate correctly, they might still be
around today – 10,000 years later – sunning themselves.
But if they were…you wouldn’t want to see them in tank tops.

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