Just Outside the Fire Light

Never are we closer to our cave dwelling selves than when we sit around a bonfire at night. We may talk to each other but our gaze always returns to the flames. We can’t help but watch the flames lick and lap at the wood as it slowly and steadily converts it to ash and soot. As the bark crackles and pops and peels and disappears we watch as if magic is being performed right before our eyes. Oh how disappointed our hairy ancestors would be. This, like many things we have gotten wrong over the centuries, is a symptom of our soft and easy existence. That may seem a little harsh but I think it’s accurate. If we were able to bend space and time and watch our former families around their fires in the Paleolithic Era, I believe we would see women and children doing and behaving much the same as we’ve talked about above. But what about the others in our ancestral pack, the men and adolescent boys, the Hunters and Protectors of our Tribe? I believe we would see them facing out, several steps away from the fire light. So far away they could barely feel the warmth, if it all, and far enough to allow their night vision to return and be effective. They would be scanning the darkness before them; staring with wide open eyes allowing their peripheral vision to take in as much information as possible. Their ears searching the inky black for noises like footfalls, twigs snapping, or leaves rustling. We would also see them rotate in and out. Fresh sentries to replace those that have been on duty, likely with the new man standing behind the one already on watch, exchanging information with his replacement and allowing the second man’s eyes to adjust. Pretty sophisticated for a bunch of half ass not-quite-people not-quite-apes, right? How can I say this was such surety? Because I am writing this and you are here to read it. That means our ancestors survived at least long enough to procreate and pass on our DNA to keep it alive for one more generation. We didn’t survive out of nature’s kindness for clawless, virtually defenseless apes. No. We survived because we learned. We survive because we armed ourselves. We survived because we made plans. We survived because we knew the whole world was out to kill us. We no longer have to worry about dire wolves or sabertooth tigers, but that’s not to say there’s not plenty to worry about. To think otherwise is going against all those centuries of learning our DNA brings us. We should once again take a lesson from our ancestors. We should face away from the fire. Remove our gaze and our attention from the warm center of our domesticated lives and understand there are real threats just outside our fires’ light… and prepare for them an appropriate ancestral response.