Man's greatest discoveries

Old rockwell and I are in Portland.

We're hear to learn about proto-history. That is, the time before time, or the land before time (in non-animated form).

To do this, we're reading the seminal text "Our Old World Background" by Southworth & Southworth. Additionally, Portland offers many caveman-like characters on the streets.

Recent readings have included how man discovered Weapons:

"Quite early, man discovered that he could throw rocks and hurt animals at a distance. We do not know how he found this out. Perhaps one of the early men looked out of his cae and saw a saber-toothed tiger creeping up to kill him. In his fright, he knocked a rock loose, which bounded out and struck the tiger and stopped him. Surprised and hopeful, the man may have taken another rock and hurled it at the tiger. In this way, he learned the use of weapons."

and on how they discovered cooked meat:

"Perhaps the body of some wild animal they had caught fell into the fire and became partly roasted before they got it out again. Attracted by the pleasant odor of the meat, they tasted it and found it was good. Or perhaps some man who was more curious than the rest put a piece of meat in the fire just to see what the fire would do to it. At any rate,man learned that by means of fire he could make much of his food taste better."

After reading these passages, Mr. Rocky and I have been theorizing about what other inventions of man may have been influenced by saber tooth tigers. For example, perhaps early man was being chased by a saber tooth tiger into a glacial lake. At the moment that they arrived at the lake, the man skidded to a halt but the tiger slid out onto to the lake, kept afloat by the pontooning effect of its long teeth underneath it. In this way, may learned about the water ski.