This chapter is set entirely in the past with no time travellers present and its narrative viewpoint is collective:
"Every fall We met at Bubbling Springs." (p. 172)
Readers recognize a Biblical echo:
"You Who Know Strangeness, why have you forsaken us?" (p. 173)
Still more in Poul Anderson's time travel short story, "The Little Monster":
"You send stranger, Old Father? Stranger is Old Father?"
-Poul Anderson, "The Little Monster" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 142-163 AT p. 162.
"Thank you, Old Father. This holy fire you have given us - we must never let it die." (p. 163)
That long ago, time travellers seemed supernatural.
14 comments:
For that matter, explorers in Africa sometimes did in the 19th century.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: We see another Biblical echo by Anderson here? I agree, and I immediately thought of this bit from Psalm 21/22.1: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Which our Lord Himself quoted on the Cross.
For a seemingly "slight" story originally pub. in a magazine geared towards younger readers, "The Little Monster" has a surprisingly large amount of MEANING packed into it.
Mr. Stirling: Meaning some of the most isolated tribes in Africa thought the European explorers who first met them were magical or supernatural beings?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: when they showed off things like fireworks for the first time.
Of course, inexperience isn't the same thing as stupidity.
There was an instance of a missionary (also an 'engineer' in 19th century parlance) showing some things didn't produce much beyond astonishment.
But when he built a two-wheeled oxcart and used it to transport some heavy goods, it created an utter sensation, with crowds roaring and yelling.
The people in question had oxen, and woodworking, and they built roads (for foot traffic). But their freight, when not in canoes, was all carried by human porters (usually slaves).
They could immediately see the implications of that ox-cart... and that they could build others like it themselves. Which they immediately started doing.
He did likewise with an overshot water-wheel hitched to a saw and a water-pump, and got the same reaction.
Or on a more unpleasant note, the Maasai had met Arab/Swahili caravans, guarded by men with flintlock muskets.
They'd learned how long those took to reload, and they'd charge, flatten themselves or duck behind trees and rocks to minimize casualties, and then charge again, charge home with their spears before the musketeers could finish reloading.
Then they met a -European- caravan, whose guards carried breechloaders...
Incidentally, the Tulat (the primitives in that Anderson story) were implausibly primitive, in the light of recent research.
Bone-isotope ratio analysis indicates that humans -- and near relations like Neanderthals -- were apex predators, big-game hunters, long long before the period the story's set.
Neanderthals ate nothing -but- big game animals; they have the same isotope pattern as lions.
Cro-Magnons (40K years ago) had the same isotope patterns as wolves; half big grazing beasts, and the other half birds, fish and small mammals.
Neither ate any substantial amount of vegetable foods.
So the Tulat should have been accomplished hunters with stone-tipped or fire-hardened spears.
There's a buried deposit of large animal bones (horses, mostly) from 300,000 years ago in Germany, which is before h. sapiens sapiens evolved, and possibly before Neanderthals did.
The animals show butchering marks, and they're interspersed with hunting tools -- heavy fire-hardened thrusting spears, lighter throwing spears, throwing sticks, and big clubs.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Because wheeled oxcarts and overshot water mills were things those tribesmen could IMMEDIATELY understand.
I don't have much sympathy for bandits and raiders, so those Maasai got what was coming to them when they met Europeans and their employees with rapid firing breech loaders!
I sit corrected, almost from get go, even the earliest humans/hominins were apex predator hunters. All the same, there must have been a time when the very, very first of them had not learned how to hunt. The Tulat of "Beringia" might have been the very last of them. Esp. if isolated in the Americas from the rest of the human race for untold thousands of years.
But, I agree, it's more likely Anderson was basing his story on defective sources.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the modern human body plan (and size) evolved about 1.8 - 2 million years ago, with homo erectus. Nearly all our differences from them are from the neck up.
And the human body plan only makes sense for a cursorial predator -- a hunter who chased animals in packs.
Our specialty is medium-speed long-distance running; we're the best of all animals at that, and only the canids (wolves, African wild hunting dogs) come close. Our running pattern is useless for -escaping- predators, but it's jim-dandy for running prey to exhaustion.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I enjoy reading your comments. And what you wrote above reminded me of this bit from Chapter I of THE REBEL WORLDS, with Hugh McCormac remembering a conversation he once had with a Wodenite: "Heritage of instinct, I suppose," McCormac said. "Our race began as an animal which hunted in packs."
And that seems to suggest how early hominins/humans handled large and aggressive predators, band together in groups using even primitive fire hardened spears for fighting off lions. That would compensate for the human running pattern being useless for escaping predators.
Humans are natural cursorial predators, hunting in packs using medium speed long distance tracking. Then band together with spears for fending off large predators.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: I've seen Maasai hunting lions with spears; they surround them, and then gradually close in, crouching behind their shields. Ultimately one of the hunters "ducks down", which prompts the lion to charge or leap; he covers himself with his shield while the others spear the lion.
It's not particularly safe -- a lot of Maasai have lion scars.
We tend to forget how -good- humans brought up to it are at covering distance. A man I knew once stopped a Turkana up in the Northern Frontier District of Kenya and asked him where he was going.
It turned out he had come from a point about 50 miles away to visit a friend and was on his way back.
He'd trotted the 50 miles in one long day, and was going to trot all the way back 2 days later, and he didn't think anything of it.
It's damned hot up there, too -- rock and sand and scrub.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I assume this hunting of lions was partly done for reasons of swank, and gaining prestige and bragging rights.
I am IMPRESSED by such toughness and endurance! Yes, it certainly helped, being brought up in such a way of life.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: as that, also as military training, and to protect their herds.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I should have remembered that. Herders would need to protect their cattle from predators like lions.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: note that the Maasai religion held that God had originally given all the cattle in the world to them, so if anyone else had herds, they were descended from stolen Maasai stock.
Interestingly, the Romany have a similar legend, that Devla (Romani for God) gave all the wild game in the world to them. And all the horses.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling! Interesting pieces of folklore! Albeit many peoples would disagree. Ad astra! Sean
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