#41 A WOMAN'S BRIEFS: FIRST OCCURRENCES OF THINGS

 I’m not sure what prompted my thoughts about the First Occurrence of Things. Maybe it was nothing more than a belief that there had to be a first for everything. Shouldn’t there be?

What do I know about opposable thumb development? It’s nearly easier for me to imagine a creative God saying, “Shazam! Thumbs!” than to picture the perplexed face of a not-quite-human-as-we-know-human-to-be Australopithecine ape-like female, some 4.2 million years ago, gazing at little digits forming on the inside edge of what were once her forefeet. Hopefully, she didn’t nibble them off. She didn’t walk on fours anymore, so what does she do with those front once-legs that now swing freely alongside an upright chest that once paralleled the ground? But that was a long time ago, and no one was taking notes, so who knows who was first to wiggle opposable thumbs.

However, while the Australopithecus is one of the best known early human species, they didn’t make it to the modern world. Apparently, that had something to do with having canine teeth too small to inflict damage on potential predators. Still, their remains, and tools they made, were found at the Lomekwi archeological site in Kenya, and so far at least, are the oldest things we know of on our earth that didn’t develop from a seed, an egg, fission, budding, fragmentation, or parthenogenesis.

Just think, something alive with a simple brain, and teeth too small, decided (it would require a decision, wouldn’t it?) to form something that differed from the natural world, something brand new. A First. A tool. Amazing. I wonder if that creature knew how wonderful, truly full of wonder, this was?

The picture Bumper-WAC took

Well, after that, humans went crazy making never-before existing things. Right? In 1949, for the first time ever, we humans shot something we made off the earth’s surface into space. Using a German rocket, the “Bumper-WAC” flew 244 miles away from us. It took a picture then fell back to earth. I’ll leave it to NASA and the Germans to argue who gets credit for this.

 Oh, by the way, the Australopithecines had an ape-like vocal tract, (how to researcher know this stuff?) but no sensitivity to the midrange frequencies that we moderns require for speech, for conversation. They did have those simple tools. They could bonk each other on the head or dig deeper pits. It is likely they had habits and hierarchy, but what about a code of conduct? Not likely. But we do have such things. What was first written Code of Conduct?  

Here it is: “The Maxims of Ptahhotep.” It comes to us via the Old Kingdom of Egypt, c.2500B.C.E.”  It seems to advise young men climbing the social ladder. Nothing for women, of course. Women need not climb. Or read. Oh wait, women didn’t read; at least were not allowed to read. Why should a woman read, she’s busy at the millstone (see the quote below) . . .but I digress.

I happen to be reading a trilogy about Thomas Cromwell by Hilary Mantel, and I can tell you I already prefer the ancient Egyptian code to that of 16th century England’s gentry. Here, a sample of Ptahhotep’s advice. I mean, if you are going to have a code of conduct imposed on a people, why not start with this?

"Don't be conceited about your own knowledge. Take advice from the ignorant as well as the wise, since there is no single person who embodies perfection nor any craftsman who has reached the limits of excellence. The perfect word is rare as an emerald, yet it may be found among the maidservants working at the millstone." ~Ptah Hotep

Code of Correct Conduct excerpt

Or here, you can read for yourself a portion of history’s first code of correct behavior.   

Here’s another “First” that still matters to us. At some point in the 15th or 14th century B.C.E., the Egyptians created a calendar using the sun, moon, and the star Sirius to mark 360 days, 12 months of 30 days, and 24 hours (leap year, too).  The months were named for the flooding of the Nile.

Egyptian Calendar

Who thinks of such a thing as a calendar when such a thing didn’t already exist? As soon as I ask that question, my middle son comes to mind. Bored by being a Marine, he created a great outdoor game called Suck-ball. It was as clever as clever gets. It was a First. If I remember rightly, a hard Japanese rain eventually washed the whole thing away, its hills and tunnels, and catapults, but not before it had gained fame on the military base.  That was a first. But I digress.

The Egyptian calendar causes me to ask:

~Did that 15th century BCE calendar cause the creation of the words, “yesterday” and “tomorrow”? Did anyone say “Yesterday” before that?

~Was it then that people started using a date to mark a birth rather than the use of expressive terms? Imagine this conversation prior to the calendar:

“When was I born, Mom?”
“You were born when the shadows of the fig tree reached the edge of the barley field just after your Uncle Abanoub got drunk on date wine, fell into the Nile, got stripped of his loincloth by the current, and was swept to the steps Pharaoh’s palace grounds. I screamed. You were born.”

Once the calendar went into effect, the mom could simply say, “First Flood, day 12.”  How dull.

On December 8, 2018, I posted my First pinewordworks.com blog. Were you with me? The category was “Thoughts Along the Way to Dying.” I have a friend who took me to task over that title, but I was convinced, not morbidly but realistically, that along the way is where we all are. And is there anything we do more than think? Surely, some thoughts are worth remembering. I wrote something like, “Dying is a journey we all share. It’s a sure path. My hope is that along the way, we might look around, look up, look left and right, look back, look forward, inward, and see stuff worth a thought, thoughts that might matter.”  

I marvel at the privilege of being alive. The odds are so against any of us being born. Who doesn’t need to say, Holy Cow! when confronted with the fact that each of us is the only “us” that ever has been, will ever be. Think about it. Out of the estimated 17 billion people who have lived and died over maybe 192,000 years of human existence, not a single other you has ever before lived. You are the First (only) occurrence of you. The last, as well. The only, ever. Think about it. Hold that thought.