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Around 40,000 years ago, Heero, a clever guy, was out fishing one day with a pole and piece of sinew dangling off the end.
Nothing was biting.
Idling around, as one does, he wondered what would happen if he tied the sinew to the other end as well, and, bending the pole, did so. He twanged it a couple of times, and then thought WOW!, I wonder if I can make a tune with it. Pluck, pluck, pluck etc. Hmm, I seem to have invented something without any kind of tune, maybe I'll call it the 'banjo'...and he did. Tiring quickly of making plunk plunk sounds, he had another thought. I wonder, he wondered, if 'scraping' a piece of stick across the string might get me better results...Finding a handy piece of straight wood, he futzed around with it, first wiping it across the 'string', as he now thought of it, and then, having no result, he stuck one end of it ON the string and pulled it back. That did nothing either, until he let it go, and to his utter 'mazement, that stick flew off his 'banjo' and hit his pal in the bubblegum. Hey! - shouted his pal, you some kind of wise guy? Take a 'bow', cretin! Well, he did, and that's how the 'bow', as it was originally called, was invented.
Pretty soon, with little else to do, he dropped the banjo idea for another time, and concentrated on the bow, and pretty soon found out that shooting pointy sticks at people in the bubblegum, could easily REALLY hurt them, and they'd get so annoyed they'd catch him and beat the ever-loving bubblegume out of him. Off in a sulk, he was wandering around the local woods when he came upon the local dinosaur [this is a story, right?], checking his eyelids for holes in a little glade. Hauling back on his 'bow', he let loose one of his pointy sticks at the dozing dino, To his amazement, having been stuck in the gizzard by a lucky shot, it just up and died.
The idea of a HUNTING 'bow' was born.
Needless to say, he publicised his discovery at the next cave whoop-up, getting some advance publicity, as 'twere. by doing a few sketches on the wall of his cave to show folks what might be possible [you can still see his 'stick-men' hunters today, if you go over to Lasceaux, France]. It caught on BIG-time, and soon everybody was using his 'bow' to hunt stuff with. It goes without saying that you only need to hunt stuff that is running away from you, or rather less fun, toward you, with teeth. Fruit and vegetables, on the other hand, just kinda lay there, doing nothing, and really didn't need much effort to catch, and the task of growing them and - even eating them - was given over to Dweeb the Nerd and his skinny pals and wimmin, too, while Heero and his 'bow'hunting pals developed enviable sets of muscles all over from the exercise they got chasing wild game, and improved their capacity for reasoning and intelligent decision-making - strategies for survival - because of having to outwit the clever game, which, more or less up to then, had been WAAAY cleverer than the nut and berry-eating humans, themselves pretty tasty for those animals with the necessary teeth that liked that kind of thing..
Hence the saying - prolly one of the oldest in Mankind - 'you don't need to shoot froot'. A lesson for all of us there, folks.
Those who till the soil will do it for those who have the bow.
tac
Nothing was biting.
Idling around, as one does, he wondered what would happen if he tied the sinew to the other end as well, and, bending the pole, did so. He twanged it a couple of times, and then thought WOW!, I wonder if I can make a tune with it. Pluck, pluck, pluck etc. Hmm, I seem to have invented something without any kind of tune, maybe I'll call it the 'banjo'...and he did. Tiring quickly of making plunk plunk sounds, he had another thought. I wonder, he wondered, if 'scraping' a piece of stick across the string might get me better results...Finding a handy piece of straight wood, he futzed around with it, first wiping it across the 'string', as he now thought of it, and then, having no result, he stuck one end of it ON the string and pulled it back. That did nothing either, until he let it go, and to his utter 'mazement, that stick flew off his 'banjo' and hit his pal in the bubblegum. Hey! - shouted his pal, you some kind of wise guy? Take a 'bow', cretin! Well, he did, and that's how the 'bow', as it was originally called, was invented.
Pretty soon, with little else to do, he dropped the banjo idea for another time, and concentrated on the bow, and pretty soon found out that shooting pointy sticks at people in the bubblegum, could easily REALLY hurt them, and they'd get so annoyed they'd catch him and beat the ever-loving bubblegume out of him. Off in a sulk, he was wandering around the local woods when he came upon the local dinosaur [this is a story, right?], checking his eyelids for holes in a little glade. Hauling back on his 'bow', he let loose one of his pointy sticks at the dozing dino, To his amazement, having been stuck in the gizzard by a lucky shot, it just up and died.
The idea of a HUNTING 'bow' was born.
Needless to say, he publicised his discovery at the next cave whoop-up, getting some advance publicity, as 'twere. by doing a few sketches on the wall of his cave to show folks what might be possible [you can still see his 'stick-men' hunters today, if you go over to Lasceaux, France]. It caught on BIG-time, and soon everybody was using his 'bow' to hunt stuff with. It goes without saying that you only need to hunt stuff that is running away from you, or rather less fun, toward you, with teeth. Fruit and vegetables, on the other hand, just kinda lay there, doing nothing, and really didn't need much effort to catch, and the task of growing them and - even eating them - was given over to Dweeb the Nerd and his skinny pals and wimmin, too, while Heero and his 'bow'hunting pals developed enviable sets of muscles all over from the exercise they got chasing wild game, and improved their capacity for reasoning and intelligent decision-making - strategies for survival - because of having to outwit the clever game, which, more or less up to then, had been WAAAY cleverer than the nut and berry-eating humans, themselves pretty tasty for those animals with the necessary teeth that liked that kind of thing..
Hence the saying - prolly one of the oldest in Mankind - 'you don't need to shoot froot'. A lesson for all of us there, folks.
Those who till the soil will do it for those who have the bow.
tac
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