Prologue and Ch. 1

The first thing that struck me about our reading was the timeline we also discussed in class. Seeing how insignificant humans are in the grand scheme of events in this world's history really was, and is, an eye-opener. I have always been pretty humble about our place in this world, as I try to be environmentally conscious and I do not believe in any religion. But just seeing how late we came into existence was really amazing to me. Although the Cosmic Calendar showed it in layman's terms, reading the actual years affected me much more greatly; the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, yet we only came around 250,000 years ago! 

As I read about the earliest peoples, I really was drawn to the small section about Rapa Nui, which is known as Easter Island now. The people who lived on the island used up so much of the island's resources that they caused deforestation, consequently causing famine, population decline, and (the part I found most interesting) no way to get off the island because they had no wood to build the boats. I actually thought this little bit of information was kind of funny, to be honest. I felt as if it could have been in a Mel Brooks movie or something. 

Another fact I enjoyed reading about was that the San people were all equal. The women gathered more vegetation than the men hunted meat, causing them to have no dominant sex. The teenagers also engaged in sex, and female virginity was unknown, or better yet, not important. Even more importantly, marriages lasted, and happily so. There were no wife beatings, rape, nor double standards. So, basically, I felt as though humans went terribly backwards after this tribe.