In a loney, time-forgotten Swartkrans Cave in South Africa lie silent bones telling a horiffic story ending in terrified and ferocious screams. Early human ancestors, Australophtihcines, a weapon- less, defenseless pre-peoples standing a mere 3-feet tall, were the easy prey of sabre-toothed tigers and other large feline. Those paired screams from silent bones were from the last terrified sound those pre-people made that was swallowed-out by the bone-chilling screech of the tiger sinking spiked teeth through flesh and bone like a knife through melting butter. That was 3 million years ago. In the intervening millions of years, the African sought to defend him and herself through: (1) understanding the spirit of nature, (2) developing weapons to defend himself during day, (3) homes to protect himself at night, and (4) wisdom to tame the feline and other large beasts to serve the human will and fancy. From these four goals emerged, respectively, (1) an animist religion that grew from a belief each rock, leaf, animal, cloud, and star having its own spirit to the concept of a single, Creator whose spirit was in all things - the concept, in other words, underlying the modern religions it birthed and (2) Lithic tools and weapons were developed and carried world- wide. In the more recent of most ancient times, a man was born from whose limbs would arise the modern world: Nimrod. The African: meaning to say the unfairly maligned hero made bogey- man. Nimrod: son of Cush and grandson of Ham - the black son of Noah. Whether the bible is to be taken literally, or not, the ancient scribes were begrudgingly telling us that an African first built (3) sun-baked bricks, homes, and walled villages to keep wild animals away at night. Nimrod built, Sumer, Assad, Caleh and the ancient cities the future newcomers found near 2300 BC when they arrived into Ur and the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley. And what of Nimrud Mountain in far-away Anatolia, today’s Turkey? Nimrod in Semitic, a language growing out of indigenous African languages, means “Leopard-tamer.” Nimrod was the answer to his a ancestors in Swartkrans Cave who were nightly food for big feline. The images of leopards worldwide seen on this page are from his migrating descendents. (4) The taming of animals thereafter, found root in his taming of the leopard. The African Minoan riding the horse bare-back. The earliest mythology says that it was Nimrod who also tamed the horse - and hence, also, arose today’s zoos and circus that provides livelihood for thousands and entertainment for millions. “Ladies and Gentlemen step right up to the Greatest Show on Earth!”..art, art history, Paul Marc Washington, paleoneolithic@yahoo.com


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