The Disillusioned Earthbound Human: A Tragedy

Part II: "Ugh!"

The human conscious is as distinct and personal as finger prints. You may get a peek at one, but you'll never see them all.

IF any "instructions," guidance, compelling messages were left by those who delivered the EBH to the surface of his rock, those guiding messages may have been encoded into the EBH sub-conscious; even if nothing more than, "Good luck! You're on your own!" After all, he was eventually able to climb down a tree and into a skyscraper. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.  Let's back up a bit.

While I'm using EBH in the singular tense; it must be understood, there were a multitude of EBH tribes scattered throughout the surface of the Earth.

Genetically speaking, all EBHs are the same; that is to say, all sport two legs, two arms, one head, one brain, etcetera, etcetera.

Some tribes enjoy variations to the basic theme, facial features mostly, height and skin tone others. But all possessed the ability to think, create, and imagine.

All possess a conscious.

Considering their similarities and differences, each individual tribe considered itself equal in standing with all other tribes, while embracing their own unique cultural differences; in many cases, tribal leaders touted their tribes as superior to others. Bigger, stronger, more powerful.

Were all tribes linked to the same magical, mystical origin in some way? Were all cast in the image of a single all mighty "creator?" There are many who speculate that is the case, just lack the evidence to prove their suspicions.

What is known is, again perhaps through the activation of encoded processes and embedded instructions, all EBH tribes began to develop socially. While some developed faster than others, all developed in simular ways.

For no man can rule a kingdom (or a tribe) without a clear mandate.

No king can preserve his legacy, record his glorious conquests, properly proclaim his supremacy throughout the lands without proper, tangible means and methods.

So somehow, someway, by some inherent "knowledge," each tribe set to accomplish a universal task.

Utilizing creativity and imagination, each EBH tribe created, tailored specifically to that tribe, variations of the basic "ugh."

Through shifting inflections, variations in tones, high and low pitch, the universal ugh evolved into complex speech patterns.

Likewise, picking up sharpened stones and flat sandstone, EBH created unique, complex, and often ornamental scribblings; individual scribblings combined in sets came to represent a tribesman name, and official title, a label for a tool or utensil, the name of a river, or a fruit.

And so it came to be, all tribal EBHs not only possessed verbal speech, but written language as well.

While many tribes continually modified and expand their languages and vocabularies, many others still use a very basic, essentially unchanged dialect today.
Surprisingly, even the most simplistic known dialects accomplish what are considered the essential elements of  meaningful communication. That is to say, even crude dialects involve a sender, a distinct and clear message, target a specific receiver, allow for/solicit feedback, permit a channel (or medium), consider potential interference and address specific situations.

These early utterances and scribblings permitted a crude, yet functional level of communication, not only within the tribe, but enabled communication with other neighboring tribes in the region.

EBH was connected, and quickly built meaningful circles of friends and formed crucial alliances.

Within the tribe, these early utterances and scribblings were important in EBH establishing some semblance of social organization (not always effective), and law and order, (not always accepted, nor abided by all tribal members); and more importantly, he was now able to commission an official scribe to record all of his accomplishments  for all time.

History was enabled, but as it is today, recorded history was not always factual. As it is today, recorded "history" is selective, embellished, and very slanted to favor the EBH being honored.

Also, while these fledgling communication tools were not interchangeable from one tribe to another, their simplicity and repetitive characteristics allowed one EBH tribe to adequately learn another tribe's "language" without too much difficulty.

And so it was, EBH could effectively, and meaningfully dialogue with EBH and thus enabled a myriad of social interactions such as trading of goods, sharing of ideas, establishment of cooperatives that would allow public works projects mutually benefiting multiple tribes.

All was well and good. But the EBH was not content. Not at all content.