Acts of Discovery

The printing press, telephone, penicillin, nuclear fission, animation…these and so many other inventions continue to boggle the imagination.

Take map makers, for instance.  How did the first of their kind manage without helicopters? And, let’s assume they were mapping out areas they claimed as their own…the very same lands that already were occupied. Did the natives, upon being shown such maps, declare: “Well, until this very moment, we were prepared to fight, but if that map thingy says it’s yours, then it must be yours.  Mind if we have a day or two to pack up before we split?”

You think map making is wild?  How about determining elevation?  It turns out there were three early forms of measurement. The oldest – and the one generally considered to be the most accurate – is known as the Geodetic Method, pioneered in Greece between 350-290 B.C. First of all, why did its three inventors give a damn about exact elevations in the first place?  Why wasn’t “way the hell up there” good enough to describe a mountain top, or “so far down, you can’t believe it” all it took to reference the bottom of a cave?  I just don’t get it.

Then there’s the act of discovery, although I freely admit it’s often hard to distinguish between invention and discovery.

The latter, as I see it, is something humans and animals can jointly take credit for, especially the earliest members of all such species. They looked at the world around them, understood their needs, and went about discovering how to provide for them.

Take mushrooms, for example.  Ever wonder how many people died before there was a clear distinction between edible and lethal varieties?  As an unabashed mushroom lover, I will forever honor those who died for my whims.

Then there was this kid in ancient Egypt, I imagine, who used to think clever thoughts all day long but, come morning, could barely remember his own name – the legal drinking age was much lower then.  To overcome his piss-poor memory, he started scribbling his thoughts on the shores of the Nile.  Early each morning he’d race back to the river’s edge, only to find his sand-written journal washed away.

“Dad,” he said one day, “I need some way to express myself in writing that will remain with me always.  Any ideas?” Upon giving the matter some thought, the boy’s father pointed to a nearby papyrus plant.  “Try doing something with that stem, my son. So far, it’s freakin’ worthless.”

While we’re at it, let’s not forget America’s plains Indians who hunted and killed buffalo, but not for the sport of it. Over time, they discovered a practical use for every single body part.  Soap and cooking oil from the fat. The stomach, from which cooking pots, buckets, cups and dishes were made. And then there were the bones:  perfect for fashioning knives, shovels, war clubs, even sleds.

Here’s my dilemma.  Did every prairie Indian tribe figure all this out one at a time, or would they get together for buffalo wings (in assorted flavors) and toss ideas around?  I suspect the latter.  These powwows, of course, were for chiefs and braves only.

But that didn’t stop the women folk from eavesdropping and picking up an idea or two of their own. As legend has it, one night Princess Run Amok overheard the men bragging about all the stuff they could do with buffalo hoof bones.  And yet the princess was troubled because, just on the camp’s fringe, there sat a pile of bone scraps. “Surely,” she thought, “something more can be done with these.”

Then it hit her.  “What if I were to take this bone, carve out two cubes and paint numbers on each side from one to six?”  That idea remained dormant for two centuries since the witless princess couldn’t count past “one”.

Two hundred years later, Princess Wanna Gamble – a direct descendant of Run Amok – came along.  One day she too happened upon a scrap heap of buffalo bones and saw huge potential.  Having heard tales of her great, great, great grandmother’s failures, she thought, “Heck, maybe I should take a whack at this.”

The problem was, Little Wanna Gamble couldn’t count, either.  But did that stop her?  No way.  She proceeded to carve up two cubes.  “Hmm, these have ‘this many’ sides,” she noted while holding up six fingers.  “So, how about if I paint a dot here and keep adding one more per side until I have completed my task?!”

The rest is history, First, tribal games of dice. Next, back alley craps. And finally, Indian-owned casinos where people run amok every day to run down their savings accounts.

As for me, if I could only figure out what to do with this gushing black, slick, gooey liquid springing up from the ground in my backyard.  Right now, all it’s doing is killing my lawn and annoying the shit out of our neighbors…except for a few who claim they can heat their homes with the stuff.  Liars!