The Appearance of Man

“Arbitrarily, for the exact date of man’s appearance will never be known, let us estimate that appearance at about one and a half million years ago. Then let us propose a comparison of mankind’s history with a calendar year in which one ‘day’ equals four thousand years of human history.

In this scheme January First would witness the appearance of our Homo habilis ancestors. Homo habilis could walk erect and use the most primitive tools. Hunting in bands, he probably could not talk as we do, though he undoubtedly had some method of communication. Speech, as we know it today, evolved very gradually during the first three months of our year. Man’s evolutionary progress was at best tedious and halting: fire first for protection from the cold and wild animals, and only much later for cooking; tools chipped from stone; the skills of hunting; the slow concentration and evolutions of the cerebral cortex. Summer came and went, and the fall was two-thirds through its course when Neanderthal man finally appeared around November 1st. The first indications of a religious belief can be seen in the burial sites of the later neanderthaloids, around December 17th in our scheme.

By December 24th of our hypothetical year, all the nonsapiens or primitive forms of man had died out or been absorbed by the more progressive and modern Cromagon man. Agriculture began around December 28th and the whole of our historical era, the brief six to ten thousand years for which we have records, is nestled in the last two days of our year. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were born about 9am on December 31st, Christ at noon and Columbus about 9.30pm. The final hour of December 31st, from 11pm to midnight New Years Eve, embraces all of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” 
(The Appearance of Man by P. Teilhard de Chardin (New York: Harper, 1956 form the Preface written by Robert T Francoeur)

Reexamination

The tools of the mind become burdens when the environment which made them necessary no longer exists.

-          Henri Bergson

What you see is what you get!

What you see in other people is what you will get out of them!

~Rev. Frederick Eikerenkoetter  (Better known as Rev. Ike)