The Lost PowerPoint Slides (Prehistory 1.1: Thag Do Invention)

Human societies existed long before the written word, but luckily for us, not before PowerPoint technology. This makes it much easier for anthropologists, historians and people who enjoy humor to understand how humans developed as a species — from a sort of limited ape with no concept of how to style facial hair or take to the high seas and become a pirate, to the fully bearded, eye-patch wearing civilization we are all familiar with today.

Roughly speaking, human prehistory is divided into three ages: The Stone Age, The Bronze Age, and The Iron Age (although amongst golfers this is known as The Difficult Short Game Age).

1. The Stone Age — Thag Do Invention!

The Paleolithic

In a similar fashion, The Stone Age is usually subdivided into three eras — the Paleolithic, the Esoteric and the Neolithic. Some paleontologists call the Esoteric the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age; like all middle children it is usually overlooked, but it was nevertheless the period after the Paleolithic and before the Neolithic.

The Paleolithic Age, or literally Old Age of the Stone, is the period we usually now associate with Disco, but actually predates the Seventies by up to a million years. (Though hairy chests were fashionable in both eras.)

In the Paleolithic, early humans were hominids we now call Homo erectus, and had few tools (apart from PowerPoint). In addition to inventing tools, these primitive ancestors worked hard to evolve into the species we are today, not only because their lives were unpleasant, dangerous, and filled with nasty smells, but also because they couldn’t stand it when other animals made fun of their name.

The first major achievement of Homo erectus (stop that) was stone tools. At first, the tools they used were really no more than rocks they found lying around the mosh pit (few paleontologists are willing to admit that Homo erectus were committed slam dancers), but soon they discovered that rock could be shaped.

Homo erectus continued in this upright fashion for some time, slowly improving their “whacking” technique until they could fashion all kinds of tools — stone axes, knives and eventually arrow points. They became proficient hunters, but even with sharp “things” they found eating raw meat a major challenge to their erectness. (It’s tough to stand up straight when you’re experiencing abdominal cramping.)

Luckily, the precocious great-great-great-great-great-great-(imagine 22850 more “greats” in this phrase) grandson of Ahk-ahk, Unk-ook, made a major discovery:

Yes, being eaten by lions and other predators was a constant problem in early human society, and
so, a method for dealing with the challenge was implemented, and it had some side benefits:

Next: Clothes, Art & The Advent of the Uni-Brow

Also appearing at humor-blogs.com and alltop.