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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