Racist Space Dudes and Cavemen

At the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey there is a famous section without dialogue called The Dawn Of Man.  There are a lot of pictures of dawn, and it's quite pretty scenery, and then the film moves in on characters that are supposed to be our ancestors, or us, metaphorically.  Prehistory ends when it's demonstrated that what separates man from beast is the use of a tool.

I suppose many self-deprecating humans feel that animals are quite wonderful and awe-inspiring, while men are tools or at least have one they came with, and some that they've made.

In Quest For Fire, a lot more ground is covered.

What separates man from animal?

The answer depends upon whatever criteria the questioner wants to consider.

I remember in third grade being told that man had opposable thumbs, and made tools and went to war.  The teacher said that we weren't the only ones with opposable thumbs and not the only ones that could use tools, but we were different, and we were human, because we actually made tools.  In her definition, she was including the idea that we're close to apes and chimps.  In body structure this is obvious, and should probably be mentioned to third graders.  However, it seems to me that a definition of a thing shouldn't include information about what is close to it.  If you can't draw the line; in my book, you don't have a definition.  Whoever made up that definition was trying to prove that people and chimps and apes are related, rather than actually answering the question.

Then I found out that chimps do go to war and they do make tools.

So much for that definition.


Milestones touted on the road to manhood include the use and/or control of fire, language and laughter; and then of course ideas of self-awareness, music and religion, and as displayed in Quest For Fire, sex while looking each other in the eye.

There is a different way that animals look at one another.  But they do it.  I have no idea how to define it. When a puppy looks in a mirror, he sees something that he doesn't know is himself.  But so does a baby.

In 2001, tapirs are contrasted with whatever ape/humanoid/chimp creatures those other things are supposed to be.  The youths are actual chimps and the adults are people in hairy suits.  It's easy to tell who's a tapir and who's more like a person, but it's still impossible for me, looking at The Dawn Of Man, to draw the line between people and animals.  I see tapirs and other animals, kind of like us.



In Quest For Fire, there are people in hairy suits also, but then there are people without hairy suits.  In the length of a movie we survey a probable 10 thousand years of innovation as if it took place among one group of our ancestors.  It's a good narrative but, it's once again not clear where the line is.

The point of these two movies is probably the same as whoever came up with the hypothesis my third grade teacher shared.  They're all trying to get us to see a sliding scale rather than a definition.  Everybody wants to point out how like animals we are.


I look at the animals at the beginning of 2001 and see them as animals.  I look at the main characters in Quest For Fire and see them as people.  The other creatures I see as less than human.  In Luc Besson's Lucy, I see one as a person and one as not.



According to Toynbee's A Study of History, edited by Somervell, p. 52, I am a xanthotrichous glaucopian dolichocephalic leucodermaticus some what do I know?  I'm going to resist the urge to see if I typed all those words right, but let me clear up the confusion by stating that whether or not the music I play is funky, I am a white boy.

I hate when people say that someone can't talk about something because they're not that thing.  So black people can talk about racism.  Duh.  Of course they can.  But so can anyone else.  The only requirement for talking about anything is the ability to speak.

Is that what separates us from every other animal?  The assignment of audible symbols to objects isn't only human.  And many humans can speak without using their vocal cords.  But the difference between our voices and animal voices is huge.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the languages in main use have been narrowed down to include white languages with Italian for a little spice and Japanese.  The whole world, presumably, understands either English, Dutch, French, Italian, Russian, or Japanese.  Apparently the cold war was on and Russia seemed formidable with Germany divided, and nobody wanted to mention the Chinese.  Why Spanish is missing I have no idea.

In 1969's Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun, the main European players include Bonn, and of course, the United States has to come to the rescue.  

I suppose the way one imagines the future is extremely attached to how one views oneself in the present.