How the Fuck Did Humans Make it This Far?

Its early morning; the sun slowly appears over the horizon. Shimmers of light breakthrough; shadows creep and grow as the sun begins its ascent into the bluing sky. 

A damp, musty, stench emerges from a dark cavern. Trailing the stench, the silhouette of a hunched-over bi-pedal creature, clumsily proceeds forward. The creature's cloak dangles and drags behind it.  A small stumble; a slight crash into some unseen object elicits a deep moan of displeasure.  

As the creature ventures further into the brightening light, the details of its form grow sharper. Long and tangled hair stretches wildly in all directions; eyes hidden beneath a matted mesh of dirty blonde locks.

The creature steps into the full light of a mid-morning sun; its eyes squint and fight for adjustment as small flakes of eye-boogers tumble down and onto the floor. The creature's breath is hot; a coating of dried drool glistens upon the creature's chin.  

The creature's now-adjusted eye balls lock on; the onlooker's eye balls reply. A moment goes by.  

Suddenly the creature speaks.

"Can I watch cartoons?"

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This is a common picture painted for me by everyone that I know who has kids. And it is a picture of the world that I see pretty much everyday. Children are amazing; they are curious, employ logic, have a wonderful way with words, and are fairly resilient when it comes to falls, stumbles, and tumbles. But when I reflect upon my anthropological studies in college, and apply the knowledge from those studies to my life today, I cannot for the life of me figure the fuck out how we've managed to come so far as a species. And sure, mature, adult human beings have proven an uncanny ability to invent, create, motivate, and drive the human species toward the world that we have today, but, how the fuck did our children make it to adulthood way back in pre-history?

Sometimes I go deep into thought...

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It is the Ice Age.

In a dark cave, a cave man, a cave woman, and a cave baby live their lives. Lets say the cave baby has somehow made it to...30 months old - so a cave toddler - without being eaten by a Sabertoothed Tiger.

The cave toddler bolts around the cave; the cave toddler's mind is empty of all thought except for "how fast can I get from one end of the cave to the other?" With wild enthusiasm and with all caution thrown to the wind, the cave toddler yells "Mama, watch this!"

And with the speed of a Cave Cheetah, the cave toddler sprints. Then its little foot catches on a left over Wolly Mammoth bone that's been tossed onto the cave floor. The cave toddler tumbles to the dusty ground; her face smashes into the dirt. One of her flailing limbs strikes cave dad's only spear.  The spear falls and slams into cave mom's newly prepare bowl of gruel. The gruel goes flying.

There is nothing left to eat; the gruel is gone. Cave mom and cave dad were hopeful that this last meal would get them through until the end of the the inhospitable Ice Age winter; they were hopeful they wouldn't need to do the ole' "hunt and gather" thing again until the month's long blizzard was over.  

Cave toddler - with absolutely no thought of the peril she just put herself, her cave mom, and her cave dad in - jumps up from her trip and fall; a single eye is full of dirt. As she stands there rubbing the dirt out of her eye, she smiles and says "Oh my god, did you see me trip and fall? that was super-cool!"  She screams "parkour!" and continues her running, jumping, twirling, tripping, and falling all over the cave.

Cave mom and dad look at each other, they look at the blizzard raging outside the cave. The cave dad picks up his spear; the cave mom grabs her basket. They both adorn their coats of Giant Sloth pelt and leave the cave. The cave toddler sits there, just cave painting a silly Cave Bird on the cave wall. The cave toddler doesn't even look up as her cave mom and cave dad head out into the blizzard to find food, but the cave toddler does yell, "love you, bye bye!"

During their quest for food, cave dad gets eaten by a pack of Dire Wolves and cave mom falls off of a glacier.  

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You can't fuckin' tell me that this bullshit didn't happen to early man all the fuckin' time; I simply cannot be convinced that cave toddlers didn't constantly get their cave moms and cave dads killed. And without cave mom and cave dad, what did the cave toddler do? They can't change their own cave diapers; they can't milk their own cave cows to get cave cow milk. They surely couldn't have gone out of the cave by themselves to gather and hunt.

And without cave moms and cave dads, there are no more cave babies. And without those generations of cave babies, none of us would be here.  

And the most curious mind-fuck out there is the fact that today's children largely behave like their cave ancestors surely must have; they grunt and growl, and stumble from their bedrooms in the morning much like I would imagine a cave child did when leaving their cave.  

I mean, every time my kid sees a neighbor walking their dog in our neighborhood, she runs up to it and yells "I want to pet it!"  And this all happens whilst I'm yelling bullshit like:

"You need to ask first!" 

"Don't just run-up to the dog!"

"Watchout for cars!"

And the whole time she blissfully ignores me.  

I'm sure that a ridiculously large number of cave toddlers were lost when they were out on a hunt with cave dad, saw a Cave Bear and yelled "I want to pet it!" and then sprinted toward it whilst cave dad is yelling bullshit like:

"You can't pet the Cave Bear!"

"The Cave Bear will eat you!"

"Watchout for the heard of Wolly Mammoths!"

Something's not adding up here when it comes how we got here as a species...I don't know what it is, but there's some fuckin' bullshit here.