New Evidence of Early Humans
Unearthed in Russia’s North
--The New York Times headline
Well. You’re fifteen-thousand years older than
we thought. While we haven’t found you per se,
today we discovered stone tools, which man
surely made, here by the River Usa:
a sharp rock edge held for chopping, its date
aligned with the four-foot mammoth tusk you
adorned with grooves. Still, we question what fate
you encountered when your artwork was through.
Did you kill, chop, chew, carve, and then move on?
Or spy a high mound to climb and cling to,
confiding to your mate, “We’ll call this home,”
just the way we apartment dwellers do?
We’ve found plenty wolf bones, no cave or tomb.
Which leads us to question just who ate whom?
Roger Armbrust
September 6, 2001
