Day 1927: Missing Links

Thursday:


Today we learned that scientists have dug up some bones that they think is the last missing link in the family tree of HUMAN BEINGS. This is jolly good news as maybe it will stop the CREATIONIST TWITS from talking about the missing link as though it proved that people were not descended from monkeys.

Of course, the really interesting thing is that there is not really any such things as “missing links” because this assumes that you have one species and then you have the next and they are completely separate. This is often expressed as “which came first, the CHICKEN or the DINOSAUR EGG?”

But REALLY each species sort of blurs into the next one. You can look at monkeys from a million years ago and easily say that they are from a different species to people. But if you took someone from now in a time machine back in time a thousand years, then you would expect that they could get out and happily get married to anyone from a thousand years ago (give or take having to learn ye olde Englyshe). Then if you took seomone from a thousand years ago back to two thousand years ago, you would also expect them to be able to get happily married to anyone that they met then. Then take someone from two thousand years ago and take them back to four thousand years ago… and so on and so on.

As you go further back, you would probably realise that the passengers that you are picking up and dropping off are getting a bit PRIMITIVE and probably a bit SMELLY. But they are still quite happily able to get together in a BIBLICAL sense with people from a thousand years earlier. In fact after you have done this about a hundred and fifty times, then the people you are ferrying in your time machine stop being modern human people (called homo sapiens by scientists or saps by The Tomorrow People) altogether!

But there is never a definite point where the species change, and never a point where the people from a thousand years later are “incompatible” even if you realise that YOU would be incompatible with your latest passenger… probably because they would rather eat the loo roll than use the toilet properly!

I guess what I’m actually saying that there ARE no missing links, and there NEVER WERE!