Because even chipped paint on a wall is proving to be a distraction. File this under “nonsense”, another entry for my “out there” category.

(click for the full sized image, 959 kb)

The Story:

A war that did not need to be fought. Everyone had land, everyone had food. Some wanted more, or feared they would lose the plenty that they already had. Fear set in, itself the prime cause of the war and all ensuing hatred.

The elders (shown on both sides of the screaming figure at the top of the image) far from being the ones to cool the heads of the teams of warriors (shown toward the bottom of each side), were actually the ones to fail to seek a compromise, and began to shout obscenities and threats at each other.

One lone man attempted to mediate (screaming red figure in the centre). He showed each side the peace they had been enjoying, and proved that neither side was planning any attack, for he had traveled and lived in both camps. Realizing his failure to even be heard, he began to scream long and loud with terror, gripped by imaginings of the horror that was to ensue, seeing a people he had known and loved face impending extermination. He was the first fatality, dying at his own hands.

Advisers to the elders (along the far left and right borders, toward the top), provided misleading information on the intentions of the other side, and secretly began to ready the warriors for attack. The warriors themselves may have been a different species of Australopithecus, and rarely hesitated to charge at an enemy with a club and crush their skulls. The most fearsome of all (shown on opposite sides towards the bottom center) were the dark, angry, smoldering-eyed, ravenous, jaguar-ape men who, far from needing to be commanded to go to war, instead always needed to be violently restrained in cages made of tree branches, or sealed inside caves. These ate their enemies. In times of famine, they would feast on their bones.

Every conflict since then has been a rerun: this was the first original war, the one to show all succeeding generations their end. It was fought around the shores of what is today known as Lake Turkana in East Africa.

(This story is “true”, as recorded on a balcony in Montreal and revealed by chipped paint.)