One of the many physical attributes that distinguish Man from the rest of the beasts is the miraculous opposable thumb. This extraordinary piece of evolutionary engineering allows Man to grasp an object with far greater force, and then wield that object with infinitely greater precision than that which would be possible without it.With the arrival of this magnificent appendage Man was suddenly able to hold objects such as a tree branch firmly in his hand and get started on the job of hitting other animals over the head with it. Animals that until then had a predatorial advantage over Man, by virtue of their superior strength or bite capability, were now firmly on the menu because Man, armed with his opposable thumb and high-tech killing stick was now able to do harm from a safe distance.
All very informative…but do I have a point ??
Well as a matter of fact I do.
Given a survey I’ve just read which stated that the average length of time it takes a young male surfing the internet for the first occasion to navigate onto a porno site is around nine minutes, I would suggest that even with his not so highly-developed cave-brain, it probably took Man, with his new-fangled opposable thumb, around the same length of time to put down the killing stick…grab his doodle and play with it. Of course we have no idea who the first male human to conceive of it was, but in deference to his legacy to Man, let’s call him The Man.
For he certainly was all of that.
Along with the discovery that pig meat tasted better when you put it in the fire for a while, the idea that you could use your opposable thumb to hold your pee-pee against the palm of your hairy hand and apply modest friction must surely rank as one of Man’s happiest moments.
Until then Man’s only chance of getting his prehistoric rocks off would have come by way of reproductive necessity and involved the decidedly unappealing prospect of poking his hairy cave-chick in her abundant, unwashed whiskers, however the addition of the ‘Digitatus Magicus’ must have heralded the dawn of a new age; The Leisure Era.
What followed was surely the most rapid and vigorous development of consciousness in human history??
Within minutes of inventing auto-eroticism, The Man would have tapped into his previously unused prefrontal cortex and had his first abstract thought; most likely a lesbian fantasy.
Perhaps a minute later The Man’s hitherto irrelevant vocal chords would have unseized themselves and sputtered to life with the first word ever spoken; ‘Ooooooooh’. This would have been followed almost immediately by the creation of God, which was probably also the second word ever spoken, to act as both a focal entity for giving thanks to.…and as an unseen mate to whom The Man could forevermore explain how good this new activity felt.
And if anyone needs further proof of the evolutionary importance of Man’s ability to toss his own salad then consider the dimensions of the human arm. It's just the right length to reach the wing-wang. Notice that Nature did not give Man little Tyrannosaurus Rex arms with which to simply play with his breasts, nor did it equip him with King Kong arms to tickle the backs of his knees. Nope, it gave Man arms that are perfectly proprtional for the job of knocking his own top off.
Though I often wonder why Nature did not smile on Woman too, and instead of giving her opposable thumbs, simply fuse her fingers together...
