And now—the threshold.
In the Rift Valley
Of eastern Africa, where the earth itself
Was pulling apart, where the geologic tally
Of tectonic force had split the shelf
Of the continent and filled the crack
With lakes and volcanoes and the ash
That preserved the bones and the track
Of every creature's footprint in the flash
Of volcanic eruption and erosion—
Here, in the Pliocene's cooling world,
The grassland's ever-widening corrosion
Of the forest's edge, the unfurled
And open savanna stretching east
To the Indian Ocean's coast—
The upright ape emerged. The beast
Who would become the host
Of consciousness.
Australos—the southern ape—
Walked upright. Not as an experiment,
Not as an occasional landscape
Of posture—but as the permanent
And committed mode of locomotion:
The pelvis broad and bowl-shaped for the weight
Of the upright torso, the devotion
Of the spine's S-curve to the freight
Of the vertical body, the foot's arch
That stored and released the energy
Of each step like a spring—the march
Of the bipedal primate, the synergy
Of anatomy committed to the ground.
Why stand? The savanna demanded hands.
The upright body freed the hand from the bound
Of locomotion—and the savannas' lands
Required carrying: the food found here
Must be carried there, to the home base
Where the young and the nursing mother's dear
And vulnerable lives occupied the space
Of the camp—and the hand that carried food
Was the hand that could also carry
A stone, a stick, a piece of wood—
The tool, the extraordinary
Extension of the body's reach.
Australos made tools—the Oldowan
Technology, the simplest that could teach
The hand a new art: the wan
And unremarkable chopper, a cobble
Struck against another to produce
A sharp edge—the hobble
And basic stone that could reduce
A carcass to its edible parts,
That could scrape the marrow-bone,
That could cut the hide—the arts
Of the butcher written in the stone
Of the earliest human industry.
And the brain grew. Not fast—
The australopithecine's capacity
Was four hundred cubic centimeters, the past
Of the chimpanzee's range—but the trend
Was upward: Homo habilis,
The "handy one," would extend
The cranium to six hundred's analysis
Of a brain that was beginning to be human.
And fire. Not yet mastered—not yet controlled—
But the natural fire of the acumen
Of the lightning-struck savanna, the bold
And opportunistic use of the wildfire's
Aftermath: the cooked tuber in the ashes,
The warmth of the embers, the desires
Of the cold night answered by the flashes
Of the brushfire's lingering heat—
The australopithecine did not make fire
But found it, and found it sweet
And useful, and the pyre
Of the accidental flame was the first
Draft of the hearth that would become
The center of the human universe—
The fire around which the drum
And the story and the song would gather.
And the group—Australos was social
In a way that the chimpanzee's drather
Had only hinted at: the total
Cooperation of the band, the sharing
Of the meat, the collective defense
Against the leopard, the caring
For the injured, the immense
And unprecedented investment
In the young—for the human child
Was born helpless, the assessment
Of nature's accountant: the wild
And enormous brain required a skull
So large that the birth canal
Could barely accommodate the full
And growing head—and the banal
And practical solution was this:
Be born early, be born helpless,
Be born needing years of the kiss
And the feeding and the selfless
Care of the group—and in that helplessness
The longest childhood in the animal kingdom
Was born, and in that childhood's receptiveness
The learning—the freedom
And the burden of the cultural inheritance
That no gene carries, that only teaching
And imitation and the patience
Of the elder's reaching
Hand can give.
This is the threshold.
Not yet human—not yet speaking, not yet
Painting on the cave wall's manifold
Surface, not yet counting, not yet
Asking why the stars are there—
But standing upright on the Rift Valley's
Ancient ground, with tools, with the stare
Of the forward-facing eyes, the rallies
Of the social group, the beginning
Of the longest childhood, the freed
And grasping hand—the winning
And the losing and the need
Of the creature who would become us.
Honor the threshold—Australos,
The southern ape who walked the nonplus
And open savanna, the pathos
And the glory of the almost-human:
The one who stood up and looked out
Across the grassland and the acumen
Of whose gaze held nothing but the doubt
And the hunger and the need to carry
Food and tool and child to the camp—
And did not know that the ordinary
Act of walking upright was the stamp
Of the future's seal upon the present:
That from this body, this grasping hand,
This helpless infant, this pleasant
And social group upon the land,
Would come the language and the fire
And the city and the ship and the song
And the question—the one desire
That separates us from the long
And patient chain of the living:
The desire to know what we are,
And where we came from, and the giving
Of a name to every star.
But that is the next age's telling.
For now, the ape stands upright in the grass,
And the future is swelling,
And the threshold has been passed.