OH MR. BRYSON...

Here is the scene- The boys are playing in the front yard while I sit on the front porch in Grandpa Patton's rocking chair reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. He is discussing the archaeological site, Olorgesailie, and wondering why this place would exist for such a long time (from about 1.2 million years ago to 200,000 years ago), under such conditions (they carried the stone about six miles to the site), and why it would produce so many axes. Here is an excerpt from the book:

Various replications have shown that the axes were tricky and labor-intensive objects to make- even with practice, an axe would take hours to fashion- and yet, curiously, there were not particularly good at cutting or chopping or scraping or any of the other tasks to which they were presumably put. So we are left with the position that for a million years-far, far longer than our own species has even been in existence, much less engaged in continuous cooperative efforts- early people came in considerable numbers to this particular site to make extravagantly large numbers of tools that appear to have been rather curiously pointless.
And who were these people?...

So I took pictures of the boys that day and the last couple of weeks since. Just like the craftsmen at Olorgesailie, the boys are prolific!

and let me introduce the craftsmen

here is stick with a piece of glass as a spear point any good invention requires a lot of tape...
and collections.
like magnolia cones and squirrel nibbled pine cones
and cones taped to sticks
and rocks taped to sticks to make a balancing thingy
lets just pause and check out my groovy mom pants....

now back to the inventions.
the modified gardening tool with lots of tape.
made, of course, to collect cones...not throw at your brother.and when the inventions were complete, the didn't want to mess up the house...so they made a new table from chairs and a crib mattress. thanks guys for the help.
and then there are paper cup inventions
and dice in a box from the recycling inventions
and the Panera wind rocket I can put paper bags over my head, just not plastic ones, right? invention
and the old potato rodent feeder invention...for those Irish squirrels
and lots and lots of swings.

The one thing Mr. Bryson didn't count on was Moms. I think of all the times I have praised an invention that was totally useless and where that has lead us. But I guess they are not futile...the craftsmen have creatively solved many problems.

I just imagine a mom with a protruding brow praising a dull axe as I try to communicate which rolls of tape are off limits and demand nothing else be pulled from the trash.

at least we haven't made it here...yet.