Recently I found myself reflecting on the campfire-lit days in the Caves of Lascaux, contemplating the remarkable paintings on the walls, which, once upon a time, helped conjure up courage, a sense of place among a small, huddled group described best not as Cro-Magnon nor Neanderthals, but as knee-knocking, Nervous Nellie Man, whose odds of surviving more than a generation or two weren't good.

In comparison to the physical development of the rest of the animal world our tender babes are cast out to the cold, cruel wilds without, in the midst of an ice age, bare minimum benefit of naturally occurring underwear, much less over-wear, or any other survival-enhancing accouterment like sharp claws and incisors that might help make life easier to lay claim to. Compound this by being bipedal, galumphing wonders, that by virtue of having only two legs, rendered them when out on the ice fields with hungry dire wolves at their heels, barely oomph enough to make tracks between themselves and those desiring wolves.

All while with flint having barely been discovered and the bow and arrow a ways out into the future, that if, by happenstance, the camp fire went out, needing to be rebuilt right quick, lest some old sabertooth tiger come prowling around sniffing out a meal. That very thought would make for fumbling hands.

At this point, anthropologically, man might be considered fire-starting "squeaks," or precursor journeymen.

On balance, mankind was tottering on the razor's edge.

For in the process of adaptation to the surrounding world, man was at an extraordinarily novel stage of proto-cultural fumbling and groping. Contrast that, say, with the natural ability of a beaver building a dam or a gopher digging a hole or a robin taking flight. In fact, man, not at all being a natural, but relying on trial and error and what constituted emerging wits and pure breath-gulping gumption was, as a survival scheme, what might be described as a journey.

Hence, journeyman.

With two remarkably dexterous hands with prehensile thumbs to poke around and fiddle with his surroundings and with the will and capacity, via the school of hard knocks, to learn, to incorporate experience into general knowledge to be latter drawn on was, indeed, quite different than anything hitherto found behaviorally in nature and was key to man getting a leg up on the cold cruel world.

The one huge step in keeping ahead of the lions and tigers and bears and also in keeping warm was mastering fire, by enabling man to wield what, instinctively, to all other creatures was a terrifying power.

To think that from knee-knocking Nervous Nellie Man attempting to get a handle on the complexities and wonders around him by drawing on the walls of the Caves of Lascaux depictions of the natural realm, as if to capture its power, to — now — man having gotten more than a handle on the complexities and wonders around him having, certainly, amplified on his fire-wielding feat, wielding, today, laser bolts and weapon systems commensurable to powers once hurled around by the fabled gods of yore, as if from tykes to titans or Superman or some sort of a super-duper, whooper-upper power we've become.

We've, indeed, become the major force operating on this little old world, haven't we? Or am I missing something?

Thinking about this, from Nervous Nellie Man to Superman, in possession of unparalleled power, alas, the lesson of Adam and Eve does loom in relief.

Tim O'Leary describes himself as "a longtime Homer navel-contemplator type, whose informative years were spent across the fence."