I kept six honest serving men, They taught me all I knew, Their names were What and When and How, And Where and Why and Who...
Rudyard Kipling* Two days earlier the fog had seeped into the valley as a cloud that had never learned to fly.
It had come slowly in, thickening as it came.
It permeated and chilled everything it touched.
It first filled the valley below, then worked its way up the walls of the adjoining hills.
Millions of years later there would be the means of measuring the cold - and in the summer the heat, but in this age that was not to be.
The man, who otherwise wore bare skins, was now wrapped in a heavy fur, skin-side out to trap his body heat.
He stood at the entrance to the cave his small family shared with his parents, but his father had entered the long sleep and was no longer there.
The man himself, had seen many seasons, and was skilled in hunting for his woman and the two small creatures she had brought him.
With a full stomach and the fur to keep him warm, he stood beyond the cooking fire and thought about the world in which he lived.
He had seen the bright star rise and fall each day, and he had noted that when the cold time came the sun was often out of sight during much of the day behind the mountain, while the light still shone on the hills even when it did not light the bottom of the valley.
He knew that during the warm time, the bright star traveled further toward the far hill during its time of brightness and filled even the bottom of the valley with its glow.
He knew he should not look at the bright star as it burned his eyes.
Besides the rise and fall of the bright star every day, he had felt earthquakes and hail storms, and the blast to his chest when the thunder was close, and he had been stunned and momentarily blinded by the flash of lightning as it lit the entire night sky.
He had witnessed the frightening winds that came sometimes either with the snow or in the dry heat.
This was a time of little knowledge, and the man had no spoken language to help him explain that which he saw.
Four of the words of the poem were words of science and would not be available to man (even in concept form) for almost two million years, but two words in thought form, the man did have; What and Who.
Each event of nature was clearly the what, leaving only one concept left to the man - who.
Who caused the thunder.
Who caused the death.
Who caused the bright star to rise each morning.
Who were the super beings that were responsible for all of these frightening events of the world.
With the advent of spoken language, man named the super beings gods, and far later, when societies formed, in order to organize the concept of the thousands of gods that had been named, the necessary action was to select one God over all the others.
The Jews were the first to finalize a belief in one God around the year 70 A.
D.
The Christians battled until even after the Council of Nicea (325 A.
D.
) to settle on one God around 385 A.
D.
, and the Muslims late in the eighth century.
These were not easy journeys, and the man at the entrance to the cave could not have envisioned what had been wrought.
* First four of sixteen lines from The Elephants Child by Rudyard Kipling - 1902.
There are several arrangements of the order of the words available, but none of them change the meaning.