Man – the Last 10,000 Years

The year two thousand oh-nine is an auspicious one, and accordingly it seems fitting that it should be chosen as the year in which to review man’s accomplishments of the past ten millennia. These twelve months will indeed be momentous, featuring nothing less than the inauguration of America’s first black President, the inauguration of America's first Christian President that half the nation thinks is Muslim, and the publication of a seminal history of the past ten thousand years.

Let us then join hands in a creepy born-again Christian way, and journey back…

Ca. 8,000 BCE – Significant quantities of ice make domesticating animals and crops difficult. Man takes succor from promise of imminent global warming and delights in mass extinctions as fauna fails to adapt to warmer climes. Even at this early stage, man is such a bastard.

Ca. 7,400 BCE - Man successfully kills off his foe, the wooly mammoth. The role of largest hairy land mammal is assumed by primitive Armenians.

Ca. 7,000 BCE – Man domesticates plants and animals thereby developing agriculture. His invention of the tractor and narrow country lanes infuriates non-farming man for the rest of human history.

Ca. 6,311 BCE – Invention of written language makes early caveman think history is accelerating. Throg of Lower Boulderia first coins ‘synergy’ and ‘paradigm shift’. Man nostalgic for wooly mammoth.

5,081 BCE – Man invents wheel.

5,080 BCE – Man invents intellectual property law. Suicide invented by creator of wheel.

Ca. 2,500 BCE – Pyramids of Giza represent great achievement in architecture by early man until later man discovers they were constructed by digging away the desert around them.

Ca. 1,000 BCE – Book of Genesis written, demonstrating man has evolved sufficient intelligence to draw entirely the wrong conclusion as to his origins.

490 BCE – Athenian Pheidippides runs 26 miles to Athens after Battle of Marathon to announce Greek victory over Persia and dies on the spot. Recreational runners confident the 150 miles he ran over the previous two days were more likely to have killed him.

216 BCE - Hannibal of Carthage leads army across Alps with aid of elephants to crush Roman forces at Cannae. Romans in particular miss the wooly mammoth.

0 – ‘BCE’ becomes ‘BC’ for the next 2,000 years or so, until it is finally reunited with ‘E’, to the great jubilation of some.

Ca. 400 – St. Augustine of Hippo becomes pre-eminent scholar in Christendom after divining the doctrine of Original Sin out of what looked like thin air to everyone else, but which he guaranteed was actually divine revelation. He goes on to discover the vagina, but is largely unimpressed.

1000 – Inhabitants of the developed world run riot as Y1K bug strikes, wiping out crops and resetting sundials. The Jews are blamed.

1099 – Europe introduces itself to Muslimdom via 'faith enforcement action'. Eight crusades later and Vatican abandons policy of armed antagonism with hastily scrawled note reading ‘just kidding!’

1220s – Genghis Khan subdues all of Asia before his empire quickly collapses back into Mongolian obscurity, rivaling only Alexander the Great and his native Macedonia for anti-climatic conquests.

1405 – Chinese navigator Zheng He comprehensively sails the Indian Ocean all the way to Africa. He does this without testicles.

Ca. 1450 – Man invents early firearms hundreds of years after Chinese man invents gunpowder to eventual dismay of the latter. Fashionistas rue the decline of shiny suits of armor. Military chic eventually makes a return in the 20th Century when Michigan Militia begins selling range of camouflage maternity wear.

1453 – Muslimdom introduces itself to Europe, which belatedly discovers the rest of the world does not share its sense of humor.

1506 – Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa and his lack of talent is mistaken for artistic genius when he fails to paint a woman-like woman. Critics debate the issue for nearly five centuries until a wildly popular novel convinces them never to mention it again. Ever.

1513 – Italian political theorist and self-help guru Machiavelli writes early piece of political satire. He spends the rest of his career wishing he hadn’t.

1536 – King Henry VIII reads St. Augustine’s opinion on vaginas and makes himself an unpleasant husband to several women.

1642 – English man throws off the shackles of monarchy in the English Civil War.

1660 – English man changes his mind, apologizes, and promises never to do it again.

1687 – Man discovers gravity. Subsequent generations think ‘no fucking kidding.’

1744 – Historians discover the past tense. They did not think much of it.

1789 – French Revolution sees man willing to die for liberté, equalité, fraternité and bestialité. Rest of Europe convinced it’s ‘just a phase’ from nation famous for fops and dandies. Rest of Europe soon conquered by Napoleon. French jokes invented by conquered rest of Europe in retaliation.

1825 – John Quincy Adams voted United States’ 6th President setting unfortunate precedent of electing former Presidents’ sons to nation’s highest office.

1860 – Forced labor enthusiasts naively instigate war against industrialized countrymen and lose, despite fetching uniforms and charming accents.

1920 –  Vaginas enter mainstream when they entitle certain persons to vote in the United States.

1937 – Man thinks he has invented the hobbit. He would later prove incorrect, and learn a valuable lesson in hubris in the process.

1939 – Man empowered by goofy moustache to conquer much of Europe.

1941 – United States collectively realizes ‘oh yeah, there’s a war on…’

1945 – Man betrayed by goofy moustache.

1973 – ‘Golden Age’ of pornography determines Augustine to be wrong in his estimation of the vagina. Found by critics to be ‘really, really awesome’.

1984 – Apple Computers releases the landmark Macintosh personal computer. Sales of the device soar thanks to wide range of accessories, including mice, printers and the wildly popular slouch.

1993 – Jurassic Park proves cinema has plateaued, with all subsequently released films being unoriginally derivative: King Kong is Jurassic Park with a giant ape; The Day After Tomorrow is Jurassic Park with  a terrible plot; The Shawshank Redemption is Jurassic Park with a prison.

1995 – Starbucks moves coffee into the mainstream and deceives 1-in-3 customers into thinking he can be a successful writer.

2001 – Wikipedia launches and adds exciting new element of uncertainty to learning process. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.^[28]

2004 – Google becomes first search engine to eponymously verb itself.

2006 – Publication of The God Delusion causes ripples in the literate world. Man accused of making himself god by theists, and temporarily disappears from existence when atheists profess lack of belief in him.

2008 – First black man voted President of United States only 13 years after first black man votes. Leaders of undeveloped, corrupt African nations wonder what the big deal is.

2009 – Man wonders how history can be accelerating when later centuries take much longer to read through. Man hopes to breed wooly mammoth from reonstructed DNA, but scientists skeptical it will be much more than Jurassic Park with M. primigenius.