When The Cavemen Walked The Earth

There's a theory going around
In scientific circles
That the interbreeding
Of Homo Sapiens and the Neanderthals
May have taken place just four times
Four times
Four acts of sexual congress
Was all it took
To alter the human genome forever

But what gives me pause
Is knowing that
For such a thing to be possible
It would mean
That the entire worldwide population
Of humans at the time
Must have been so small
As to make our very existence today
Seem like an anomaly
An accident
A twist of fate
With no cosmic significance whatsoever
Like bird shit on the windshield
Or something sticky on the sole of your shoe
That small
That insignificant
And that ultimately unnecessary

It must have been a bleak and dreary life
For them all
Watching their children die in the snow
Die in the ice
Leaving them for the animals
When they could not be buried
But there must have been worse things
Than seeing your children
Eaten by animals
When the cavemen walked the earth

No wonder then
That the newly born human brain
Evolved a way to protect itself
From self destruction
From the madness of despair
That would surely
Have doomed us all

No wonder then
That it was necessary
To invent the afterlife
And to invent the gods
For who doesn't want to see their children again
When so many have died
And all about you
Is ruin and waste and brokenness
Broken lives
Broken hearts
Broken bodies
And broken everything
Everything was broken
Hope was all they had
I wonder about their eyes that way
I wonder about the secrets they possessed
The brokenness that they possessed
And I begin to understand

That the bleakness of reality
Is the madness that afflicts us all
It is the disease
For which there is no cure
No wonder then
That even children know how to pretend
Without being taught
No wonder then
That even cavemen
Looked to the sky and dreamed
When they walked the earth