The Last Word

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The first word, I like to think, was “Ouch.” Some cave man, trying to knock a stone into better shape with another stone, slipped, hit his thumb – and there you are. Language.

I have an affection for these useless and unverifiable facts. Take the first dog. He, I feel sure, was an unusually clever but cowardly wolf, who managed to terrorise early man into throwing him a scrap. Early man himself was a terrible coward. Man and wolf discovered that they could hunt together, in their cowardly fashion, and there you are again. ‘Domesticated animals.’

I admit that I was lax during the first few thousand years. By the time I realised that Man needed closer supervision, many of the crucial events had already taken place. I was then a young – well, let us say a young fallen angel. Had I been older and more experienced, history would have turned out very differently.

There was that time when I happened across a young Egyptian and his wife sitting on a stone near the bank of the Nile. They looked glum; the water was rising. A hungry jackal was not far away, and it crossed my mind that if I distracted the young people’s attention for a few minutes, the jackal might surprise them.

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