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News Reporting in the
Prehistoric Age
ANGRY MASTODON GOES BERSERK
 One minute
everything is normal. The hunters are about a 4-day trek
(as the crow flies) west of the villages along the forest
edge, tracking food for the winter. The group is led by the older, experienced men. Most of the guys are
equipped with freshly prepped spears and knives. A few
have what amounts to stone axes. Everyone is ready for
their assigned task in the kill.
They spot the
tracks of a large male mastodon moving south along the
foothills. And after following the tracks in and out of
dry canyons for nearly a day, they finally spot it.
Unfortunately for them, the big
male has had a recent run-in with a giant bear. One eye is no
longer functional, and one of the long, curly tusks is broken
about half way up. The wounds are just beginning to scab
as they start to heal, but the injured male is still more than a
little ill-tempered, unable to see all that well, and in
a lot of pain.
To make matters worse, two young men,
out for their first mastodon kill, decide to run ahead of the party,
eager to show their courage and strength. They are
foolishly confident that they can bring the beast down on
their own, and become famous around the winter campfires.
(Then as now, guys figured that more fame equals more girls and more stuff.)
Yelling loudly, the would-be heroes attacked.
The mastodon was unimpressed.
With a slight
toss of his head, the huge pachyderm catches one of the young
hunters in the gut with a tusk and throws him up onto the rocks nearby.
Then he turns to face the other man, trampling him into the
dirt before the
guy can even throw a spear.
Then
the real fun begins. The giant beast spots the rest of
the hunting party.
Nearly everyone is still standing about 40
yards away, on the trail that comes up from the river.
Giant trees and a thick brush grow on both sides of
the trail, walling them in. Yet as the mastodon charges,
men quickly leap aside anyway, disappearing into the thick growth,
willing to risk any injury that may come to avoid being trampled into
the rocky ground.
Your job, as
village recorder and story teller, is to witness all the
action in order to faithfully relay it later for the folks
back home. You must honor all the dead, regardless of how
foolishly they died. And you must declare the astonishing
bravery of all the men presently entangled in the briars or
clinging to drooping tree limbs.
Without a camera
or even so much as a pencil and paper, you must absorb the
entire event while running for your own life.
You must also remember not to run directly for the
villages, since the angry mastodon has now singled you out for the
chase.
Those were "the good ol' days" of
news reporting before writing and recorded history. Be thankful that you've
chosen this profession in the present age and not in that prehistoric
year of whatever-it-was BC.
See? Already the job of starting your own small newspaper
in a modern community seems
less daunting.
© Jim Sutton
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But Do I Really Qualify? |
