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conclusion would it have been reasonable for them to draw about the nature of humans as a species?
    Elaine . I'm afraid I can't begin to guess what you're getting at here.
    Daniel . It's safe to assume that these ancients were as knowledgeable about the creatures around them as we are — probably more so. For example, they must have known that birds hunt insects and build nests. What conclusion would it have been reasonable for them to draw about the nature of birds as a species?
    Elaine . I'm tempted to say that they would conclude that it's the nature of birds to hunt insects and build nests.
    Daniel . Of course. Birds had been doing that for as long as anyone knew. They must also have known that bees gather nectar and build hives. And what would they conclude from that?
    Elaine . That bees are nectar gatherers and hive builders.
    Daniel . That's what bees had been doing for as long as anyone knew. And what had humans been doing for as long as anyone knew?
    Elaine . Planting crops and building cities.
    Daniel . And from that what would they reasonably conclude about the nature of humans?
    Elaine . That they are agriculturalists and civilization builders.
    Daniel . To them, planting crops and building cities had to seem as innate to humans as gathering nectar and building hives is to bees.
    Elaine . Yes.
    Daniel . The idea that humans had come into being as tribal hunter-gatherers — planting no crops and building no cities for millions of years — would have seemed preposterous to them.
    Elaine . I'd have to think so.
    Daniel . Of course we can only conjecture that the Sumerians believed that Man was just a few thousand years old and had been born an agriculturalist and a civilization builder. But it's not conjecture that this story was still in place in our culture four thousand years later, and for centuries of years beyond that. It was the prevailing belief right through the eighteenth century that Man was just a few thousand years old and had been an agriculturalist and a civilization builder from birth.
    Elaine . Not quite from birth, but the very first human, Adam, became an agriculturalist.
    Daniel . Granted. But even in this biblical version of the story, there's no suggestion that the first agriculturalist had been preceded by fifteen or twenty thousand generations of hunter-gatherers.
    Elaine . Certainly not. We were agriculturalists from the very first generation — according to the biblical story.
    Daniel . Now at last we're poised to give our Martian anthropologist the answer to his first, overriding question. Current in our culture is this version of human history: Humanity is some three million years old, but nothing of consequence happened until we abandoned the hunting-gathering life and became agriculturalists and civilization builders. How did we end up with this story, prefaced by three million years in which nothing of consequence happened?
    Elaine . You're asking me to reconstruct it?
    Daniel . Give it a try.
    Elaine . Wow. Okay. During the nineteenth century new scientific discoveries made it untenable to think that life on earth was just a few thousand years old.
    Daniel . Archbishop Ussher's famous calculation, announced in 1654, that the human race was born in 4004 BC, became scientifically untenable. Or rather, to be safe, we can say that it became untenable to those who find scientific evidence more convincing than the belief structure on which Archbishop Ussher made his calculation.
    Elaine . Yes.
    Daniel . The result was that, among those who generally accepted the evidence of geology and paleobiology — and with it the emerging theory of evolution — the human story had to be revised. It was no longer going to be accepted that Man had been born an agriculturalist and civilization builder just a few thousand years ago.
    Elaine . No.
    Daniel . And so how was it revised?
    Elaine . It was revised to the present version: Humans were around for three million years as hunter-gatherers, but they