Origin stories are all around us, and we like them.
Even if we don’t believe them. Bitten by a radioactive spider? Yeah, sure. As Brian Cronin posts in The Greatest Superhero Origins of All Time, there’s a certain commonality to origin stories:
one of the trademarks of a great Marvel Silver Age origin is that the protagonists do something selfish and/or stupid before they learn from their experience and become heroes
by Brian Cronin – on Nov 14, 2016
Also in common? Our interest in origin stories in general. We like to know how things happened, why they happened.
But curiosity is not always our best friend. We know this, because a good headline gets us every time. For example, something like: “My cat ate my face off because I’m so delicious and now I’m a beautiful model making a seven-figure income” — no don’t go search that on the internet; I made it up. And if you do find it on the internet, for goodness sake don’t tell me. That’s not the kind of cat picture I’d like to see.
But forget superheros and clickbait. Consider food.
Who first ate termites? Chimpanzees? Mankind? Did we learn how from them or did they copy from us? We don’t know, but even if they weren’t first, prehistoric hominids–Australopithicus robustus and/or Homo Sapiens–seem to have chowed down.
Or consider lobsters. The word lobster is a corrupted form of the Latin word for locust or grasshopper. Lobsters do look like huge insects, crawling around with their many legs. They were apparently so plentiful in the shallower places along the North American Atlantic coast that European settlers reported lobsters washed ashore in great numbers, and the Native Americans ate them, used them as bait, and used them to fertilize crops.
So is it just being practical to eat what’s at hand? Sort of the historical form of today’s Eat Local philosophy?
I don’t know how long humans have been eating termites, but if the current beliefs are correct, termites may have been on the menu for 1-2 million years.
And lobster (and crab, and shrimp) eating goes back to the stone age, at least, some 10,000 years ago. We know because archeologists have found evidence of the crustaceans’ shells in human garbage piles.
I find it hard to believe someone thought, hey I could eat that thing that just washed ashore even though it’s clicking its pincers at me. I tend to think that first person must have been terribly hungry.
On the other hand, necessity is the mother of invention.
Which brings us to coffee. Not so much a necessity. So what is coffee’s origin story? The most well-known story involves an Ethiopian goatherder named Kaldi.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I am skeptical of any story that seems to be as much legend as truth, and that also claims to know the name of the person who first invented a foodstuff.
I mean, we aren’t talking about Caesar Salad, here. And even Caesar Salad, which became popular in California in the 1920s, doesn’t have a consistent origin story.
The story goes that Kaldi, a goat herder, variously depicted as somewhere in age between a twelve-year old and a teenager, saw his goats eating cherries from a tree and then, when the goats got all frisky, he decided to eat some too. This makes Kaldi frisky.
He tells a passing monk, who thinks this will keep him awake for prayers. The monk decides to dry the cherries and boil them to make a tea.
In some versions the monk throws the coffee into the fire, or drops it into the fire, or the goats kick the cherries into the fire. We then find out that roasting coffee is a good idea, and that it makes a better drink that way.
It’s a little unbelievable.
For one thing, we are given Kaldi’s name, but not the monk’s. The monk is the person who makes it possible to spread the consumption of coffee. And maybe for the monk, coffee became a necessity.
I sense a cover-up. Kaldi (if that was really his name) spent a lot of time out there alone, watching the goats. What was he doing all that time? Daydreaming? Hanging out by the fire? Making tea with whatever he had at hand? Experimenting with what he could eat or drink or brew or maybe smoke? Getting a little sun-stroked?
Maybe he just thought, hey, I could boil those berries. I’m out of food anyway. I could just blame the goats. You see, I saw the goats dancing…no, ma, it wasn’t a mirage…
How about the person who picked up the first lobster and brought it to the home campfire? How did that go? Yep, saw these wash ashore, and figured we’d eat them. No, I wasn’t smoking anything today, dear. How could you ask that? I just saw some wolves eating them and I figured whatever was good enough for the wolves was good enough for us…
Or the termites? I’m so full, you’ve gotta check out this place I found. You can eat meat right out of the ground!
I’m thinking that perhaps the monks didn’t want to own up, in case their discovery didn’t catch on. Let’s blame the goat herder. Kaldi did it. We just put it to spiritual use.
It all makes questions like whether or not to put anchovies in Caesar Salad dressing seem pretty tame by comparison.
But that’s just food. I run into things all the time that I find hard to believe the explanation of.
For instance, we lived several years in Northern Texas. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why people decided to settle there. I mean, it’s pretty, from about May to November, when by the way it doesn’t rain, and you can see about fifty miles in every direction, sure. I loved the open spaces, the sense of horizon reaching forever. But I lived there in a modern home. With a modern car. And other modern accoutrements.
I can understand hunter-gatherers there. Maybe. Passing through. Following bison or something. On their way to, say, someplace with water. Maybe headed to Southeastern Texas, where there’s plenty of humidity and a coastline to fish.
But Northern Texas, the dry part? The ground gets so dry, if you’re not careful, it actually cracks your foundation. And they didn’t have air conditioning unless you count how “cool” it felt to hang out in a sod house. Which is basically like saying, hey baby, I dug us a big grave and put a lid over it. Come see how nice this feels.
I’ve long thought that what happened was that people were, in fact, on their way to somewhere else. And it was just too hot to go any further. Honey, I ‘m done. Every day we travel is hotter than the last. Where are you taking me? The end of life as we know it? Sorry, I will just stop here before it gets any hotter and we burst into flames.
So now you’ve heard the rant gloss that goes before the poem…the poem where, in fine historical tradition, I blame Kaldi…
Unbelievable Origin
Because they both made termite-gathering tools,
we can’t know who first ate them: ancient human or ancient chimp.
Or what native group first learned to like the locust of the sea,
the lobsters that washed ashore readily in Plymouth Colony.
Desperation? Creativity? Or a certain pragmatic frugality
using best what’s most at hand.
Did Kaldi really follow the example of his goats? Or was he just
bored / drunk / stoned and decided to toast some seeds?
Yeah, yeah, I followed my goats,
and they led me to Texas
and they told me to build a house
on a slab foundation
and water it when the ground around it cracks.
Water the foundation, not the house.
Good goats.
If you enjoyed Unbelievable Origin
You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.
Missed a poem of the week? Links to prior weeks are on this page.
