The Manner of Primitive Man

Enough with the quibbling [in a past issue of AIR?] about whether our ancestors would have suffered higher mortality rates from having mechanical 24-hour clocks at their disposal or from having electronic 24-hour clocks. We will never know for certain, will we? My position on this argument was summed up, long before my birth, in the poem “Ballade of Primitive Man” by the Scotsman Andrew Lang, who died in 1912, some years after he wrote the poem. I enclose a photograph of Lang, which was made at some point during his lifetime. Lang wrote:

He worshipp’d the rain and the breeze, He worshipp’d the river that flows, And the Dawn, and the Moon, and the trees, And bogies, and serpents, and crows; He buried his dead with their toes Tucked-up, an original plan, Till their knees came right under their nose, ‘Twas the manner of Primitive Man.

Dr. Devindra Maas, Ancud, Chile