The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar by Martin Windrow Read Free Book Online

proto-hominid
Australopithecus afarensis
(familiarly known as ‘Lucy’), emerged on to the savannah in the Horn of Africa at some time around 3.5 million years ago, the dawn-mother of the owls,
Protostrix
, had already been part of the fossil record in what is now North America for at least 50 million years.
Protostrix
had appeared during the Eocene era, long before the tectonic plates that underlie our continents had slid into their present positions. The last of the dinosaurs had died out some 15 million years before
Protostrix
laid down her imprint in the shale-mud, at a time when both the birds that had evolved from some of the smaller reptiles, and the small mammals that these birds preyed upon, were diversifying and spreading through the forests and grasslands that covered much of the planet.
    Unimaginable periods of time then passed while evolution carried out its infinitely slow series of branching experiments, filtering the genetic legacies of the flying hunters. By the Pleistocene period, ‘only’ some 3 million years ago, this process had produced something that was definitely a Tawny Owl.
Strix aluco
is one of about thirty of the most ancient species of the family
Strigidae
that are still recognizable today, among many more recent arrivals. That the Tawny Owl continued to survive the ceaseless process of competitive species-sorting argues that by 3 million years ago it had already adapted well to its environment, becoming the master of a particular niche of opportunity in the food chain. This, remember, was at a time when our own hairy, dwarfish ancestors were still coming to terms with walking on their back legs, and were still at least half a million years from discovering the potential benefits of deliberately banging rocks together.
    The exact sequence of relationships in mankind’s family tree remains a matter of debate, since a number of the trial-and-error sketches for a future human being that have been revealed by fossil finds seem to overlap in period rather than representing successive stages in the process. About a million years after Lucy, some 2.3 million years ago, a still ape-like creature called
Homo habilis
had a brain about half again the size of hers, and was definitely using stone tools. By 1.8 million years ago
Homo erectus
, the first undoubted member of our own lineage, was on the scene in eastern Africa – taller, straighter, less furry, and with a brain that continued to grow in size, slowly but steadily,over hundreds of thousands of years; the rock-banging was now getting more ambitious and sophisticated. At some unknown time a number of families of this upwardly mobile species migrated from Africa into the Middle East, and began their slow colonization of the rest of the planet.
    From about 800,000 years ago the enlargement of
Homo erectus
’s brain speeded up remarkably, presumably in response to the challenge of dramatic and repeated changes in climate and environment. By just 120,000 years ago (in evolutionary time, the blink of an eye), we –
Homo sapiens
– were jostling our way ahead of the competition to challenge the brawnier and equally large-brained
Homo neanderthalensis
, but it was a mere 28,000 years ago when the last Neanderthals disappeared from ice-bound Europe. (What gave us the edge may have been as simple as the bone needle: apparently we had it, so we could sew hides into warm clothing, but Neanderthals didn’t.) As a parting souvenir of interbreeding they bequeathed us about 4 per cent of our DNA, but they left us as the final champions in the long marathon of primate evolution. We now had a brain more than three times the size of Lucy’s, a truly upright stance, a skeleton evolved for long-distance running, strong opposable thumbs, and a gut that could cope with a wide variety of foodstuffs. Together these gave us such unparalleled adaptability that – though comparatively weak, and pathetically slow to leave our mothers and breed – we were able to