Familiar?

     Apes were to become men, in the inscrutable wisdom of nature . . .Down on the grass by a streamside, one of those apes with inquisitive fingers turned over a stone and hefted it vaguely.  The group clucked together in a throaty tongue and moved off through the tall grass foraging for seeds and insects.  The one still held, sniffed, and hefted the stone he had found.  He liked the feel of it in his fingers.  The attack on the animal world was about to begin.
     If one could run the story of that first human group like a speeded-up motion picture through a million years of time, one might see the stone in the hand change to the flint ax and the torch.  

-- Loren Eiseley --  "How Flowers Changed the World"
first published in The Immense Journey, 1957

The Star Thrower




Does this sound familiar?


And from the back cover of The Star Thrower:

"The book will be read and cherished in the year 2001. It will go to the MOON and MARS with future generations.  Loren Eiseley's work changed my life.  -- Ray Bradbury --



Curious.   Why that year of all the years he could have picked?