Enigmatic Gallimaufry And The Fall Of Peking

One compiles, amid labors of life, a routine of refreshment and exertion. We keep things close by to assist our progress and keep our sanity intact under the terrible rule of our wisdom (Homo sapiens).  Parenthetically, H. sapiens --"Man The Wise"-- is what we call ourselves as a species. It comforts one from feeling reminded of someone one used to know who one was once.

One might, what with one thing and another and this being California, come to rely upon espresso and wine as aide-mémoires but, as suggested by the illustration above, gift serving-ware (from a caring offspring) and pharmaceutical treats find their ways into the ritual. Which brings us to Homo religiosus (Man the religious).

H. religiosus is a term I learned in 1970, while starting a family in the city of Chico and attending the strange college there.

My Religions prof, Chas. Winquist, was a great admirer of the historian of religion and philosopher, Mircea Eliade. They both used the term, H. religiosus, frequently, had beards and smoked pipes. Here is a picture of Mircea Eliade in his 60s or 70s:

Professor Winquist was only 32 years old at the time and looked much as Eliade must have before he was kidnapped and beaten up by an older version of himself. I have the same problem. For readers younger, fresher and more sanitary than I, it would be helpful to mention all professors smoked pipes in those days. Poor Winquist was often turned away and sent home when he forgot his --even though that reinforced his reputation for absent-mindedness, which was the other professorial requirement. In fact, his lectures were regularly punctuated by the need to throw a blazing trash can out the window after he'd tapped out his live dottle into it. To do this, one or another of us would have to stand up, which defines Homo erectus.

Smoking in school became, as one's diversions do, politically incorrect (un-pc), but that is as nothing compared to what political correctness did to poor Homo erectus. Our introduction to this early human came with the discovery of Peking Man, the first resident of Peking --who lived there some 250,000 years ago.

Peking Man occupied a cave on Dragon Bone Hill in the Fangshan District. The city that rose upon that site took its name directly from archaeological  notes transcribed from his prehistoric mailbox. The picture above is from his college yearbook. All we know about him is he was not a physician because medical school grad-photos were taken in x-ray. But they found fossil evidence that he was on the football team.

So, for a quarter million years, the city around his little cave paid homage to Peking Man. Then came Political Correctness. First the PC Movement changed China's chairman's name from Mao Tse-tung to Mao Zedong  (and liddle lamzy divey.A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?). Then they came up with Beijing and everybody in Peking, about 20 million people, had to pack up and move there at great inconvenience. No more Peking, only a poor caveman all alone on Dragon Bone Hill.

All movements go too far.