Of Figs and Fire

Thousands of years ago, there was a wild man who played naked in the mud all day to keep cool. One day a fig farmer from the city dressed in furs and leather came upon him and told him, "I made you from that mud". The wild man said, "No!?" The farmer taught him how to grow plants from the mud, which made the wild man think the farmer was right as life bloomed from the mud in a few days. But this was a trick to get the wild man to follow his commands. The farmer told the wild man to leave them be until he returned, and the wild man listened.

The farmer left and returned to show the wild man how to harvest the figs. After their work was done, the farmer showed the wild man fire and warned him not to use it and to fear its power. Before he left, the farmer asked him to name the animals he encountered while he was gone, and the wild man drew pictures in the mud with an animal rib he found in the forest so that he could remember them until the farmer returned. The mud dried in the sun, and the pictures could be removed and carried away from the former puddle.

When the farmer returned, he asked what animals the wild man had encountered. The wild man showed the farmer the pictures he had drawn and named them off for him. The farmer asked how he had done this, and the wild man showed him the rib and made more marks in the mud and told the farmer how they stayed that way when it was hot and dry.

The farmer asked for the rib and pictures and told him he would return with a gift at the next harvest. When the farmer returned, he was dressed much better and had a beautiful bride in tow, who was also wild and naked, and presented her to the wild man as his bride. This solved the wild man's loneliness.

One day while he was out finding more animals, another man that was clothed like the farmer entered their camp. Seeing the lone naked woman he quickly built a fire, offered her cooked meat and when he tried to take her with him, she pleaded that she wanted to stay with her husband. He showed her how to keep the fire going by burning wood.

The man saw some ungulates in the forest, and he tried to sneak up on them by crawling on his belly, but they were scared off by the wild man returning and the other man followed behind the herd hunting them.

When the wild man came upon his wife and the fire, he tried to tell her the fig farmer said it was bad. There was still some meat left cooking on a rock, and she made him eat it since it made her full and wanted the wild man to be full too. As the fire died, the wife told him to get more wood and the wild man did as he was told, and they were nice and warm for a while.

When the farmer returned, he barely recognized the place. The trees were all gone, even his fig trees. He found the wild man and his bride hovering over a small fire clad in clothes she had made by weaving the branches and leaves of his fig trees as her elders had done to make baskets.

The farmer asked what had happened, and the wild man told him about the snake of a man his wife encountered and how they needed the fire now because without it they were too cold.

Upset at the loss of his orchard and the loss of their wildness the farmer made a slave of the wild man and his bride, and he took them out of their forest paradise which had been lush and green but was now ash and brought them into the city, so they would survive.

There people were using clay tablets and styluses to record everything. And they used fire for everything from cooking to making pottery and holding back predators to seeing at night. They even used fire to dry mud to keep the records forever. Once there the wild man continued to draw and learned to write. He told his story and today some still claim to remember their names.

His sons were eventually sent out to find new things for the farmer to raise and sell and one brought him animals while the other brought him another plant. He was more impressed with the animals since he knew how to make more plants already and branded the son who brought the plants after he killed his own brother, and after being marked he fled back to the river valley in which he had found the other farmers. But that's another story entirely.

And that's probably more in tune with what really happened or just stories combined to remember our past. Either way this is the story of one of the first male slaves recording their own enslavement which only occurred because knowledge of fire was withheld, that unfortunately women were always considered slaves until just recently in our history when they were finally made equal, why most gods are really powerful humans we call lords who take what you make for their own, shows fire's potential danger and transformative capabilities upon our species through technology, why women always complain they are cold, why we cook food for the ones we love, shows how bad slavery can be on the next generation no matter how good it seems for the first generation and how hidden knowledge can lead to disaster, including the meaning of this story as taught by others.

Image thanks to:

https://www.craiyon.com/image/Xa7n1GzSSQ6lbG8Dayxwhw