Our noble brows are deep, our noses broad, our heads are long.
With frames of massive muscle, we are quick and very strong.
Besides our own we never knew another human form
until the strangers came, descending like a noisome swarm.
No beasts are they, but humans of their kind we’d never seen.
Their heads are child-like, round and domed; their frames are long and lean.
They peer from shallow eyes in formless faces, flat and thin,
but from each weak and narrow jaw there juts a pointed chin.
They’re watched in worried silence by the people of my den
for we have cause to fear the presence of these monster men.
Although we find their aspect disconcertingly bizarre,
their numbers and their natures cause us more concern by far.
Their clans have come in scores into this vale, our ancient home.
We hear them, see or scent them everywhere our hunters roam.
As yet the strange ones haven’t learned we’re in this valley, too,
and we are sore afraid of what may happen when they do.
For though their flesh and bones compared to our physiques are weak,
we’ve seen the lethal havoc their capricious fears can wreak.
They see a threat in anything they do not understand,
and their extreme reactions terrify our little band.
We try to keep our presence secret as we gather food,
yet even so the monsters grow more anxious now in mood.
Upon the earth no creature moves which doesn’t leave a sign,
and these outlandish men have found a tell-tale track of mine.
There is no savage beast they know which causes them to fear,
for they are fierce and skillful killers with a club or spear.
Instead, the greatest threat which they as human beings face
would come from other members of their fearsome human race.
So when these frightful humans found that one miss-taken tread,
their hearts, and ours as well, began to fill with mounting dread.
We have our quiet councils in our thinly scattered troops
and watch the agitation grow among the strangers’ groups.
Our people aren’t as many as the fearsome monster men.
No single band of us would ever number more than ten.
We’re spread for leagues throughout this valley in our caves and dens,
unused to meeting but by chance while hunting in the glens.
No single man of them could match a man of us in strength,
but strength of numbers would confirm their victory at length.
We watch their bellicose debates which lead us to decide
the course our kind must take or else succumb to genocide.
The time has come for us to leave this vale to them and go
into the forests dark, to mountains never free of snow.
Our ancient kind survived throughout the ages of the ice
and never found our innate will and strength would not suffice.
Though each of us is stronger than the fiercest of their men,
their kind is more prolific than our kind has ever been.
So, while their branch of humankind will thrive without our limb,
we’ll have no future if we stay to some day fight with them.
But if in time they visit our remote and harsh domain,
perhaps they’ll find our human tracks and know we still remain.
Author notes
First contact of homo sapiens neandertalis with homo sapiens sapiens: As the global climate warmed and glaciers of the Ice Age retreated toward the polar regions of the earth, humans with morphology and physiology similar to our own began to migrate into newly temperate zones of the northern hemisphere. Until then the only humans who had established themselves in those lands had been those referred to nowadays as Neandertals with their incredibly robust physiques and facial and cranial features far different from our own. Would not each human form have seemed monstrously alien and frightening to humans who had never encountered or imagined others so different in aspect from themselves?
In a list
A contest entry
- Crude Animal: A quote inspired contest. by howlinginpain.
2150 points, ended August 17, 2008, 8 entries
Bronze trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
1 - 10 of 10
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i watched a thing about them an that there larynxes were too high up to make vowels good so they didnt have as good a language as we do but i wonder what kinda poets they coulda been
Although their flesh and bone compared to ours are weak,
We’ve seen the lethal havoc which their fear can wreak.
They see a threat in all they do not understand,
And their reactions terrify our little band.
i love this part and its still true that we destroy stuff before we really understand it an even if it means messing up balances in nature and the world. i think neanderthals got a bad rep for being too big so we killed them thinking they were a threat and its why theres still so much prejudice in the world. people see differences before they see similars. my friends are a rainbow and i woulda been happy to have a neanderthal as a friend.
anyway great write
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Neandertals had a hyoid bone formed exactly like that of modern homo sapiens. The shape and position of the hyoid and the larynx is what makes human speech possible. Since the hyoid is not articulated (connected) to any other bone, and there is no soft tissue to identify its position in Neandertal throats, there is only prejudice to account for disallowing speech for our long-departed cousins.
My personal prejudice is that we are Neandertals, distinct from our ancestors in morphology and physiology only by environmental corruption of the human genome and breeding away from distinctly Neandertal traits. There is certainly no indisputable evidence of them to indicate they were less advanced than we except in technology, and their technology was equal in all ways to that of many "modern" humans with exceptionally primitive lifestyles who are genetically and intellectually no less human than the rest of us.
I suspect Neandertals were also no different from us in their propensity for violence in response to ignorance, fear, prejudice and territorial instinct. They did live violent lives, and it seems naive to think violence was limited to contests between man and beast. If humans who had been bred away from morphological and physiological homogeneity with Neandertals came into contact with them, each group was probably inclined to go at the other just like we still do today with people strange to us. Also just like today, whoever had the numbers and technology advantage would be likely to win in any struggle for dominance and survival.
Today we do not see more massively muscled, long-headed, heavy boned, beetle-browed people than we do most likely because we killed so many more than we bred with. Those folks are still among us, but the convergence of all such traits is infrequent enough for us to imagine we are some sort of higher species than the Neandertals. However, we still pass along their traits now and then, here and there. -
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so i could be dating a neanderthal with a receding gene line an not know it? he does have alotta face hair an it would explain his apetite too
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If he has a physique like Lou Ferrigno (TV's Incredible Hulk) and never touches a weight, he might be the archetypal human form appearing in our generation. Does he have a big old head with a little bitty chin?
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No he works out but hes not gross huge and he has a normal chin and olive skin not green
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Excellent
"No man of them could match a man of us in strength,
But numbers would confirm their victory at length."
Brilliant for this contest, wonderfully done. There are some spots in this that interrupt or kill the flow all together but the base subject and perspective are very overpowering, so I don't care.
Very good write. I will be reading this one a few times when I do the final judging.
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You are not the first to tell me this doesn't flow as well as it might. When I read it, I do not see this, but then I am reading it with a rhythm already fixed in my mind - and of course, with my particular West Texas, American South and Midwestern garbled accent.
Although I wouldn't ask for your ideas on a re-write, I'd appreciate it if you would point out the troublesome spots. I may not mess with this one anymore, but I'd like to make sure I smooth out things in future writes. This is still asking a lot, and I won't be in the least offended if you don't get back to this.
Thank you very much for the bronze, by the way! -
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OKay here is my little non-expert analysis: First Stanza is excellent, no issues there. 2nd stanza, 1st line: The word "somewhat" just seems to hitch it a little. If you read that line and on without that word it works more smoothly. 2nd stanza, 2nd line: the repeat of the word "their" could be removed. 2nd stanza, 4th line: the word "ever" could be removed. 3rd and 4th stanzas are excellent. Last stanza, 2nd line: This may be just my preference again but I think this line would read better as "Into the lands of forests, ice and snow"... removing "dark" and the first "and" makes this a little cleaner.
last stanza, 4th line: The word "that" just kills the flow for me here, it's just kind of stumbly I think. it could just be removed.
After that it's perfect.
See, it's just those few little things that just make it hitch. I tend to notice it more because of the way I read. If you were to take this and read it out loud to another person they would probably make a few of the same observations I did...or maybe because I am from the upper midwest I just don't talk or think in the particular vernacular that you do, that may just be the difference. Just take a good look, read it aloud if even to yourself and think about it. Let me know your thoughts. It can be difficult to seperate yourself enough from your art to realize little issues like this. That why I love AP.
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OK, I am pretty much in agreement on all of these, except maybe the last. Even there I see your point and understand how a person might falter. It's like steps carved into a cliff face: if you start out on the wrong foot, you may find yourself hung up with no way to go forward or back without losing your way altogether.
When you've built a path yourself, you tend to time your paces for its eccentricities, hardly realizing whoever comes behind you might trip where you skip across without noticing a flaw. I appreciate your marking the stones which could do with a little re-seating.
Thanks,
Ben -
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Well that's what AP is here for isn't it? Giving each other input on how to improve our little paths.
Thank you for sharing this with me and listening to my little voice. Such voices are hard to hear as most of us are busy dealing with the ones in our own heads, which tend to distrust the outsiders...
Regardless, keep on keepin' on. I hope to see more of your work in my future contests.
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