This is a story about the first people.
I know where the first men came from, says Raven. No shit, there they were, pale like little worms, crawling out of a clam I had just opened for dinner. No claws or fangs, but cute, y'know, trying to stand on two legs and all...
I know where the first woman came from, says Coyote. She fell out of the sky and landed on me.
Knock it off, you two jokers, before I get Old Testament on your asses, says I. Ahem.
***
1.1 Once there was a primate who, like the rest of his pack, would often come out of the trees and chase lesser carnivores off their kill. 1.2 He got up on two legs, arms over his head, and ran at them. 1.3 He was good at running. He ran everywhere he could. 1.4 And when he got tired of running, he stopped. 1.5 He was the best runner of his tribe. The girls dug this and wanted to have his babies.
1.6 Those babies were born to run. They competed amongst themselves, and over the generations, their legs got longer, their butts got bigger, and they lost their body hair so they could sweat better.* 1.7 They got so good at running to catch food that they could afford to stop and rest most of the day. With their long running necks, they began to talk, and with their denser hunting brains, they began to think. 1.8 And these were the first humans.
***
But what about Adam and Eve, asks Coyote.
Oh, the first Hebrew people?
Well, they show up a little later. And there's a story there too.
***
Adam and Eve were two kids, crazy in love. And they had the audacity to demonstrate it in public, because they were shameless.
So the villagers chased them out of town, to try and teach them shame. Adam and Eve didn't give up, though, and settled in a little house far from town, on a grassy sward near the woods, with a garden. Not far enough, though, because rumors spread, and boys started teasing them, and one day a mob showed up while they were out and burned their house down.
They looked at the remains of their house, and the angry mob, and the burning sward.
Is this the joke that ends with Adam yelling "Since when did it become so wrong to have sex with your sister?" interrupted Coyote.
Not anymore. And you've ruined the story. Although maybe it wasn't that funny.
Do you have another one?
There's one where Adam names every living thing and learns animal husbandry (which isn't what it sounds like) and begat the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
That sounds very long and boring. Anything interesting?
***
Well, here's a story Eve herself told me once. Adam was a warrior, a big strong man, in a tribe with a rule: you couldn't be elected leader unless you had children. This rule was very important. It meant the leader would have other distractions besides sitting around and making up silly rules. Adam was second in command, and wanted to be leader so strongly he could taste it. But he and Eve had no children.
Eve privately thought Adam was an arrogant jerk. She didn't think he had the sensitivity to be a good leader, nor a good father figure. And besides, her best friend was already wife of the present leader. So she began taking contraceptive herbs supplied by the tribe's medicine woman. She knew she was doing her friend a favor. If circumstances changed, she could stop taking the herbs, fall pregnant, and become a leader's wife eventually. And of course it was important Adam not find out.
One day, Adam found out. He was angry violent raging on MAD! Mad as Adam was, though, he left Eve unharmed.
He found and killed the medicine woman with a single blow. They were exiled from the tribe for that, because a good smart medicine woman is worth a couple of dumb, strong warriors any day.
Adam and Eve and some of his hangers-on wandered for days and settled finally in a fertile valley.
Without her medicine supply, Eve herself eventually fell pregnant and had twins. Adam hardly had time for them, he was busy trying to convince his new tribe that it was Eve's fault they had to leave in the first place. Eve says his story seems to have caught on, although it changed a little in the telling.
Abel and Cain grew up in the valley, and eventually dated some of the daughters of Adam's lackeys, but those two boys were always fighting! "Dad always liked you better!" Killing each other, they were! But that's another story.
***
for Everything Quest: The PC Bible
* "Born To Run", Ingfei Chen, Discover magazine, May 2006; http://www.discover.com/issues/may-06/features/tramps-like-us/