Tuesday, July 2, 2013

The patent of discovery

Who discovered fire? No, really. The anthropological answer would be the quintessentially sexy Stone Age Man. But what if it's inaccurate? More so, what if it's false altogether? What if it's just another myopic (if not misogynist) propaganda? And what if it was a woman who discovered fire? Because the conventional theory states that someone with testicles thought it'd be a great idea to rub flintstones and see what happens. This particular scenario drives us to believe that fire was an accident even though it wasn't one. Even the history book illustrations make sure that there are two hairy guys hanging out with flintstones dangerously close to their nuts. Besides, how do we know for sure it wasn't a chortle of hairy girls who patented the art of setting the house on fire? The fact is our society has always been a male-dominated one and for reasons abysmally biased. For instance, it's Evolution of Man as if women don't evolve. One doesn't have to be a feminist to glance into the very sexist structure of the way we look at our past—both imagined as well as real. Going back to the fire, it's hard to believe that a guy discovers fire and then asks his live-in girlfriend (since marriage wasn't in vogue then) to not only handle it but also go ahead and cook food. It's like giving away your greatest discovery to someone else just because you're an affable bum who doesn't like to patent stuff. Prometheus be damned, something must have happened then. Just that we might never visualize what exactly.

1 comment:

Subin said...

This is a great discovery, shakti :)