Читать книгу The Men Commandments - Christian O’Connell - Страница 23

We had the choice to become monkeys or mice. That’s right, it was a simple case of would we rather be mice or monkeys? And who doesn’t love a monkey? Think of how much as kids we loved the PG Tips adverts with the piano-moving chimps. Arguably the greatest advertising campaign ever. Chimp removal men. Genius.

We rightly chose the path of monkey and modern man avoided the prospect of a tail and buck teeth (apart from the inhabitants of certain parts of Norfolk).

Then after a couple of 100,000 years (men don’t like to rush anything, it’s all in the preparation) we worked out it would be easier to walk on our hind legs and use sticks to smash things up. This was made possible by another huge evolutional leap: the opposable thumb. Evolutionary scientists will tell you that this development was important because it enabled us to pick up wood, make tools and hold things. This is all true, but thumbs were a much more important development in man history. Now for the first time since the universe began, we could give each other the thumbs-up.

No talking, no elaborate rituals, just a simple thumbs-up. The thumbs-up sign of course reached its zenith in the mid-twentieth century with the advent of Happy Days and the invention of the Fonzie double thumbs-up. The thumbs aloft was then ruined for ever by Radio One DJs and Sir Paul McCartney.