Daâh: The First Human

by Edmond Haraucourt

  The dumpy individual had the head of a giant; that oblong mass accentuated his bestiality instead of attenuating it. By means of the effort that he was making to stand upright, he only succeeded imperfectly in obtaining a vertical position, and as soon as he started walking, his torso swayed forward, like a lever alternately raising its burden and falling back again, dragged down by it.

  That was, however, only a stance; the biped’s upper body, coarsely sculpted, was solid and capable of supporting much heavier loads; the feeble curvature of the ribs made for a broad, flat chest; his vertebral column, instead of bulging in the lumbar region, was concave, like the beams of a vault; in his narrow pelvis, less elevated than that of apes but more elongated than ours, two powerful thighs were planted, terminated by enormous kneecaps like those of a gorilla and continued by tibias that seemed truncated. The legs, already so short and massive, aggravated their inelegance by the habitual flexion of the hamstrings; they curved inwards like parentheses, and the man, thus gathered on them, was further reduced in his meager height.

  That curvature of the inferior limbs, that flexion of the hamstrings and the excessive development of the joints denounced a climber who was endeavoring to walk. The climatic conditions of the epoch, by obliging him to live in an environment that maintained ancestral heredities within him, only permitted him to disengage himself from them slowly.

  In the inextricable virgin forest, he only rarely encountered an opportunity to walk straight ahead. He was not yet able to place his foot flat on the ground; he leaned on the external edge in the manner of quadrumanes;8 and that foot, because of its free and prehensile big toe, bore some resemblance to a hand, while the hand, on the contrary, with its short and scarcely detached thumb, remembered having once walked.

  But the most notable strangeness of that transitory type was the form of his head, so voluminous, and whose muzzle projected forward without a forehead or a chin. The depressed cranial cavity pushed the sinciput down all the way to the brows; it descended thereto in a gentle slope; there, abruptly, the frontal bone reared up like an embankment, leaving behind it a kind of ditch and deploying over the face the cushion of a continuous visor. Sheltered by that awning and separated from it by an abrupt furrow, the bridge of the nose jutted out; to either side of it, the orbits of the eyes were sunk in funnels of shadow.

  The eyes, thus framed by bony spectacles, were less forward-facing than ours, and more widely separated, as if the nose, flattened out between them, had pushed them outwards; the two holes of the nasal fosses pierced the mask in which no depression was modeled and was supported by a ferocious mandible. Seen face on, that mask was vaguely trapezoid, and seen in profile, triangular; a pair of ears, amply splayed, enlarged it further; in the guise of tresses, a leonine mane enveloped it entirely; born on the forehead above the eyebrows, bushy at the temples, it reached the cheekbones with no discontinuity and became a beard on the cheeks; coarse, bushy, tangled and sticky hairs, the color of mud, hung down at the edges of the eyes and nostrils, and in front of the eyes and ears; grass was adhering to them, and drool glued them together at the corners of the mouth.

  And yet...

  In spite of his bestiality, his hybrid forms and his ambiguous awkwardness, in spite of his defects—or because of them—that brute affirmed himself to be human. He was not an ape but the sketch of a new being, prohibited for the moment, suffering from being without being able to be, hesitating before itself, clumsy and pitiful, condemned to search without knowing what it was searching for, hampered in its future even more than in its past, chastised less by its weakness than its latent strength, and the victim of the ensemble of the two.

  Gleams of mystery were trembling in his eyes, and through that double prison window, behind the solid wall of that forehead, captive energies could be sensed quivering in the darkness. When a growl emerged from that mouth, it was like the plaint of a strength ashamed of its own impotence.

  Standing in front of the female, he yawned. Through the enormous bay of his mouth, she could see his palate, as red as a wound, whose vault was very high; thirty-two huge teeth garnished his jaws, and the molars at the back resembled white rocks.

  He closed his mouth again, picked up his club, and moved off.

  VII. Their Patrimony

  No individual, animal or plant is the first of its race; there always exists some similar form that preceded it, in a continuum; when any being brings a new element into the world, it is for other beings that it is preparing the seed, and to which it will bequeath that seed; it is itself merely the variation, ameliorated or deteriorated, of the precursors from which it has emerged.

  Human beings, the dissident siblings of Apes, are not descended from the Anthropoids, but arrived in parallel with them, better endowed than them, and inherited, like them, what their common ancestors had conquered. Recent as they were upon the earth, they were an aristocracy, the descendants of something, and they possessed an entire patrimony of acquisitions. The obscure endeavor of their descendants was totalized in them; there was already a human machine, provided with its essential elements, ready to function in a human fashion, which was trying to do so while grating, entirely clogged up by mud and darkness.

  After the Semnopithecus9 and the Orangutans, after the Chimpanzees and Gorillas, life simulated its normal movement: an effect of which the slow evolution of species had been the cause intervened in the family of Primates to produce the privileged being to whom the unconscious phenomenon was leading, and was henceforth possible; with its still-rudimentary brain, already a prodigious enormity, it inaugurated the faculty of refining sensation to the point of extracting, first sentiment and then thought.

  Humans’ familial patrimony, to tell the truth, was still meager; it was reduced to a few notions regarding themselves and the surrounding world, all of them tending simply to the preservation of the individual or the species. There were appetites, with the means to satisfy them, or suspicions, with the means of averting them. The latter only offered vague warnings regarding toxic vegetables, but denounced dangerous animals with greater precision, their fashion of striking and the manner in which to flee or combat them. That heritage of memories revealed itself in the form of instincts; certain self-preservative actions were suggested thus, without having to be invented, because others had found them previously.

  For, if one examines it closely, instinct is an ancient intelligence that has lost consciousness of itself; the result being known in advance, the effort of research has become unnecessary, and the animal has gradually dispensed with it; the instrument, too expert in its work, continues to function of its own accord. In sum, the heredities of a species are the reservoir of ethnic experience, a total of superimposed educations and crystallized habits. Instinct is the memory of races, the patrimonial science and the accumulation of practical advice: the manual of the past for the usage of the future.

  Of those materials, stored in the cells of their generators, new-born humans benefited. In their turn, they hoarded on behalf of future times. Fabricating instincts in their turn, they had to endow their descendants with the actions that would later be required of them; with difficulty, they enriched with their emotions and their efforts the undivided patrimony on which the community would found the unity of a race.

  VIII. The Wedding-Feast

  After the fortuitous embrace, the woman, exhausted by the efforts of her vain defense, had remained lying on the moss, her eyes wide open, dazed and slightly dreamy; for the first time, she took note of her solitude, which had previously appeared to be normal or necessary. She experienced a kind of anguish in consequence, somewhat comparable to that of hunger—and it was, indeed, a hunger of the soul that was beginning to awaken in her.

  She got up, plaintively. Then she walked, going to the right, the left or straight ahead, aimlessly and with no plan, but also without fear and without prudence, because, suddenly, her life was no longer of any concern to her: the attack of a wild beast would have found her indifferent
and almost incapable of uttering a cry. She no longer had any fears, any cares or any needs, as if she no longer lacked anything, because she had just discovered an emptiness within her and around her that was larger than usual, in which everything was lacking at the same time.

  For several days she wandered around the vicinity looking for the man who had taken her. She found his trail and followed it through the wood; sometimes creeping up behind him and sometimes charting a curve around him in order to post herself in his probable passage, she watched from the height of a branch, waiting for an opportunity. In order to provoke that chance, at the risk of her life, she sometimes uttered a long guttural cry, which she heard drifting away in the domes of the forest.

  Finally, he encountered her again, and she did not resist him—but when he went away she marched after him, two paces behind him. When he wanted to rest and he crouched down, with his back to the trunk of a beech tree, she crouched down beside him in the same attitude, and imitated all his gestures in order to flatter him.

  When evening came and he climbed into the crown of an oak in order to sleep, she climbed into the same tree, and took care to choose a branch below his, very close to the trunk, in order that the other could not climb down without her being aware of it.

  That ingenuity did not require any great effort of thought on her part; the plan, clever as it was, only represented, in sum, a prudent action that was doubly familiar: the tactic of a hunter accustomed to tracking prey, and the cunning of an educated prey in not allowing retreat to be cut off.

  All night long she watched, for fear that he might leave without her. In the morning she was still asleep when she saw, at the foot of the oak, a young wild boar that was digging in the soil. She woke the man by tugging on his foot. After starting in alarm, he recognized the hand that was touching him and his fear turned to anger, but as soon as he saw the pig, he forget the woman.

  He continued to forget her when the animal was slain, and even growled at her when she dared to approach him. Not for a moment did the thought cross her mind that she had been useful to him and that he was being unjust, and much less did it cross his. The experiment made of that utility, however, deposited a memory in their two minds capable of germinating and expanding. By virtue of that fact, and by the repetition of analogous incidents, the possibility of cooperation was spontaneously demonstrated to them, and their alliance was prepared without either one of them being aware of it.

  He ate without seeing her. She admired him enviously, and then lowered her eyes to the opened carcass, and she drooled with desire; at intervals, a piteous gurgle emerged from her mouth to implore him; he never made any reply. She slid a sly hand toward the prey and suddenly plunged her fingers into it; then, bringing them back to her mouth she began to lick them serenely, one after another, observing the male with a timid eye.

  He pretended to ignore her, but she tried again, and this time he growled. After that, she remained quiet; with her palms flat on her knees, she waited, no longer budging, except to run her tongue over her lips when the temptation became too strong.

  Meanwhile, he was chewing less vigorously. She saw him break a long bone between two stones, from which he sucked the marrow delightedly, and then another, and a third; his movements were becoming increasingly ponderous. She was patient for a little longer, and then took the risk.

  The man followed her gestures with a drunken gaze, and no longer made any protest. She took possession of the carcass and finally, grunting with pleasure, sank her teeth into the profound meat.

  For her, who had neither the swiftness nor the strength of a male, such a windfall was rare; less skillful in hunting, she usually nourished herself on wild fruits, and on insects or rodents more often than large prey. In her turn, she prolonged the feast; with a bone in her hand, she tore away the fragments of muscle, exerting the vice of her jaws; pink juice ran over her receding chin.

  Her little brown eyes, whose corneas were scarcely visible between the irises and the corners of her eyelids, gleamed with joy and swiveled in their caves. Suddenly, her mouth opened wide, exposing the gums, and a burst of laughter reminiscent of a sneeze sprang forth between her oblique teeth. Sated, she, too, affirmed her bliss and gave thanks.

  The somnolent male contemplated her with a dazed indulgence, and closed his eyes again. She lay down beside him, their backs applied to the trunk of the oak, and very gently, the first couple went to sleep under the rain.

  IX. Honeymoon

  She no longer left him. He tolerated her, at first obliging and then as a matter of custom, finding in the association a few conveniences and an occasional pleasure; thus habit made him a companion, and that companion was a servant.

  She did not suffer from that role. Her relative debility, informing her more rapidly of their common distress, had immediately attached her to that temporary protector more than he was attached to her. She recognized in him a strength superior to her own, and a bravery superior to that strength; she admired him for it.

  Many a time she saw him, in unequal struggles—he had neither fangs nor claws—stand up to the most powerful quadrupeds and vanquish them by means of an audacity reinforced with cunning. In the universal battle, they were unarmed, and she was even more aware of that than he was; she remembered that, before him, she had rarely eaten enough to appease her hunger, and she knew that, thanks to him, she would be able to delay much longer falling under the teeth of one of the giant Cats of the caves that roared in the dusk, or those of a stealthy hyena, or a growling bear. Her prolonged existence depended on the consent that the little colossus accorded to her presence; every peril avoided rooted more deeply within her an animal gratitude that bore some slight resemblance to tenderness.

  She took refuge in that humble sentiment in order to calm the surges of her anger when the male had beaten her.

  They ate incessantly. Their only aim, after the more urgent care of not allowing themselves to be eaten, was to capture something to eat. They did not wait for hunger, but for prey; the entire animal kingdom seemed to them only to exist for the sake of their insatiable appetite. Everything that could move, everything that could bleed, and everything that passed within range of rapid action, was seized and immediately ingurgitated.

  While the hunter crept on the track of large herbivores, so difficult to catch, the women dug up the burrows of rodents and searched for them at an arm’s length, or pursued snakes and lizards through the layers of dead leaves; she removed eggs from nests, crunched grasshoppers, savored ant-larvae, swallowed snails and caught mosquitoes on the wing, which she licked from the palm of her hand. For want of anything better, they pulled up tender roots or bulbous plants, knocked down nuts or acorns, or collected mushrooms, figs, apples and berries. At the whim of their voracity, everything was good; the summer was rich in insects, the autumn with fruits.

  All the lives that one puts into oneself add to one’s own life.

  While they walk, the woman follows, as closely as possible; during halts, she establishes herself within arm’s length; she immediately begins scratching herself, while he does the same, for they are riddled with vermin, and they notice that more when they stop.

  They never sit down; their attitude of repose resembles that of a child in its mother’s womb: crouched, with their buttocks on their feels, their knees up, their forearms against their thighs, their hands flat on their knee-caps or hooked around their ankles, they compact themselves, gathering themselves together and holding themselves in a solid block, as if they were afraid that one of their limbs might go astray. Their legs are too mobile for them to be able to endure a sitting position without irritation; as soon as they hang loosely they begin dancing in space, nervously; it is necessary to hold onto them to keep them in place. It is also necessary to watch over their security and not to leave a foot too long out of sight in the thick and living grass.

  That crouching pose is, therefore, the only one that procures them a moment of tranquility; it gives them the sensation of be
ing “at home”—or, to put it better, “within themselves,” all the parts of the body living as a family, and savoring the wellbeing thereof in a temporary relaxation. For everyone only finds true refuge within themselves; no other contact is as agreeable and reassuring as one’s own body; the sister flesh of one’s flesh is one’s own, and no one else’s. The individual is as yet only organized for egotism, and that egotism is equipped with five keen senses that watch over the safety of the being.

  Those warning organs, therefore, do not have the same aptitudes or the same aspects as ours: coarse, brutal, insensitive to nuances, education has not yet instructed them in the delicacies of subtle sensuality; they are not instruments of joy but tools of protection; they are lookouts, and, being powerfully conditioned for that role of vigilance, they possess the plenitude of their initial power. Three of them in particular are on the alert: sight, hearing and smell.

  The last-named observes the immediate surroundings: Alert! and the high, broad, profound, hairy nostrils wrinkle in the direction of the danger or the prey whose presence they have sniffed.

  Hearing perceives approaches from further away: Alert! and the two vast ears, sticking out from the skull, move toward the sound, as the nostrils move toward the reek.

  Sight goes even further: Alert! It works relentlessly, forwards, to the right, to the left, upwards and downwards; the eye sees everything at once; under the eyebrow, which contracts or retracts, between the eyelids that blink or distend, it swivels, it focuses, it pierces; it gives the impression of wanting to leap out of its hole. With an untiring zeal it summarizes and revises the observation of the other senses; at close range or far away, nothing escapes it; it is the perfect guardian, but, at the same time, it is the translator of the internal anguish for which it functions and which it denounces by its uneasy mobility.