CANDID TALK : Darwin was right, we are still evolving

What you need to know:

  • He attested that we were once chimps, baboons, Orangutans and gorillas and other primates something that did not auger well with religion. Of course, such attestation did not augur well with the church and the people around him. I am told that they were so incensed that they would have loved to shred him, mince him and have him for breakfast.

Charles Darwin stirred up a hornets’ nest with his evolution theory. He boldly told human beings to the face that they once lived all their lives in the forests doing what thing monkeys do best – jumping from one tree to another.

He attested that we were once chimps, baboons, Orangutans and gorillas and other primates something that did not auger well with religion. Of course, such attestation did not augur well with the church and the people around him. I am told that they were so incensed that they would have loved to shred him, mince him and have him for breakfast.

During one of my biology lessons (which I miserably flunked) I almost threw punches at one of my teachers who always reeked with paraffin stench, Mageranturubus Rwegerera because he religiously supported Charles Darwin in his theory. I could not imagine my monkey relatives jumping from one tree to another.

My reasoning was rather simplistic – what happened that such primates stopped being converted into human beings? I mean, I expected some of the monkeys to be gradually changing to become John, Paul and Catherine.

But evidence that human beings are still evolving is now evident everywhere. There might not have been digital cameras then but if you ask your grandfather how his grandfather looked like he will most certainly tell you that he was a huge hairy man, with a nose the size of a cup and eyes widely set apart – if you have seen a gorilla you have an idea of what I am talking about.

The man of yore is said to have had so much strength that he could manage five to thirty wives, had several football and netball teams for children and his women never complained of lack of food or sex.

On the contrary, my one-and-only Bisho can sometimes drive me up the wall. My two kids almost make me have rat poison for breakfast whenever opening of school term coincides with the house rent payments. I am a hundred times a lesser man than my grandfather’s grandfather.

In those days, I am told, before human beings vandalised trees, there were trees three times taller than today’s. The old man could climb then all to harvest honey without the help of lifts.

Today, climbing two floors leaves me panting like a frightened rabbit. While my idea of work ends starts and ends with my clawing at the keyboard to produce such stories like the one you are now reading, theirs was tilling acres upon acres of land to keep their dozens of wives and scores of children well fed! In simple language, we have evolved into a generation of the laziest creatures.