Neanderthals In Our Midst. . .

In case you've believed in history books most of your life and didn't want to hear the real truth, let me bring you up to date. Montana Governor Greg Gianforte has a new take on the age of our planet...and various other strange and magical thoughts inside of his head.

You see, we all thought this rock we live on was around 5.6 billion years old.  And, the crazy scientists who planted that idea had good solid evidence, too. But, they should have checked with Gianforte.  He knows for a fact that it's made only about 6,000 trips around the sun.  Earth - the third rock from the sun - is just a baby!  Dinosaurs lived and frolicked with Neanderthals and other humanoids, Noah hired the Titanic's White Star boat builders to rivet the Ark together, Siegfried and Roy helped him get the animals in the boat, and  Moses and Houdini the Magician conspired on that little trick to part the sea.

Speaking of the Neanderthal connection, Gianforte and his horde of GOP Legislators have been studying under the tutelage of Neanderthals for years.  They can now make laws that allows their governoment to get between a woman and her doctor, a woman and her boss, a woman and her rapist, and a woman and her unequal pay.  

With the Earth being only six-thousand years old, it simplifies a lot of geological arguments.  Since the common understanding is that a generation constitutes about 35 years, our ancestors could go back only about 171 generations. Family trees could be a lot smaller. That's a blink of an eye compared to the 157,142,857 generations the scientists came up with for 5.5 billion years.  Gianforte likes things neat, tidy, and small.  And he and his horde likes the idea that Neanderthal thinking is from very recent ancestors - maybe even a great-great-grandfather or so. 

Neanderthals, according to those pesky scientists, eventually lost out to our most recent kin - Homo Sapiens.  Most of us have descended from them.  They were friendly, good hunters and gatherers, and kind of semi-alert. 

A few Neanderthals did survive by hiding in caves and occasionally kidnapping a Homo Sapien for breeding purposes. And that, dear friends, is how Conservative Republicans came to be. But, that is another story...for another time.  Right now, about all we can fill our wondering heads with is this thing about the Earth only being 6,000 years old.  

Old Greg still has a lot of  'splainin' to do about that. . .  and the terrible bills coming from him and the thundering herd of elephants in our Montana State Legislature!

On the other hand, I think I'd rather be frolicking with a T-Rex.