Iffy evolution

I'm still thinking about Neandertals. And their brains, which at an average of 1450 cubic centimeters were significantly larger than those of modern humans today. (One has to wonder, given the record of this country's Congress, the extent to which the brains of modern politicians are even smaller still.) But, hey, many animals have bigger brains than us. Whales, for instance. They needed smarts to navigate the world's oceans, and to communicate across long stretches of water.

But somehow, one suspects, a whale has yet to wonder, as Shakespeare did, whether "whether to be (or not to be)" is a cool question to ask.

And whether a play about Hamlet is even slightly interesting.

Neandertals, venturing out of their caves, seeking to garner wooly-mammoth meat, probably didn't spend a lot time worrying about whether to-be-or-not was an interesting question. Surely they just wanted meat for the fire. A hunk of protein to bring back to the tent and the family.

As many of us sit around, wanting something similar to that happiness around a fire, but now in a whole different world, checking out the computer, wondering who might be texting, we forget that we owe our survival to those similar cave guys (homo sapiens, in our case) who turned into us. I don't know what made the difference between 2010 and the past, but it had to be important. What worries me is that it probably was just luck, not our smarts. That bodes a bit ill, or at least iffy, don't you think?.