The presence of pre-history

Watching a Discovery Channel show on early man.

Do you know there were Homo Erectus in England at least 500,000 years ago? England! Half a million years ago!

It makes me conjecture that perhaps the reason ridiculous anti-evolution and anti-reasonable Fundamentalist Christianity has such a hold on Americans, and not on Europeans, is that European- and African- Americans are so physically divorced from this history.

We are floating on this continent with only a 500 year history. Cavemen - prehistory, and Biblical history are both somewhere far off, in a neverneverland oceans away.

I am watching these re-enactments of early man in England and I wonder how my European friends see them? Knowing that these are their ancestors, or really that the uncovered shards are their ancestors' tools, that skulls are their ancestors, that someone they or a fellow townsman or national are descended from actually held this deer remnant in her or his hands, actually ripped this animal's flesh off and swallowed it.

But this did not happen in this land I sit upon -- but this did happen on the land Alice and Witchy and Zoltan sit upon.

We Americans feel a distance from this truth of descendency and history. That is why the ridiculousness of Fundamentalist Christianity can hold such a powerful grip on so many tens of millions of Americans. The truth of our long past is so far away.