Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there lived a kind of creature. This creature was called hairy man.

Hairy man was a slow, methodical, strange creature. He lived for nearly a million years in relative balance with his world. He killed to eat. He fought, but only for personal reasons and always singly.

Never did he band together to wage war on his fellow hairy men. If a hairy man had a tasty bone, or a tasty female, he might well kill him to take the morsel away. But he never got six of his friends together to kill the man. He did it alone.

After untold ages a new creature came into the picture. He was smooth man. He was very different from hairy man. Smooth man built things. Smooth man wore clothes. Smooth man killed in groups. Smooth man even invented war, with the express purpose of killing off hairy man.

Smooth man nearly succeeded too. Within ten thousand years of his arrival the hairy man was few and far between. He still existed, and his genes were mixed with those of the smooth man, but as an organized race he was gone.

Smooth man found this to be rather dull so smooth man began to wage war on other smooth men. The reasons were varied. Perhaps one group of smooth men had lighter skin than another. Or worshipped a different idol. Or talked differently.

There was always a good reason to band together and kill off a bunch of other smooth men. Hairy man was assimilated and simply bided his time. After a while smooth man tired of expending so much energy in killing off large groups.

But, being smooth, the idea of simply giving up warfare did not appeal. Instead they applied their many inventions, which they called technology, to simplifying the task of killing large groups.

They invented explosives, and machines of ground and air travel. They invented diseases, toxins, and as a byproduct, civilization. For this reason smooth man is often referred to as civilized man, or less frequently, techno-man. And the hairy man waited.

By the time one hundred thousand years had gone by smooth man reigned supreme. He had modified his environment until no one but smooth man could live.

And the hairy man waited. He had taken war to levels never before even dreamed of in nightmares. And the hairy man waited.

Out in the smooth population were still those who carried the hairy man’s genes. Very similar to the smooth man’s, but with a few subtle differences.

One difference finally became apparent. In those last days of the smooth man a plague came to the world. It came slowly at first and was ignored. Smooth man knew he could conquer anything. Then the plague became worse.

Smooth man called the plague many things, but the hairy man called it justice. It struck the smooth men down one by one, then two by two, and finally million by million. In fact, it seemed it would kill everyone. Everyone, that is, except those remnants of hairy man.

For some reason, those with the hairy man’s genes were immune. The hairy man waited, and laughed. Within a short time the smooth man was gone. And after centuries, so was all he created. And once again the hairy man roamed the world. He continued to do so for hundreds of millions of years, until the sun was a dying ember, and then he quietly faded away. And once he was gone, there was no trace of these two-legged creature, neither hairy nor smooth, on the face of the world.