The Very True Story Of How Cavemen Made Fire

"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something." -R Heinlein.

Is this true? If it's true why do we pride innovators for their hard work? Or is it that lazy men think of easier ways to work, and early risers take those ideas and test them?

Being lazy isn't enough. You have to be both smart AND lazy. If that offends you, substitute "curious" or "determined to find a better way" for lazy. One thing is for sure. Smart people are always at the center of innovation, but the oft-ignored corollary to that is the majority of smart people aren't useful as anything but test subjects.

Let me tell you a true story to demonstrate.

Atook and Grog don't like hunting for animal skins, but they also don't like being cold. Atook notices that he's warm during the day, and cold at night. He comes up with a plan to lie out on rocks in the sun during the day, to store up heat for the night. Instead of hunting, he heads out to test his theory. While alone, on a rock, he fails to notice the rattlesnake with the same idea. Atook dies.

Grog knows the sun makes him warm, and wants to make a small one. He figures out how to make fire!

Everyone in the tribe is impressed, and a little scared, and then Grog sets himself on fire. He is badly burned, and is left out for the wolves.

Grog and Atook were both smart. They're also both dead.

Brog likes playing with rocks. He builds places for turtles so they can't escape. Brog knows to look for snakes around rocks and knows that if Grog had stopped the fire from escaping, he would still be alive. Brog builds a place where the fire can't escape. But Grog is dead, and no one else knows how to make fire.

Brog's grandson, Grool, also doesn't like being cold, and he doesn't like hunting either. He rediscovers how to make fire, but learning from his grandfather, puts the fire in a rock pit. From that innovation, his family is now warm, and the best hunters trade him animals when he agrees to cook their meat.

Grool's wife, Pey, likes to draw. She draws the fire pit with the animals on the wall of a cave. For hundreds of years, everyone who sees the painting knows that Grool was smart, and copies his family's recipe for rotisserie chicken.

Tens of thousands of years later, modern humans see the paintings on the wall, and conclude that Grool was the Elon Musk of his day. Poor Atook and Grog are of course, never discussed. An economist in 1765 uses Grool to explain the origin of trade. The economist calls his theory Groolian economics. An Oxford professor renames it pre-agrarian trade practices in Neolithic economies. An assistant professor for journalism with a degree in Women's Studies claims that it was Pey who created fire. Also, Pey was the tribe's polyamorous leader, an accomplished hunter, and had thousands of cave drawings that were suppressed by male archaeologists. The assistant professor first publicizes her theories in a debate with a local televangelist, who claims the roasted chicken is actually a velociraptor.

The story is eventually animated by Disney. In the story, Pey is a brilliant young female artist who watches her mother graphically torn apart by bears in the first five minutes of the film, and is then raised by Grog. Bryan Cranston brilliantly does the voiceover for Pey's mountain lion cub, who serves as the main narrator.

The idea for this story came to me early this morning. I'm not sure if it supports or negates the value of being an early riser.