Hunting down some land

If you look up land reform in South Africa in an atlas, you will see a picture of a Neanderthal armed with a wooden club dispersing a family of brachiosauruses so that he might build a rudimentary security complex on their traditional grazing grounds.

- BEN TROVATO

He was the first property developer. And while the dinosaurs went extinct, property developers still walk among us. It's quite sad.

Then, in the early Pleistocene - which ended when it got ground into the terrestrial carpet - Australopithecus africanus came along and things took a turn.

"Who the hell are you?" said the Neanderthal.

"I am the earliest hominid and I am taking this complex for myself."

"No, you're not. Besides, I haven't started building it yet."

"Then I shall take your land."

"You will have to fight me for it."

"I can't. Not today. My wife wants me home early."

"Your wife that Mrs Ples?"

"That's her. Why?"

"Take my land. You've suffered enough."

Not all transfers of land went as smoothly as that. Before long - well, quite long - Australopithecus sediba was fighting off Homo ergaster who fought off Homo erectus who fought off Homo rhodesiensis who fought off Homo helmei who fought off Homo naledi who thought about fighting off Homo sapiens but chose to kill themselves rather than sit through interminable committee meetings on land ownership, where nobody spoke the same language and everyone wanted more than they needed. Little has changed since then.

Along came the Upper Palaeolithic period and everything went to hell in a crudely woven hand basket. Men started thinking they should cover their willies in public and women started thinking... I don't know what they were thinking and it's not my place to guess. Smash the patriarchy.