The great American poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote:

“Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”

While studying music at Tel Aviv University, I took an elective course in Paleoanthropology, a branch of anthropology, dealing with the study of fossil hominids. In one of the early sessions, the professor introduced Lucy. She was found in Ethiopia in 1974. Her slideshow indicated that she was first cataloged as: AL 288-1. As the significance of her discovery grew, she was named: Dinkinesh, which means: "you are marvelous" in Amharic. But her name Lucy was established while the Beatles’ Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was playing over and over in the expedition camp, celebrating the discovery. What was left of her is a 3.2 million years collection of bone fossils. Her pelvis indicated she was a female. The revelation was her ape skull but a skeleton that suggests she was walking straight. A possible link between apes and humans. 

With Lucy in mind, came about the curiosity of the possible connection to our more ancient patriarchs and matriarchs, whose rare, scattered findings of bone fossils keep igniting controversy. The Great Ape Personhood, for example, is a movement that pursues legal protections to the non-human members of the great ape family. In 2008, a parliamentary committee set forth resolutions urging Spain to grant the primates the rights to life and liberty. And most astoundingly, in 2015, a US appeals court debated whether or not a monkey can own the copyright to a selfie, ruling that US copyright law doesn’t allow animals to file copyright infringement lawsuits.

This discussion revolves around the most inspiring book, God’s Grace by Bernard Malamud. A son of a Rabbi and a talking chimpanzee raise some mind-boggling questions about the human race, religion, and God, in a post-nuclear war which both miraculously survived. Is a chimpanzee conspired an animal after acquiring human language? It’s so worthwhile reading, and it’s only 240 most thrilling pages in paperback. To be continued…