Before we came down from the trees we were bending and breaking branches to build shelters. We were fruitarians, living on fruits, nuts and seeds. Before we could make fire we were using stones to crack nuts and we were using stones to throw at predators and sharpen branches for spears.

​Before we had agriculture we were wading out into the wetlands, spear in hand to gather grasses to make ropes and mats to make our homes secure and watertight and we were making bags to carry what we gathered home. Before we ate animals we were gathering fruit and bringing them home and pooping out the seeds that would grow into fruiting trees. We were forest farmers, at first accidentally and then intentionally. 

Weaving gave us the ability to build secure homes. It gave us the need to come down from the trees. It gave us bags to carry food so we could live in semi-permanent villages and care for the sick and injured, and grow fruiting trees. It made us walk upright from wading out into the wetlands to gather grasses. Weaving different patterns from our neighbours gave us identity and the need for complex languages. We were the weaving ape.

​Working with wood, grass and stones gave us the ability to make fire and the means to bake bread from the seeds of the grasses. It gave us tools to chop down trees to make space to grow grasses for materials and seeds. It gave us deforestation, desertification, climate change, war, starvation, disease, meat eating and refugees. It gave us the means to flee south to the land of the Gorillas and Chimpanzees and east to the land of the Neanderthals.

Or maybe we learnt to eat meat from contact with Neanderthals, the meat-eating ape, and they ate meat because they lived in a colder climate. And that was when we started to deplete our environment from clearing the forest to grow grasses to attract animals to eat. The rest is history.