12. A Prehistoric Proposal

STEPPING BACK IN TIME Part 12

It was just as well that Owongo couldn’t remember the nightmare when he finally emerged from it. For he lay on a pile of skins on the floor of Jeweleye’s cave in a state of frightening delirium, sometines tossing wildly about and sometimes shouting like a wild beast.

Sweat covered his brow and matted his hair, but Jeweleye had her special salve, mixed by her hands from an assortment of herbs and juices that only she knew, and she fastidiously wiped his raging and open sore with it while Mirumda mopped his brow and whispered her own comforting homilies to him, reminding him of the magic in his hands as he struck fire from stones and telling him to wake so that she could look upon him once again, and touch his mouth with her own. And it was a combination of these treatments that gave him strength to recover.

Mingey, Owongo’s mother, called more than once, though she had Pretty to think about and being a caring mother she brought the younger child with her. Child care back in primeval times being a problem for the single parent and many young children were left to their own devices, sometimes for days on end. But maybe it was Pretty’s voice encouraging Owongo with a goo, goo, goo that helped him push the nightmares away and eventually open his eyes and see once more the light of day, undisturbed by the horrors of his nightmares.

But he did recover. The sore on his back responded to the magic of Jeweleye’s salve and the will in his mind sought Mirumda’s words and swam in them. Then came a shock for him.

One day, when he was well on his way back to good health and could sit up without collapsing back on the bed of skins, Mirumda came out with what was on her mind.

“Owongo, Mirumda share cave,” she said seriously.

Marriage hadn’t been invented back then and its equivalent was sharing a home with a loved one, because love, in any time be it ancient or modern, is the most precious thing two sentient beings can feel together, and it is best when shared.

I know this because I chanced on Jeweleye’s home during my tour of the river valley where the small community lived all those years ago. Thirty-odd thousand years! It’s a long time in the affairs of man, and the structure of their den had long disappeared, fdestroyed by ravaging time.

But there, on a rocky surface that must have been part of Jeweleye’s home were the marks left by Owongo during his convalescence. Etched in hard stone like some sort of ancient Morse code were the lines and squiggles that I have, by huge effort and after spending tireless hours struggling to interpret them, managed to read. Well, I say read: but that’s not quite right. They contain within them a message that I believe I have construed accurately, but every time I recall them the message is slightly different.

But in his pre-cuneiform characters he tells of the way his heart somersaulted when he was told by Mirumda that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.

Right, let’s get one thing straight. By modern standards they were still children and any idea of them snuggling together in any sort of physical union is abhorrent, but those were not modern times and if they’d waited until their late teens or even twenties they might have waited too long. Life was a short affair back then. I have found remains of several men and women in the ground where they had been lain to their final rest, fossilised and barely recognisable as human, and examination of such things as their teeth has indicated that very few lived long enough for their teeth to decay. They died, that is, at a young age by our standards.

So for Mirumda and Owongo to decide to set up home together while they were still barely in their teens was far from being unusual.

But what was unusual it was what Owongo did next. The marks are quite plain for those to read who want to know about his huge invention.

Because, of all the people living on Planet Earth, it was Owongo who invented marriage!

“We need party!” he proclaimed, actually also inventing parties as he made his proclamation.

“Party?” queried Jeweleye, who was present at the youngster’s decision to unite for life.

“Food, drink, friends. Dancing under moon. Party!” announced Owongo, and Mirumda clapped her hands and grabbed him so that he winced as her hands squeezed his back where it had been sore and was still tender.

“Like winter feast?” asked Jeweleye, referring to the annual knees-up enjoyed by one and all as summer slid gently into winter, though back in those days winter was never as savage as it became in later years and hardly seemed worth celebrating.

“With booze!” added Owongo, “loads of booze! And songs, lover’s sagas set to music and sung in chorus!”

“And afterwards, a holiday!” yelped Mirumda, “to do grown up stuff together!”

“And give me grandson!” smiled Jeweleye.

“But Owongo too young!” put in Mingey, who had arrived after crossing the river, “Owongo just a baby himself!”

And Mingey’s concerns would, in later years, be only too real, for he was her son and she knew full well the trials that lay ahead for any couple who were going to battle their way to grand old age together. The age they lived in was thwart with dangers both out in the wild hunting for food as one of the many species engaged in the same activity and in battle with others, some being stranger than fiction to the simple folk of the valley bottom.

But Owongo had caught the bug from the love of his life and wanted a party that would inform all comers that Mirumda was off the menu for all but himself.

“Mirumda mine, and party say so,” he said slowly and remarkably severely for one so young.

“But Owongo…” sighed his mother, but from the expression on his young face she could tell that whatever she said would be to no avail. This pretty girl had won his heart, and she could tell that it was lost to his mother for good. Maybe she felt like her own mother had felt when she had grown heavy with child whilst still a youngster.

© Peter Rogerson 28.02.22

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