Fiction or fact?
The year is 7123.
The creature living in the cave has hair or fur covering most of its body. It stands almost upright with large flat feet on the end of legs that has knees that are jointed in a backward manner. The toes on its feet are short with webbing in between. Its short arms culminate in four fingers with claws. Its head with narrow eyes and tiny ear flaps has a long nose a round bulbous appendage with dilated nostrils which continually twitch. Its mouth almost hidden below its nose has the teeth of a carnivore, ready to tear apart anything edible - most of which it sees - is. An omnivore which is easily satisfied by almost any plant or small animal. Its size? It stands about two metres high but is happy on four legs as two; its back legs propelling it at speed on four legs and at considerable height jumping on two.
It came out of its lair in the misty morning sniffing the air which at this time of the season was beginning to be filled with the aromas of plants coming into flower. Its mate followed and together they looked across the flooded valley. The first grunted. Between its legs its member became erect as it turned to its mate and without any formality it thrust it into the immediately receptive aperture of its mate. The process was quick and lacking in any finesse. When finished they once more turned and looked across the landscape.
This action was almost the only similarity they had with the human race who had long before occupied the planet.
Some 5000 years before disasters had begun to change the life on planet Earth. All around the globe independent groups had threatened and violated populations of numerous countries in the name of religion, or commercial power struggles. Politicians began to lose control of their party members who split off in groups with indefinite objectives but invariably with a view to lining their own pockets. The distrust of the electors in many countries led to feuds amongst normally peace abiding folk. Anarchy became the credo of communities across the globe. Eventually most of the countries in Europe and Asia were in open hostility within their borders and across them as the groups spread, amalgamated and became more powerful and more violent. The rising temperatures of the planet tended to heat tempers as well as the air.
The breaking down of the borders between heat and cold, between temperate and tropical led to the movement of insects, viruses and parasites into areas where they had hitherto been unknown. Diseases and illness spread like wildfire the health organisations, world wide or national were unable to keep up. Immunities had no time to be accrued by animals or humans. Epidemics were uncontrollable. Death and corruption became commonplace. Certain countries had played with atomic power, exploding huge amounts of weaponry in underground silos. Inevitable leaking of radioactivity from the playthings of ambitious dictators caused genetic deviation in many of the newborn. Defects and weakened body systems rendering them ever more unable to protect themselves from the all invasive toxins that were widespread.
The planet, its peoples overcrowded and underfed lost its fragile equilibrium.
With the heat violent winds brought frequent storms. Rainfall lessened and water shortages became drastic, leaving populations as far North as Britain with an unassuaged thirst. The death toll rose dramatically, while dry winds dehydrated the corpses. The ice of the poles melting faster than normal in the summers had led to a rise in the level of the oceans leaving the atlas maps wildly inaccurate.
In 2317 small groups of survivors in the mountainous areas led their lives in caves where cool air and condensation gave them shelter and enough moisture to survive. They had long since stopped fighting and lusting after power. They had reverted to the survival methods of the prehistoric cave dwellers who had lived some seventy thousand years before them. Life again became a simple question of survival. Their sources of food were the plants and wild creatures who roamed the wilderness around them. The human population continued to decrease as illnesses were incurable; they had not yet the natural instincts for survival as those who had been the first humans who had to learn everything. These present day cave dwellers still had the innate dependence on the skills of others and a reliance on the intelligence of the disappeared scientists. Their numbers dwindled until only a few animals were left.
The following two or three thousand years saw a return of cold; a raw biting cold that brought ice and snow cover over the greater part of the planet. The animals who wore the thickest fur were the natural survivors of this ice age. They hid in the caves and fed off each other, bred between the species producing slowly new and even more hardy creatures that were able to survive until the dawn of a new time when the climate on this new reshapened planet became more clement and a fresh start could be made.
