Humanity Packs A Suitcase

Much of the chaos that appears to be currently sweeping the planet stems from the penchant humans have for not staying in one place. Instead, whether because of some kind of political or climatic upheaval or boredom with their own cave and a need to explore new ones, they moved restlessly about the planet.  After about 100,000 years or so of this activity, things became quite unruly. This resulted in an attitude of “We were here first. You weren’t. Go away.” This attitude was manifested by either building large walls to keep the “others” out or by capturing the “others” and placing them in large holding facilities until they could figure out what to do with them.

The belief that “We (whoever the ‘we’ refers to) were here first” is fascinating to Life in the Boomer Lane.  She decided to get to the bottom of this, once and for all. She does this as a public service, so that the “We”s of “We were here first” can get to where they actually belong, and stop pretending that they belong where they are.

Africa: Africa is technically not a country, although most people in the US have not been notified of this yet. Since Africa is the place that started the colonization of the rest of the world, we are all, in effect, Africans. Therefore, we should all be going back there. LBL appreciates that a certain percentage of humans might have some difficulty with this concept and would be perplexed as to why the Supreme Court wasn’t ruling in their favor.

For that reason, she will skip over Africa and have only people go back there who want to and have the rest in line to go back to wherever they think they are from, based on family anecdotes and preference for certain foods.  A word of caution: Wherever you think you are from, you must provide actual proof. Your grandmother’s lasagna recipe may not be enough.

Europe: This is another place that is not a country. All of Europe was covered for thousands of years with countless tribes who probably had actual names for themselves. But, when the Roman Empire gobbled everyone up, the Romans had their own names for everyone.

England had Celts.  France had Gauls. Germany had Goths and Vandals.  (The Goths would later go on to dictate fashion for groups of disaffected teens, while the Vandals would just stay Vandals.) Italy had Etruscans.  Spain had Celts (Those Celts really travelled). Russia had Eastern Slavs.  And on and on and on.

The main thing most of Europe agreed on was that the Roman Empire was the Big Dog in town. Beyond that, most people agreed that all the others were super annoying.

Asia: Asia, a vast territory that has absolutely nothing to do with anything else, was never part of the Roman Empire. It was sort of left to do its own thing, which involved having its own tribes trying to obliterate each other. When it wasn’t doing that, it had some pretty amazing culture that no one ever heard about.

China is a pretty big part of Asia. If you can prove direct ancestry to people who used the tools found at the Xiaochangliang archeological site, or, if you have any idea how to pronounce the word Xiaochangliang, you deserve to be in China.

The United States of God-fearing America: This is quite squirrely, since arguments continue as to who, exactly, populated North America first.  Was it people from Asia who crossed the Bering Land Bridge?  Vikings who sailed ships to the new world?  People from anyplace else? Or was the US a complete and total wasteland that wasn’t even worthy of discussion, until discovered by a bunch of white guys who brought Walmart and pumpkin frappuccinos with them.

LBL thinks everyone should go back to where they started. Then, after about 5% of the world population can actually figure out where that would have been, the rest of us can play a giant game of “Risk” and then be assigned countries. That way, new alliances can be created, new countries can be named, and new definitions of “We” and “They” can be discovered. No matter what happens, it can’t get any worse than it is right now. Right?