Just when did Homo sapiens finally attain its modern mental capabilities? Evidence about mental capacity is rare - scratched prey-bones and simple tools can set only a very low "lower bound". Only the most durable materials have survived, and they tell us nothing about what the makers thought or discussed, or how well they did so. "Separation" speculates on the nature of creativity in early Homo sapiens society and how it might have been used and fostered. In the tale, Mother Nature 40,000 years ago brought together a collection of events in the affairs of a human tribe, each event improbable but certainly possible. The outcome was a multi-generational chain of spectacularly-gifted women who were cave artists and a great deal more, led by Artist Veejr and her mother Chys. Gerard, a modern boy living in the same region, discovers Veejr's main art-cave. In it, he finds a boggling display of her decades of development as a self-taught artist. The collection culminates in a magnificent painting -clearly a self-portrait- set among hundreds of depictions not of mere animals or items, but of people and autobiographical events from Chys' and Veejr's lives. Gerard becomes an archaeologist, forever lured onwards by the evidence he is uncovering about specific, talented, identifiable individuals - nameable, knowable people from so long ago. Across the separation emerges a surprisingly clear and detailed story of the relationship between Chys, Veejr, their descendants, art, and various forms of Tribal knowledge. That story is told by a remarkable and ever-growing suite of findings of materials and of evidence of individuals' thought processes. Ultimately, the Artist, via her descendants, can be traced forward into the present. Surely there is a reasonable probability that somewhere there may exist just such a record as is imagined here. It may someday be discovered: why not? Nothing in the story is impossible.
About the Author: Eric Shulenberger PhD JD is a biological oceanographer specializing in plankton, especially Antarctic krill. He is also an attorney, businessman, professor, and other things. He has a strong amateur interest in the critical evolutionary steps in cognition that turned Homo "sapiens" (i.e. almost modern) into today's Home sapiens. He has published many scientific papers, co-authored the first text on Urban Ecology, and written a detailed history of his father's night-fighter squadron in WW-2.