Coffin of Light
I like anything that shimmers. I have always been attracted to the light, like a moth drawn to a streetlight, or a bug diving into a fire despite the heat. Then I suddenly realize what a dangerous place I am in. Normally animals are afraid of fire. Human beings, however, love it.
Today, the front page of the New York Times has an article about a recently discovered, 4.4-million-year-old fossil skeleton, named Ardi by its finders, “Lucy, meet Ardi,” it begins. Prior to this discovery, “Lucy” was the oldest known hominid; she had allegedly lived in the Ethiopian forest about 3.2 million years ago. It is likely that primates started to play with fire when they were evolving from Ardi to Lucy. At the sight of lightning in a dark sky that hits the ground with a roar, a scared animal will run and hide. But, in a primitive society with few entertainment options, humans were able to enjoy this phenomenon as a spectacle, for they knew thunder and lightning was not as dangerous as it appeared. In order to understand the facts of nature as such, a special ability — namely memory — was needed: nobody died from the thunderstorm last night nor from the one the night before… . Such ability to perceive time is closely related to the awareness of death. Human beings learned that everyone would die some day.
Curiosity moved those early humans to investigate the sites that were struck by lightning. Many of them were aflame, hot and bright, so it was hard for them to get too near. After the fire extinguished itself, there remained burned chestnuts and acorns, which smelled good. They tasted good, too. This was the happy encounter between human beings and fire. They utilized fire to warm themselves during winter. It made then live longer. By cooking things, there was suddenly more choice of edible-and delicious-food.
Learning to make fire was no less epochal a stage than the Industrial Revolution, or the advancement of information technology. Fre cast light on the darkness that hung over humans through the ages and lent dramatic effects to religious rites, and even play. Coffin of Light enfolds such memories of fire like a torch.
- Hiroshi Sugimoto