Daniel Quinn - Ishmael

“Naturally you wouldn’t consider it a myth. No creation story is a myth to the people who tell it. It’s just the story .”

“Okay, but the story I’m talking about is definitely not a myth. Parts of it are still in question, I suppose, and I suppose later research might make some revisions in it, but it’s certainly not a myth.”

“Turn on the tape recorder and begin. Then we’ll know.”

I gave him a reproachful look. “You mean you actually want me to… uh…”

“To tell the story, that’s right.”

“I can’t just reel it off. I need some time to get it together.”

“There’s plenty of time. It’s a ninety–minute tape.”

I sighed, turned on the recorder, and closed my eyes.

“It all started a long time ago, ten or fifteen billion years ago,” I began a few minutes later. “I’m not current on which theory is in the lead, the steady–state or the big–bang, but in either case the universe began a long time ago.”

At that point I opened my eyes and gave Ishmael a speculative look.

He gave me one back and said, “Is that it? Is that the story?”

“No, I was just checking.” I closed my eyes and began again. “And then, I don’t know—I guess about six or seven billion years ago—our own solar system was born…. I have a picture in my mind from some childhood encyclopedia of blobs being thrown out or blobs coalescing… and these were the planets. Which, over the next couple billion years, cooled and solidified…. Well, let’s see. Life appeared in the chemical broth of our ancient oceans about what—five billion years ago?”

“Three and a half or four.”

“Okay. Bacteria, microorganisms evolved into higher forms, more complex forms, which evolved into still more complex forms. Life gradually spread to the land. I don’t know… slimes at the edge of the oceans… amphibians. The amphibians moved inland, evolved into reptiles. The reptiles evolved into mammals. This was what? A billion years ago?”

“Only about a quarter of a billion years ago.”

“Okay. Anyway, the mammals… I don’t know. Small critters in small niches—under bushes, in the trees…. From the critters in the trees came the primates. Then, I don’t know—maybe ten or fifteen million years ago—one branch of the primates left the trees and…” I ran out of steam.

“This isn’t a test,” Ishmael said. “The broad outlines will do—just the story as it’s generally known, as it’s known by bus drivers and ranch hands and senators.”

“Okay,” I said, and closed my eyes again. “Okay. Well, one thing led to another. Species followed species, and finally man appeared. That was what? Three million years ago?”

“Three seems pretty safe.”

“Okay.”

“Is that it?”

“That’s it in outline.”

“The story of creation as it’s told in your culture.”

“That’s right. To the best of our present knowledge.”

Ishmael nodded and told me to turn off the tape recorder. Then he sat back with a sigh that rumbled through the glass like a distant volcano, folded his hands over his central paunch, and gave me a long, inscrutable look. “And you, an intelligent and moderately well–educated person, would have me believe that this isn’t a myth.”

“What’s mythical about it?”

“I didn’t say there was anything mythical about it. I said it was a myth.”

I think I laughed nervously. “Maybe I don’t know what you mean by a myth.”

“I don’t mean anything you don’t mean. I’m using the word in the ordinary sense.”

“Then it’s not a myth.”

“Certainly it’s a myth. Listen to it.” Ishmael told me to rewind the tape and play it back.

After listening to it, I sat there looking thoughtful for a minute or two, for the sake of appearances. Then I said, “It’s not a myth. You could put that in an eighth–grade science text, and I don’t think there’s a school board anywhere that would quibble with it—leaving aside the Creationists.”

“I agree wholeheartedly. Haven’t I said that the story is ambient in your culture? Children assemble it from many media, including science textbooks.”

“Then what are you saying? Are you trying to tell me that this isn’t a factual account?”

“It’s full of facts, of course, but their arrangement is purely mythical.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’ve obviously turned off your mind. Mother Culture has crooned you to sleep.”

I gave him a hard look. “Are you saying that evolution is a myth?”

“No.”

“Are you saying that man did not evolve?”

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

Ishmael looked at me with a smile. Then he shrugged his shoulders. Then he raised his eyebrows.

I stared at him and thought: I’m being teased by a gorilla . It didn’t help.

“Play it again,” he told me.

When it was over, I said, “Okay, I heard one thing, the word appeared . I said that finally man appeared . Is that it?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. I’m not quibbling over a word. It was clear from the context that the word appeared was just a synonym for evolved .”

“Then what the hell is it?”

“You’re really not thinking, I’m afraid. You’ve recited a story you’ve heard a thousand times, and now you’re listening to Mother Culture as she murmurs in your ear: ‘There, there, my child, there’s nothing to think about, nothing to worry about, don’t get excited, don’t listen to the nasty animal, this is no myth, nothing I tell you is a myth, so there’s nothing to think about, nothing to worry about, just listen to my voice and go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep….’ ”

I chewed on a lip for a while, then I said, “That doesn’t help.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you a story of my own, and maybe that’ll help.” He nibbled for a moment on a leafy wand, closed his eyes, and began.

This story (Ishmael said) takes place half a billion years ago—an inconceivably long time ago, when this planet would be all but unrecognizable to you. Nothing at all stirred on the land, except the wind and the dust. Not a single blade of grass waved in the wind, not a single cricket chirped, not a single bird soared in the sky. All these things were tens of millions of years in the future. Even the seas were eerily still and silent, for the vertebrates too were tens of millions of years away in the future.

But of course there was an anthropologist on hand. What sort of world would it be without an anthropologist? He was, however, a very depressed and disillusioned anthropologist, for he’d been everywhere on the planet looking for someone to interview, and every tape in his knapsack was as blank as the sky. But one day as he was moping along beside the ocean he saw what seemed to be a living creature in the shallows off shore. It was nothing to brag about, just a sort of squishy blob, but it was the only prospect he’d seen in all his journeys, so he waded out to where it was bobbing in the waves.

He greeted the creature politely and was greeted in kind, and soon the two of them were good friends. The anthropologist explained as well as he could that he was a student of life–styles and customs, and begged his new friend for information of this sort, which was readily forthcoming. “And now,” he said at last, “I’d like to get on tape in your own words some of the stories you tell among yourselves.”

“Stories?” the other asked.

“You know, like your creation myth, if you have one.”

“What is a creation myth?” the creature asked.