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Having
ripped away the protective ozone layer, the distant explosion bombarded
Earth with shock waves of cosmic rays and by ultraviolet radiation from
the Sun. The result was an environmental disaster that lasted 2,000
years.
For
several years the exploding star would have been brighter than the full
moon. It would have been painful to the eye to look at. It would have
cast shadows and turned night into day.
Those
who were prone to cancer would have died prematurely. But more
important, descendants of the survivors would have developed immune
defences. They would have become stronger and better able to face the
world's dangers.
One of
the chief of these dangers was that of Neanderthal man who fought for
supremacy against Homo sapiens in Western Europe during the last Ice
Age. When modern men arrived in Europe from Asia about 50,000 years ago,
they found that they had company. It was the first and only time that we
shared the planet with another human species.
It
does not seem to have been a happy encounter. More than a century ago,
H.G. Wells gave a glimpse of the conflicts of our ancestors and the
Neanderthals in his frightening short story "The Grisly Folk":
"The
steps of the humans were dogged. . . generation after generation, that
long struggle for existence went on. Thousands of fights and hunts,
sudden murders and headlong escapes there were amidst the caves and
thickets of that chill and windy world."
Then,
very suddenly, about 35,000 years ago, the Neanderthals vanished. Their
fossils exist in plenty from before that time, but none after it. The
long war appears to have been won.
This
surely is suggestive. The struggle between humans and Neanderthals had
been going on for 15,000 years; and then, with comparative suddenness,
the humans were victorious.
Could
there have been a connection between their victory and the supernova
that occurred in the same period? True, the number 35,000 describes a
millennium, not a year, and a millennium is a very long time.
But
there is certainly circumstantial evidence that the supernova had a
long‑term effect on human behaviour in the form of the
proliferation of cave wall paintings around this time. As Denis
Montgomery described it an Internet study ( www.sondela.co.uk
) this
period witnessed a "particular flowering of creativity."
In 2001,
when our ape-like ancestors discover the mysterious black obelisk,
it changes their behaviour. They become inquisitive and aggressive. They
are soon adept at inventing weapons, and have no difficulty in defeating
the enemies they so recently feared. It could have been the same with
the supernova.
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