Measure for Measure. . .The Naked Truth

If Elephants Had Hands. . . .

     They have a childhood that lasts ten years.
They develop adult characteristics during their
adolescence, lasting until age sixteen.  They
become sexually mature around this time,
but normally do not engage in coitus until
reaching age eighteen or twenty.


     They live in a complex social structure
that values good communication, mutual
support and life-long social bonds.  Their
average life span is the biblical three-score
and ten.


     They are most commonly called 
elephants by the talking monkeys.


     They exhibit a degree of nascent 
religious thought by remembering their
departed loved ones with regular visitations
to their final resting places and by touching
and arranging the bones, as did the 
Neanderthals, who were the first talking
monkeys to attend to their dead with burial
and rudimentary ritual.


     The bond of extended childhood
experienced by these two very different
creatures engenders the childhood belief
in a life beyond death, the fear of a painted
devil, and the worship of dirty gods.


     Childhood's Beginning is the God Gene.*

*THE GOD GENE HYPOTHESIS--
     If an animal's juvenile period is 25% or more of its average
     life span, the animal will exhibit the "God Gene."
                                                    ----The Thane of Towson