Sunday, August 28, 2011

Old Friends

I have always wondered why small children are so delighted with dinosaurs. Its seems instinctive, like a race memory. They seem to want to work and co-operate with them. Books and games like Dinotopia are popular. I have come up with only one idea why so far.
As we all know, human beings and dinosaurs did not walk the earth at the same time. Dinosaurs were around long before homosapiens. However, our probably quite crafty ancestors were around in the age of the dinosaur. When the dinosaurs were in their heyday, our ancestors were small furry rodent like creatures, yet to evolve into lemurs, monkeys and apes. I suspect we might have stayed close to large predatory dinos for protection. Smaller creatures would hunt us, and the big dinos would hunt our predators. We would have been too small for the large dinosaurs to bother eating. We may have even deliberately lead the small predators to the large dinosaurs to get rid of them and to work in a symbiotic relationship.
Or maybe it isn't some old instinct, it's just that kids like big monsters that roar.