Maligning primitive man

Lascaux cave painting, Lascaux, France, 15,000 BCE

The other night, we had dinner with the paleontologist Duncan Caldwell. He is in the area at the moment visiting local caves, and he enthralled us with stories about early man and how his belief structure was tightly integrated with nature and survival.

I often describe a neighbour in Rignac as a bit of a Neanderthal. Last week for example, he sprayed his land, bordering on my freshly cultivated vegetable patch, with weed killer. I realised...