If you were able to time travel, and also able to climb up the highest swamp tree to get a good view of the beach, all the Sticks would look alike. However, there were many different tribes - and each tribe tended to Stick together, for the most part: The Maples were - on the whole - pretty conceited because they had sweet sap running through their veins. They stood around the beach with their branches bent on their hips, and scoffed at the other sticks. The Ash tribe didn’t bother taking the Maples seriously. They were simply too hip for that. Also, the Ashes were too busy playing Ring around the Rosy to really even Notice the Maples. The Pines were all in love with various sticks in other tribes, and mooned around Pining like crazy. The Apples told jokes and laughed a lot. The Elms were a sad bunch - they had the unfortunate ability to see into the future. There were many more tribes too.
So many tribes, only so much space, only so much food to go around. At that point the Stick Creatures were still eating fish and plankton. You’ll recall from the last entry that they had to return to the swamp waters every 3 hours. That’s when they’d hydrate their bark, as well as eat. But you can imagine….as time went by and millions of Stix trudged into the water every 3 hours, finally there weren’t many fish left. Things were beginning to become complicated.

At first the stix were amphibious.  Thousands of them, possibly millions hung around close to the shore (the original ’shore’ was a continuous sandy beach that extended around the whole earth, although at that time the earth was flat, its length was the length of the circumference of the spherical shape it would eventually become) because they couldn’t live on land or in the air unless they retreated to the murky swamp waters every 3 hours.  No compromise.  It was kind of like Cinderella.  Sticks, by nature, are naturally curious and every now and then a stick wandered off in search of a party or a Ball - into the wilderness that lurked beyond the beach.  Carbon evidence shows that when these unconventional sticks, who - of course - didn’t wear watches, suddenly realized their time was almost up, they made a wild dash back to the beach.   If they didn’t make it in time, they turned into rocks.  So, as you can imagine, rocks began to multiply on that very large beach.

Picture it.  A truly vast beach sandwiched between  a giant swamp  and a primeval jungle, populated by billions of stick creatures and rocks.  What did they eat?  Vegetarian or meateaters?  Did they multiply?  What did they do with their days?  Nights?  Who were their predators?  What did they do for fun??

Stay tuned.

Apparently (and remember –this is still just a theory, but think about it. Who’s going to Question Stephen Hawking’s theories????) a mysterious force, directly related to The Force in the Star Wars chronicles, caused this huge honker of a stick to spontaneously explode. As one might imagine, the universe was tremendously hot as a result of particles of both matter and antimatter rushing apart in all directions. As it all began to cool, at around 10^-43 seconds after the explosion, there was an asymmetry in favor of matter. As a direct result of an excess of about one part per billion, the universe was able to mature in a way favorable for matter to persist. Essentially what occurred, in layman’s terms,  is the sticks became the planets. Um, except for Earth. It turns out, our funny planet was partially formed out of Termite flesh!

Over the billions of years a vast chemical change took place in our planet, and by the time the dinosaurs roamed the earth, all that was left of the original monster stick were little sticks, kind of splinters, lying around on the floors of the oceans and swamps.  Hawking is still scratching his head about what happened to the termite part - though he’s come up with some pretty accurate wild guesses…….   Read the last post, below, to find out what happened next.

In the next post we will follow the sticks on their evolutionary journey. We will also be Branching off the main track, by exploring the fascinating mythology and belief systems that have always dogged the scientists’ efforts and theories. Although, naturally, we are solidly on the side of Science, we feel that people can believe what they want to believe about the history of Sticks. Hey, it’s a free country.

Around the end of the Mezozoic, in the Cretaceous era (about 60 million years ago) the sticks began sprouting branches. Imagine a pollywog, and you’ll get the general idea. At first the branches were like fins, and the Sticks had a joyous time swimming around, playing Marco Polo, and escaping the dinosaur’s claws. But as the decades passed the limbs grew longer, sturdier, and more flexible. It was at this point in their development when these stick creatures - for creatures are what they then were - began crawling towards the shore.