The Science of Discworld II

and an Eve, unless they came with a lot of servants, slaves or concubines.
    The Biblical stories don’t mention those. 6
    1 There’s been a very cute discovery about elephants recently, and the only place we can find to put it is this footnote. (This, after all, is what footnotes are for.) It has been known since 1682 that elephants’ lungs are unusual, without the ‘pleural cavity’, a space between the lungs and the chest wall that is filled with fluid, that most mammals have. Instead of fluid, elephants’ lungs are surrounded by loose connective tissue. It now looks as if this type of lung exists because it lets elephants go snorkelling, breathing through their trunks. In 2001 the physiologist John West calculated that with a normal pleural cavity, the pressure of the water would burst the tiny blood vessels in the pleural membrane and snorkelling could be fatal. We’re now wondering whether the trunk evolved in the ocean as a snorkel. Land vertebrates first evolved from fish that came up on to the seashore. Much later, a variety of mammals went back into the oceans and evolved into several kinds of sea-mammals, the most spectacular modern descendants being whales. We now see that somewhere along the way, some of those water-adapted mammals came back on to the land and turned into elephants. So the elephant is now on its second evolutionary journey out of the water and on to the land. It would be nice if it made up its mind.
    2 See The Science of Discworld , chapter 38.
    3 Peasants do cost.
    4 David Brin fans will know what we mean here: in the Five Galaxies, no race (save for the long-defunct Progenitors) ever became extelligent without the aid of a sponsor race which already was. Save for humans, because even in an SF story we need to feel superior. We are, after all, the True Human Beings.
    5 Always be careful of the twentieth-century ‘story’ of ‘the natives who live in harmony with their environment’. It tends to gloss over the fact that back in history they killed off all the really big animals, and now it’s a choice between harmony and death.
    6 Mind you, Genesis does say that after Cain killed Abel he was exiled to the land of Nod, on the east of Eden, where he ‘knew his wife’ and Enoch was born. It doesn’t tell us how the wife got to Nod in order to be known. She could have been one of those unmentioned servants, slaves or concubines. That, in turn, raises even more problems with the story of Adam and Eve.

ELEVEN
THE SHELLFISH SCENE
    T HE WIZARDS WATCHED CAREFULLY .
    â€˜There’s five of them sitting there with him now,’ said Ponder. ‘And some children. He seems to be getting on well enough.’
    â€˜They’re very interested in his hat,’ said the Dean.
    â€˜A pointy hat always commands respect in any culture,’ said Ridcully.
    â€˜Then why have several of them tried to eat it?’ said the Lecturer in Indefinite Studies.
    â€˜At least they don’t appear to be warlike,’ said Ponder. ‘Let’s go and introduce ourselves, shall we?’
    And, again, when the wizards arrived at the little group around the fire there was the strange sensation of … nothing. No surprise, no shock. The heavy people treated them as if they’d just returned from the bar; their curiosity level extended perhaps to the flavour of crisps they’d brought back, but no further.
    â€˜Friendly souls, ain’t they?’ said Ridcully. ‘Which one’s the boss?’
    Rincewind looked up, and then turned and snatched his hat from a big fist.
    â€˜None of them,’ he snapped. ‘Stop pinching the sequins!’
    â€˜Have you mastered their language?’
    â€˜I can’t! They don’t have one! It’s all point and kick! That’s my hat , thank you so very very!’
    â€˜We watched you walking around,’ said Ponder. ‘Surely you’ve learned something?’
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ said Rincewind. ‘Follow me, and I’ll show you – give me my hat !’
    Holding his sequin-stripped hat firmly on his head with both hands, he led the wizards to a big lagoon on the other side of the village. An arm of the river flowed through it; the water was crystal clear.
    â€˜See the shells?’ said Rincewind, pointing to a large heap a little way from the beach.
    â€˜Freshwater mussels,’ said Ridcully. ‘Very nutritious.