#thesethingsallhappened

[thesethingsallhappened]

Necessity is the Mother

Anatolia, 6500 BCE. The sun sets high over the world's first proto city, a sprawling maze of stacked clay brick buildings adjoined together with stamped dirt roads. Inside one particularly unkempt house, two friends nearly come to blows:

T: ENOUGH, MY EARLY MODERN HOMIE-NID. WE NEED TO TALK.

P: You know what, T? I just don't get you anymore. First, you figure out the HOUSE. And that was pretty cool. I've liked being housebros with you. But now you yell and you yell, and you stifle my art--

T: YOU PAINTED THE POTS THE SAME COLOR, P.

P: I know, and look at what it's done to the room! Having some green in here is like being outside, without all the deadly nature!

T: THE. SAME. COLOR.

P: Because green really ties the room together--what's your point?

T: WHY DO WE HAVE TWO POTS

P: Well, that one is the eating pot with some bread in it. Actually, I think that bread it starting to get a little old, don't you? Maybe we should take it to the river and feed it to the ducks--

T: AND THE OTHER POT?

P: Well, that other pot is the p--

T: THE POOPING POT, P. IT'S THE POOPING POT. "P'S PAINTED POOPING POT," WE CALLED IT. REMEMBER?

P: I don't see your point, other than my amazing alliteration skills--

T: YOUR ART HAD ME SHIT IN THE BREAD, P. THE FOOD POT SHOULDN'T LOOK LIKE THE POOPING POT. THIS IS THE SECOND TIME--

P: The second time? Wait, what do you mean by the second time, I--

T: I'M FIXING THIS. PAINT THE POT A DIFFERENT COLOR, P.

*T storms out, hurriedly grabbing a torch*

P: Well today has been alarming for more reasons than I care for

*Some hours pass, and P's concern only grows with the sounds of an intense fire, and the digging surrounding the HOUSE.*

T: *breathing heavily* All right, P. Which pot is the pooping pot?

P: The green one, still. The eatin' pot is brown again, I just scratched off the paint.

T: You could've painted it any color you wanted, and you just took the paint off?

P: I wanted it to be as boring as your sense in decoration, T.

T: Whatever. Listen, so I rage-burned up all this shiny shit, and when it burns, it turns into this liquid stuff--

P: The fuck? You burned it, and it got wet?

T: Yeah, listen. After it gets cooled down, it stays in the shape it was when it was wet looking-

P: You mean FIRE turned a SOLID thing into a WET thing?

T: Focus, paleobro. So I poured it over half a pot so it would stay round, but like, hollow inside the curve of it, so when we get a bunch of them together together--

P: THE FUCK KIND OF A FIRE TURNED A THING INTO A WET THING, T? LITERALLY NOTHING DOES THAT. DID YOU MAKE A NEW KIND OF FIRE?

T: LISTEN TO ME NOW I AM TELLING YOU WHAT TO DO WITH THE POOPING POT.

P: You have my interest.

T: So I buried most of the shiny... things. But they're in a line, just like the walls, and they lead up to right here, inside the HOUSE. So if we put the pot over the beginning of the shinies, the poop will go far away and NEVER AGAIN INTO THE OTHER POT.

P: No more emptying the poop pot?

T: No more emptying the poop pot.

P: So, whaddya call it?

T: I don't know just yet. Something simple. It leads the poo away, so maybe...

P: T's poo parade?

T: No.

P: The defecation diversion?

T: No.

P: The great fecal fend-off--

T: WE'LL JUST CALL IT LEAD. LEAD IS FINE.

P: But is it pronounced like lead or--

C: Hey there, my favorite bromo sapiens neighbors! What do you think of making a network of these leads--

T: It's definitely just lead.

C: --where they all connect, and go to the same place?

P: Where does the lead.... lead to, anyway?

T: Well, I hadn't really decided yet. I was thinking maybe near where the grain is growing outside. I think that maybe something about adding it to the soil could--

C: How about the river, where it can just get washed away? It's nearby, it should-

P: NO CRAIG, THINK OF THE DUCKS

T: COME ON CRAIG, THINK OF THE DUCKS.

P: Lead the lead to Craig's house?

T: Lead the lead to Craig's house.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_smelting#Historic_mining_and_smelting_sites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint#History