the first person

Before there were people, there was a tribe of apes.

They lived in the green — in the trees and the tall grass — and they did what apes do. They climbed, they slept, they ate bananas. They had no words and no names and no questions. They had only the warm now.

One of them was different. His name, though he did not know it yet, was Jonze.

the ape who stared too long

Jonze was the ape who stared too long. While the others groomed and dozed, Jonze sat at the edge of the clearing and watched the sun sink behind the mountain, and something in his chest ached in a way that was not hunger and not fear. It was a feeling with no name yet, so he just called it the ache, and he kept it quiet.

the first word

One evening the tribe ate bananas as the light went soft. Jonze peeled his slowly. He looked at the fruit in his hand. He looked at the sky, which was the same color as the fruit. He looked at the peel on the ground, lying there like a little yellow boat.

And Jonze did something no one in the history of the world had ever done. He pointed at the sky and made a sound on purpose. Not a warning, not a cry — a name.

“Banana,” he said, and pointed at the fruit. “Banana,” he said, and pointed at the sky.

That was the first word, and the first lie at the same time, because the sky was not a banana. But inside that tiny lie was the seed of every story ever told.

the first drawing

The next day Jonze found a burnt stick where lightning had split a tree. He dragged it across a flat stone and it left a dark mark. He drew a circle. Two eyes. A mouth. He stepped back.

The drawing did not move or breathe, but a face looked back — his own, or something very like it. “Jonze,” he said, and touched the stone. That was the first self-portrait, and the first time anyone had ever met themselves.

The tribe gathered and tilted their heads. A few picked up burnt sticks and made marks of their own — clumsy, true marks. Soon the clearing was full of drawings: suns and bananas and apes, and also things that had never existed anywhere. Because the first artist had also been the first inventor.

the first question

One night Jonze watched the sun go down and, for the first time, asked the question instead of just feeling the ache.

“Why?” he said to the sky.

No one answered. The sun kept going down. But the question stayed, hanging in the air like a smoke ring, and the tribe felt it settle over them like a light rain. Why, why, why. It was the heaviest little word in the world, and once it was said, it could never be unsaid.

the first counting

Winter came. The tribe had always slept through the cold. But Jonze stayed awake and noticed the stars returned to the same places, and he began to press small marks into the mud for each night. One. Two. Three. Four.

He was counting. That was the first time the past had ever been kept and the future had ever been measured. Time had a shape now. It could be held.

The others watched and, slowly, one by one, began to count with him. First in the mud, then in their heads. They taught their children, and their children taught theirs. And because they could count, they could share; because they could share, they could plan; because they could plan, they could hope.

the first fire

Then came the first fire. Lightning struck a tree and left a tongue of flame, and every ape ran from it — except Jonze. He walked toward it, slowly, with his burnt stick held out like a question. The fire did not eat him. It warmed him.

He fed it small dry branches, and it grew, and that night the tribe did not sleep in the cold for the first time. They sat in a circle around the light, and their shadows danced on the trees like a second, bigger tribe. The fire was the first home, and the first thing that belonged to everyone at once.

the first song

With the fire came the first song. Someone — maybe it was Jonze, maybe it was the smallest ape, nobody remembers — began to beat a rhythm on a hollow log. Thump. Thump. Thump. Jonze hummed along, low and warm, the same note over and over, and one by one the others joined until the whole clearing was a single beating heart.

Then somebody stood up and moved to the rhythm, and that was the first dance. It was clumsy and wonderful and nobody was good at it, which is exactly how the first dance should be.

the first goodbye

Not all of it was bright. The winter was long, and one of the tribe — the oldest, who had carried Jonze when he was small — grew still and cold and did not wake again. The tribe did not know what to do. They had never seen an ending before.

Jonze sat beside the one who did not wake. He put his hand on the gray fur. And for the first time in the history of the world, someone cried.

That was the first tear, and the first goodbye, and the first memory. Jonze took the burnt stick and drew the old one's face on the flat stone, so the face would stay even after the body was gone. And in that drawing, the old one was still there, sort of, the way a song is still there after it stops.

the first dream

That night Jonze dreamed. He dreamed he was flying over the trees, and the moon was close enough to touch, and when he woke he sat up and told the dream to the first face he saw, with his hands waving.

That was the first story told in the morning, and the first proof that the inside of a head could be bigger than the world.

the telling

Years passed. Jonze grew old and gray and slow, and the tribe grew too. There were fires now, and shelters, and songs, and drawings on every stone, and children who asked “why” so much the elders grew tired — but never too tired to answer.

On his last night, Jonze sat at the edge of the clearing where it had all begun, and watched the sun go down behind the mountain, which was the color of a banana, which was the color of the sky. A young ape — a young person, really — sat down beside him.

“Tell me the first word again,” she said.

Jonze smiled his old, wise smile. “Banana,” he said.