Religion, belief, superstition, ritual, psychological mis-perception, distortion, veils, clouds ..... not to mention power and fear.

....the 'serpentine' river...

Here, the massive river Amazon, outlet for thousands of tributaries which could, depending on conditions, all flood simulataneously, turning this huge waterway into an incomprehensible torrent, beyond imagination. So huge is the waterflow at times that the river completely obliterates it's banks and defines a completely new course for itself .

Raw nature.

This is what the early human, as it emerged from millions of years of evolutionary changes, had to contend with. A natural environment that defined it's life and could, at any moment, end it.

Nature has no designs, feelings, will or purpose. It is ,rather, an everlasting,evolving process.

Nature, that all powerful force, at times could exhibit forces well beyond the comprenesion of mankind , for even the forces exhibited on thias small planet of ours are but breezes to the tempest that continues to evolve in outer space.

All consuming fires raged, tossed down from the violent skies.
We live, if we could only get our minds around it, in a cosmic shooting gallery which could end our planet's existence in a split second.

So much power, all of it caste down from the skies.

No wonder that early human's attention was so riveted upon the sky !!

These forces mentioned above were only some of the colossal natural elements that the evolving being, on it's path of development, faced in it's daily survival. These were not the only profound difficulties that faced it for many other powerful creatures also strove to survive, most of which probably saw the evolving 'ape' as a food source. It is hard for us now who live in a relatively safer time, to comprehend the danger that faced our ancestors.

Unlike other creatures, many of which, such as those in the crocodile family, had survived from the age of the dinosaur and for some natural, biological reason were not evolving in the similar manner that our ancestors were, the evolving ape had been transformed from a strictly reactive being, buffeted by whatever nature threw at it , our ancestors had acquired the ability which we may now perhaps best describe as 'self awareness' , a quality which began the process of separation from the strictly 'animal' world.

Somewhere in the recesses of the brain of those which we have evolved from, an electrical tributary burst into new territory, giving this creature the ability to 'control' it's life to some extent. Perhaps it came , as was suggested by Sir Arthur Clarke's book, '2001- A Space Odyssey' the moment the ape first grasped onto and raised, in anger, an animal's dried leg bone above it's head.

More than likely it was a tiny haemmorhage that expanded the brain's capacities, driven by the pressure of fear and the urge to survive, that opened up this creature's awareness of it's precarious life situation and drove it to make use of this weapon in self defence.