The First Kill and the Conquest of Outer Space 413
When I watched "2001: A Space Odyssey" for the first time, directed by Stanley Kubrick, I must have been around 12 to 14 years old. Obviously, I understood absolutely nothing. I watched it driven purely by my affinity for science fiction, more specifically for the theme of space. However, when I watched it again almost 20 years later, already graduated as a biologist, I arrived at an understanding of the first act that I believe few people have had. At least that was my perception, since none of the people I spoke to about it saw the connection that I am about to present.
There is a striking scene in the film that I call “The Cut”: the abrupt transition from the first to the second act, in which an ancestral primate of humankind, holding a bone, throws it into the air, and the camera follows the bone as it rises until the director cuts to a space station in a future time.
The message I perceived was that, at the moment these hominids began to consume meat, since before that they gathered seeds, ate roots and vegetables alongside herbivorous animals, there was a significant change that, in my view, represented an evolutionary leap. When an individual noticed the skeleton of an animal, there was a long, robust bone, probably a femur. He picked up this bone and began to manipulate it until he discovered that it could be used as a weapon. Wisely, the director alternates scenes of this individual testing the new weapon with scenes of him killing an animal that lived among them, followed immediately by scenes of them feeding on the meat of that slaughtered animal.
We know that, among all sources of protein, meat has the highest protein content in the diet, and it is very likely that this increase in protein intake in the diet of our ancestors enabled an increase in brain mass and, consequently, an increase in cranial volume. This can be observed by comparing skulls of other closely related primates, such as chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, and even fossil skulls that have been found. This difference is evident, allowing us to conclude that this was what propelled us evolutionarily in relation to our relatives within the primate order.
It is clear in the scenes that, in addition to using the bone as a tool to kill prey, it was also used as a weapon to attack other groups or to defend against them, since behavior related to dispute and conquest has always been part of our construction as a biological species.
And what is the relationship between all of this and the famous “cut” at the end of the film’s first act? It is that, at the moment our ancestors began to feed on meat, a process of brain enlargement began, which led to an increase in intelligence, an essential condition that would later make possible the conquest of outer space, as shown in the abrupt cut from the scene of the bone being thrown into the air to a space station in orbit.
Well, this was my free interpretation of that important moment in the film. For this reason, I invite everyone to take a careful look at the messages that are conveyed, whether in films, songs, or works of art in general. The author has the need to communicate something through their art.
