Teach the Controversy, Teach the Katu's Origin of Mankind Story

"We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation."

Lily Tomlin

I was honeymooning in Laos with the Crazy Cat Lady™ earlier this year in February and on the 11th, while exploring the city of Luang Prabang, we came across the TAEC (Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre) which is an independent non-profit museum that aims to collect, preserve, and interpret the traditional arts and lifestyles of the country’s many and diverse ethnic groups. Even if you are not into tribal culturalism, the air-conditioning here is a welcome respite from the dusty Laotian dry season heat. Or monsoon rains, depending on when you're in the country.

The most interesting exhibit there was a pair of black wood carvings of a dog and an alleged woman which summarily represented the origins of the Katu people. It was said that long ago, a great flood covered the world which killed everything except a woman named Anoi Amek and a dog called Apuu Paner. The dog wished to marry the woman but she - quite understandably - refused the amorous pup. She said that she would only marry the dog if he fetched fire from the top of some mountain and in the first two attempts, the dog failed as the fire he carried was extinguished by the rivers and streams he crossed in his return. At the third attempt, he captured the fire in a gourd tied around his neck and with that prize, won Anoi Amek's hand in marriage. They somehow managed to produce human children who later intermarried, giving rise to the Katu people.

I think that there should be some deleted scenes here preceding the birth of their children but never mind that now.

You can see the fire gourd hanging from the neck of Apuu Paner.

Of course, aside from the impossibility of a global flood, fire surviving in a watertight gourd, a dog which can understand the concept of matrimony, and fertile human children resulting from the union between a Homo sapiens and a Canis lupus familiaris, this myth is no more fantastic than how some Middle Eastern desert people believed that a deity created the first man from dirt and the first woman from his rib, and then commanded them to never eat fruits from a particular tree. A talking snake supposedly tricked them later into disobeying, resulting in their creator cursing them and banishing them from paradise, after which they managed to populate the entire Earth with their incestuous descendants.

If creationists argue that we must teach creationism or intelligent design in schools as a competing theory to evolution, then we must teach the controversy in churches regarding the origins of mankind! It's only fair.



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