Though little discussed, the ability to send our children back in time is an ability all of us have. This ability has to do with how we choose a mate.

It has been estimated that our lineage of homo departed Africa around 50,000 years ago. From there, the various branchings of humanity began. There is evidence of overlap with Neanderthals in Europe, but there is no certainty of conjugational relations. Regardless, as bands then tribes grew separated by greater geographic spans, the last common descendant between diverging lineage threads grew further apart in distance and in time.

Academics have hypothesized several reasons that humans left Africa. I would suggest that robust language facility had no small amount to do with the compulsion to explore. We might conclude that language was well established because across the planet, most cultures display a relatively small number of left-handers, anywhere from 2-12 %. This number suggests that those that left Africa used the same brain we right-handers have today–larger left lobe with smaller corpus callosum–as opposed to the alternative, earlier left-hander model of both lobes being similarly sized with larger corpus callosum.

We might also consider whether those myths and stories that seem to…

There are many ways to kill a dragon. I counted several hundred strong-man dragon interventions in the almost one hundred books I read when I was snake-charmed by the subject. Courage, strength and cleverness were the qualities looked for in a dragon vanquisher. Many battles led to happy endings where the victor gained a wife.

Myths and legends are a little like spring garden catalogs, offering pictures of the ways a man can gain a mate along with instructions to society and its women on how to best encourage the man’s strong features. Our catalog of stories for the last few thousand years have offered guidance for the families of the women on how to pick strong, protective men for their grown-up little girls. When women began to pick their own husbands, they sought men with qualities that society respected, men with strength and streaks of independence, men who could be relied upon when dragons reared their heads.

Gilgamesh slew a dragon-like creature, a stand-in for the goddess, when records of these stories first emerged. Not just the Indo-Europeans, but Semitic, Asian and aboriginal peoples revel in these tales of acts of courage in gaining honor and a wife. Not…

The symbol of our earliest known religions, back when goddesses ruled the world, was the serpent. The goddess had several familiars or manifestations. The serpent was unique.

“The snake is life force, a seminal symbol, epitome of the worship of life on this earth. It is not the body of the snake that was sacred, but the energy exuded by this spiraling or coiling creature which transcends its boundaries and influences the surrounding world. This same energy is in spirals, vines, growing trees, phalluses, and stalagmites, but it is especially concentrated in the snake, and therefore more powerful. The snake was something primordial and mysterious, coming from the depths of the waters where life begins. Its seasonal renewal in sloughing off its old skin and hibernating made it a symbol of the continuity of life and of the link with the underworld.” Marija Gimbutas, 1989

Over tens of thousands of years, the snake transformed into the dragon. The Western dragon is the serpent demonized by Indo-Europeans who conquered goddess culture. In India, Indo-Europeans demoted serpent deities to a lower caste, suppressing the serpent gods in myth and story. Farther East, the serpent was deified and made magical by the Chinese,…

I have friends with gaydar. Usually women, these friends can conclude a guy is gay after a brief conversation. I don’t think it’s the way they dress or the way they talk. It’s a childlike aspect they pick up on. When they are wrong, and the guy they thought was gay was not, that person had a Peter Pan quality about him.

When I was in college, I evidently jammed some guys’ gaydar. On occasion, I’d have to tell gay guys I was straight. I had girlfriends. It’s just that I was living out the life of my hero, Peter Pan. The Mary Martin version. If there was a major in childhood, I had the course load: children’s lit, art, children’s theatre, developmental psychology, clay, drawing, children’s clinical psychology, etc.

Many years later, when I fell in love for the first time I experienced a powerful connection between Wendy, as she was portrayed in the Mary Martin production of Peter Pan, and the woman I’d fallen in love with. It’s only now, more than 15 years later, that I fully realize why her wearing the Wendy-like white nightgown so filled me with reverence, fear and joy.

I’ve heard of the…