Word: prometheus
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...nameless rock he has no bun and no penny. As he slowly goes mad from hunger while a rainstorm unmercifully keeps him from death by thirst, he imagines that he is Atlas and Prometheus. By the time the gulls have become flying lizards to him, he imagines-in the fictional season's most unpleasant metaphor for the condition of man-the last huge master-maggot of a box previously full of smaller maggots which, he has heard, are cultivated by Chinese gourmets...
...occasion for the tribute was a U.S.-inspired production of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, played partly in the Hamilton English translation and partly in modern Greek. Though the performance was a bit too complicated to arouse noisy enthusiasm, Edith Hamilton's appearance more than made the evening. Over the years she had done as much as any scholar to spread in so eloquent and popular a form the story of the ancient world among English-speaking readers, and last week the Greeks were determined to show their gratitude. In the name of the King, the Minister of Education decorated...
...Prometheus killed with the bones of his victims: the jawbones of prehistoric buffalos, zebras and giraffes, the tusks of hyenas and saber-toothed tigers; stiletto-sharp shattered thighbones. For a small creature, he struck his victims with amazing force. One Makapansgat cave contains the skull of a young man-ape who was killed, Dr. Dart believes, with a bludgeon blow to the chin that shattered the jaw on both sides of the face and knocked out all front teeth...
Modern Heel. The dexterity with which prometheus killed indicates, says Dr. Dart, that he possessed a heel much like modern man's. While an ape can squeeze and crush, it takes a heel-furnished man to "rotate the whole body around stabilized feet and therewith dance a jig, plant a fist in a face, throw an opponent in wrestling or hurl a projectile with accuracy." Prometheus was capable of doing all these things, and his dexterity enabled him to fashion crude stone tools with a cutting edge to slice up his victims after he killed them. Strangely, he often...
...Prometheus probably had a communication system of sorts, says Dr. Dart. Hunting and the techniques and tools of killing probably forced him to develop "an adequate number of distinctive gestures and signals . . . for communicating [his] intentions while assembling and employing tools . . . and dividing the spoils of the chase." His proudest accomplishment may even have been the use of fire. Dr. Dart has discovered a number of charred animal bones in the Makapansgat caves which he thinks might have been scorched in a man-ape bonfire...