Ladies and gentlemen, may I present, aged about 5 million years, weighing in at about 30 kilos (that’s about 4 stone), 4′ 6″ tall (that’s about 1.3 metres), covered in hair and unable to say anything but, “Uurgh”, I give you – Caveman Og!

Now Mr. Og has only the very basic of instincts and interests; mainly to eat, and to make little cavemen. One other thing that Mr. Og does rather well is run. He has to, because even after he invents fire, he is not the top of the food-chain in his part of history! Poor Mr. Og is at the mercy (but mercy doesn’t exist at this time) of anything or anybody else which views him as either enemy or lunch, and for a while Og, and the others of his kind, face extinction.

What is Og’s world like? It is almost an Eden. For a start, apart from the normal animal noises, it is quiet; the loudest noise Og is liable to hear is a thunderstorm. No machines, no aircraft, no vehicles. The plants are much as they are today, but Og doesn’t yet know what to do with them, except eat some and avoid others which do him some damage -  something he learns very quickly! There are a few animals which have since disappeared from the earth, for instance the sabre toothed tiger; which is just one of the animals that Og has to watch out for, but as Og develops tools, he will be able to face even this frightening, savage animal.

The climate is warmer than it is today. The river Nile flows through a vast lush countryside, not a desert. Great forests cover the much of the earth. Indeed, as late as the middle ages, there were forests in Europe that would take a man more than a month to walk through! But there is one thing we would instantly notice – the sweetness of the air. No industry, no man-made pollution – the vast climatic engine driving the world’s weather patterns ensured that the air was regularly cleaned of the only pollutant – volcanic output; and the plants and oceans endlessly and effortlessly cleaned the air and replenished the oxygen.

Now Caveman Og has something that no other animal in his world has – a rag­ing desire to see what is over the next hill; and going to see over that hill is what he does next. Og’s migrations lead him out of Africa, north at first, then east towards the rising sun. Some of his relations do, indeed, go west, but archaeological research shows that the majority of Og’s descendants travel in generally an easterly direction – what he thinks of as the sun’s birth place, and viewing the sun as his god, Og wants to go and visit him.