Our Great, Great, Great Gandad The Goat!

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NEWS Anthropologists Trace Human Origins Back To One Large Goat 'Wait, That Can't Be Right,' Scientists Say the ONION | ISSUE 47•07 Researchers say their goat-human evolution theory, on second thought, does feel a little off. NEW YORK — Hello, this is Anderson Cooper reporting for Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN. At this time, an international team of anthropologists announced Monday it had traced the lineage of Homosex... sapiens! Homo sapiens! back to a single large Pliocene-era goat. "We have mapped out each of the diverse branches of the human family back to the dawn of our species," Douglas Ochs of Columbia University told me, singling me out from about two dozen other reporters gathered at the press conference to make this announcement, "and found that the common ancestor of all living humans was an immense and cognitively advanced goat that roamed the earth 3.4 million years ago, foraging for... uh..." Mr. Ochs paused for a moment. "Hmm," Mr. Ochs continued. "You know what? Now that I'm actually saying it out loud, it's starting to sound a little weird. Am I... is this the right research paper?" He turned around to check with his assistant. After staring down at his notes and then quickly shuffling through some files, a visibly flustered Ochs called for more aides to cut the looping CGI animation being projected behind him, which showed several horned proto-humans covered in thick full-body coats of mohair walking across an African savanna. Anthropologists claim the early human pictured above "subsisted largely on...wait, is that really the right picture?" "If everyone could just give me a minute—this all made sense when we started the press conference," Ochs said. "Kevin, can you hand me that folder?" Funded by a grant from the Smithsonian Institution, the 17-year inquiry into the origins of the human race brought together 12 top anthropologists from around the world to pursue the single-large-goat theory, which participants in Monday's conference assured press members "felt more plausible when we came up with it, really it did." The landmark study culminates in this week's release of a 270-page report explaining the structure of prehistoric humans' short, upturned woolly tails and identifying the roots of early Indo-European language in goat bleating, which, Ochs stated, "maybe [they] should have double-checked real quick" before the paper went to publication. "There may be some slight inconsistencies in a few of our results, but I assure you these bone samples and behavioral analyses are all, well... look, I'm not going to stand here and tell you they're not a little ridiculous-looking," said Regina Hubbard-Price, associate director of the American Anthropological Association. "Obviously, with hindsight, yes, it's somewhat odd that our theory presupposes complex hunter-gatherer societies composed of large, 250-pound bipedal goat-men. But a lot of thought went into this, I swear." "Maybe we should have listened to Cliff [Geertz] back at the beginning when he kept emphasizing that humans don't look like goats," Hubbard-Price added. As their colleagues huddled together and whispered behind them, researchers from Australia and Japan explained how one 6-foot-tall goat with a hominid skeletal structure spawned numerous goat-human hybrids over a period of 1.8 million years. In a series of PowerPoint slides, they then showed that our ancestors used their prehensile upper lips to perform basic agricultural tasks and stomped out crude pottery with their cloven feet, theories that team members stopped reading aloud to the assembled press audience almost immediately after reaching the words "cloven feet." "Okay, so I'm reading this now, and it says, 'After trotting out of Africa nearly 2 million years ago, our earliest ancestors used their strong hooves and hindquarters to climb up steep mountain slopes in search of delicious moss,'" British anthropologist Oliver Cranmore, pointed at me [it must be my white hair] reading from the report [it stands out, you know, my hair] and shaking his head. "The thing is, I think I actually wrote that part. And I remember feeling very confident and excited about it at the time. This is weird." He kept looking, back and forth, at the papers he had in his hand and me. I swear I saw him smiling at me a sly smile that looked inconclusive with his words.

After opening the floor to questions, researchers said they were now able to pinpoint what should have been warning signs that their findings were problematic, such as the moment 10 years ago when none of them could account for why present-day humans don't have horns, or the realization in the spring of 2004 that goats today exhibit virtually no humanlike characteristics whatsoever.

In spite of such incongruities, most of the scientists maintained that much of the physical evidence appeared to corroborate the goat - human connection, from countless Paleolithic cave paintings of goats, to the fact that many of man's earliest gods and demons took the form of goats, to colleague Lou Samedi's narrow, pointy beard.

"You know what? This might actually still be right," said University of California professor Han Choi, looking at me while leafing through printouts of data. "Some male goats can reach almost 160 pounds, and that's pretty close to a normal-sized man."

"So, if you think about it," Choi added before trailing off. "Hold on, sorry." He seemed to apologize directly at me.

I raised my eyes trying to look at my own hair, impossible, I know, I hoped it was, as always, impeccable, and I left.