The Dawn of Man

Linus Gelber

Young Rohan gazes down a different evolutionary path at this oddly-shaped hairy guy. Cue Also Sprach Zarathustra.

I spend Thursday afternoon walking down through Central Park to the American Museum of Natural History with my nephew Rohan and my sister-in-law Jane. It's my second visit in a couple of months, after an absence of too many years, and I'm thinking it should really become a regular stop.

Rohan is too little to really appreciate the gorgeous dioramas in the Hall of African Mammals and the adjoining exhibits - he's at that age where he sort of goes, "Oh look, a gorilla," as if that were a more or less normal turn of events. Which, in his mind, it probably is. He gets very into the lights and stairways and running down the corridors, which keeps us pretty busy.

I love the museum if only because you can have exchanges like this:

Linus: Hi - where's the Hall of Ocean Life?
Museum Guard: Go left through that door into the Hall of Biodiversity, then make a right into Ocean Life.
Linus: Great, thanks. ... That was normal.

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