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In a time before history, humans lived in caves and traveled the earth in search of game to hunt, fish to catch, and fruits and berries to gather. By then they had invented stone tools and made extensive use of them. They would use blunt stones to fashion chunks of obsidian into sharp stones, and they would use these sharp tools for various purposes, one of which was cutting the hides of animals to make rudimentary clothing. In those times, human beings were eminently practical, and their pastimes derived from their labors. The process of blunt stone fashioning sharp stone fashioning hides gave rise to one such pastime. In this predecessor to all games, each man had a pouch containing a blunt stone, a sharp stone, and a piece of hides, and they would simultaneously reach in and pull out one of the three items, and whoever had pulled out the item that could not be fashioned by any of the others would win. Cavemen were simple-minded, but they were not fools, and soon they discovered that a blunt stone could not lose, since it could not be fashioned by anything else. Once they had discovered this strategy, they continued playing the game, since it was the only one they had, but now everyone would always pull out the blunt stone so it would always be a tie, which led to disputes and strife within the tribe.

It was then that one of these prehistoric men made a mental leap that would change the course of human history. He realized that the stones and hides game, in its existing form, was doing a lot more harm then good. It was then that he was able to abstract (!) from reality, perhaps for the first time in human history, and come up with a new rule by which hides would smother the blunt rock. This rule had no basis in reality, for, of course, one did not use animal hides to fashion blunt rocks, nor were blunt rocks living and susceptible to being smothered! But this man, for the first time thinking of the game as an abstract construct, realized that this rule would make the game better. And so, with blunt rock beating sharp rock, sharp rock beating hides, and hides beating blunt rock, the game became the first version of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Its effect on human development, however, was far greater than simply giving humans a good way to amuse themselves, for the game's creator, in thinking beyond concrete reality, first introduced the idea of abstract reasoning which lies at the foundation of all human progress. The rest, as they say, is history.

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