A couple was walking across the savannah in East Africa at the beginning of the rainy season. It was the age of the Pliocene Epoch, in the Third Era, which is to say time immemorial, and the woman and the man still looked a lot like apes, truth be told, although they walked upright and had no tails.
The Sadiman volcano was belching ash from its crater unremittingly, and the rain of ash preserved the couple’s footprints, across all the histories lost in time.
Beneath the grey blankets of volcanic ash, the tracks remained intact. Those footprints tell us today that the woman and man had been walking side by side when, at a certain point she stopped, hesitated, turned away, and took a few steps on her own before eventually returning to the path they shared.
Thus, the oldest human traces left us a token of doubt. Much time has passed. The doubt remains.

Eduardo Galeano