It was a metaphor that felt natural. There probably wasn’t one person who invented cave paintings, any more than there was a literal ‘first man’, but it makes sense to (to me) to use it in a poem, as a metaphor, because it makes a more concrete image than trying to be literal. Also, I guess I assumed that on lesswrong, no one would interpret ‘the first man’ in the Christian sense.
I perceived it as “the first man that held a stick” and didn’t notice the other way of seeing it.
It was a metaphor that felt natural. There probably wasn’t one person who invented cave paintings, any more than there was a literal ‘first man’, but it makes sense to (to me) to use it in a poem, as a metaphor, because it makes a more concrete image than trying to be literal. Also, I guess I assumed that on lesswrong, no one would interpret ‘the first man’ in the Christian sense.