The Hashrag Diagram

Ages ago, I was sitting somewhere in my village. It was around dusk.  I was lying down in my hut made of mud and straw. It was very calm and pleasant. I could see the horizon and the animals still grazing near the farm. I being the observant and the contemplative being that humans have been since well, since we have been us, was deep in thought. I was slightly worried about the number of huts in my village and the growing populus. Old folks say it wasn't so in the old days. I was thinking about the provision of accommodation and its imminent scarcity for my tribe. It was a troubling thought, but I was not really troubled- let's just say pensive. It was the beginning of the neolithic age which at the time, I didn't know, of course.

It is due to pervasive thoughts like these that I was not really the most productive member of the society. But, in my untamed and raw mind, I was solving a complex problem of housing my tribemen, who were oblivious to an imminent insufficiency of real estate. It was here, that, my dear reader, I, yes I, came up with the idea of tiered housing. I called it this (perhaps a colloquial translation of this, but you get the idea) in my solitude. Numerous generations passed since then and such arrangements started to be called apartments. What I will, though, not take credit for, is the idea of escalators. I didn't have the energy (or the imagination) to come up with another useful upgrade to my already genius idea quite right then. What I did come up with was the idea of ladders. Yes, it was me. Not the same evening, but rather, in a continuation of the same thought (while strolling in a nearby cave). I even etched this idea in the stones (in my personal artistic expression), which, in their limited understanding of the early expressionism, or perhaps sheer laziness that all future generations can generously be accused of, my future generations recognised as the hashtag diagram.