A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ASCENDANCY OF CHAIRS OVER TABLES, AND THE DOMESTICATION OF THE LATTER BY THE FORMER
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Above: A "wild" table, "rearing". Such tables can be very dangerous, and should on no account be approached by humans. Alas, wild tables are almost unknown nowadays. This photograph was taken in 1936.

Before the arrival of chairs on this planet, Tables ruled supreme. Thus, many cave paintings of the Late Stone Age depict herds of wild tables attacking sheep, oxen, or occasionally, Reindeer. One particularly fine neolithic picture in the caves of Lovail, Southern France, depicts a herd of tables in the final stages of killing a sabre-toothed tiger. Such incidents must have been rare, but surely presented a magnificent spectacle to the earliest humans.

How different those tables were to the tables of today! It seems scarcely credible - looking across the row after row of domesticated tables populating human habitations today - that the table was once undisputed master of the Earth. Even man used to be wary of hunting them. The earliest humans would characteristically trap tables in pits in the ground, before spearing them to death. The table would then be sacrificed to the gods, during periods of strife. They were too formidable to eat.

Tables were first domesticated by chairs in 1539 BCE, and after the arrival of the Mach 1, wild tables were ruthlessly hunted to extinction. The last wild table ran amok in Chicago in the 1930s, and was eventually gunned down by policemen. Despite an attempt by a consortium of zoologists to purchase the corpse for the Progress of Science Society in New York, it was purchased at auction by the circus owner, Mr Ron "The Professor" Jolly. For five years it was exhibited across America, drawing vast crowds. When World War II forced the closure of Jolly's circus in 1942, the stuffed wild table promptly disappeared. It has never been seen since, despite an offer (still in effect today) of $50,000 dollars for its safe recovery, by the University of West Colorado.

Several fine skeletal remains of ancient tables can be seen in the Natural History museum, London.

Above: The tragic result of a battle-to-the-death between a wild table and an unfortunate chair. Chairs usually triumph in such encounters, but often die from their wounds, or from shock, very shortly afterwards.

Above: Tables in their domesticated state. The presence of many chairs "shepherding" these specimens from behind is worthy of note. Ninety-nine per cent of tables on planet Earth are domesticated like these, and the gene-pool has been drastically reduced as a result. Some experts are now calling for wild tables to be preserved in zoos.

Above: Some wild tables, like these rare "picnic tables", prove to be immune to domestication. As a rule, they are chained up and shipped intact to the planet Tharg, where they are slaughtered and eaten as a delicacy.

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