Why Men Love Backyard BBQing

"You're obsessed. That's what you are," shouted his Cro-Magnon wife from the smokey darkness behind him. The Cro-Magnon husband didn't answer. He just continued to stare. It hadn't snowed for at least a month, and here and there patches of green were beginning to show through the tundra.

"Receded," he muttered. "Definitely receded." He looked up at the morning sky. Despite the thin cloud cover, a pale hint of sun could just be seen shining wanly overhead. 

"It's receded!" He shouted over his shoulder to his wife. "The glacier, maybe only a few feet, but definitely receded. Do you know what that means? It means it's finished. The Ice Age is over!"

"That's nice, dear," his wife called back uninterestedly. "But you know we've got the Neanderthals coming for lunch today, and you promised you'd finish painting the cave before they arrive. What are they going to think of us with your bison mural only half-done?"

The Cro-Magnon husband, however, had other plans. "No time for cave-painting today," he called. "Besides, if you really want to impress those Neanderthal friends of yours, I've a much better idea."

The Cro-Magnon wife may have said something in reply, but the Cro-Magnon husband was no longer listening. His mind was made up, and already he was gathering up a bundle of firewood. A few minutes later he emerged from the cave and, the firewood tucked under one muscled arm and a huge hunk of raw mammoth steak clutched in his enormous fist, began striding purposefully towards the small rock pile that had been carefully built a few yards beyond the cave entrance.

"Lunch?!" he muttered to himself. "I'll show those Neanderthal's how we do lunch...the new-fashioned way!"

And so began, as any paleontologist could tell you, men's love of backyard BBQing. And why, despite the passage of thousands of years, does it continue? You could say it's in their DNA.