Collecting goes back several million years and then some. Today we watch grown men on television digging holes in someone's back garden and getting extremely excited about a piece of pottery or small adornment that is corroded beyond recognition that a long departed ancestor collected several million years ago. Our television archaeologists call in a mechanical digger to shift several tons of dirt to discover nothing and then explain to the viewer over the next hour exactly what all this means to us today and what our ancestors were like then.

Most collectors now that it is not necessary to dig holes in other peoples gardens to find something of value, we have replaced holes with charity shops, junk shops and antique dealers though man appears to have a preoccupations with digging holes and hording, you only have to watch children digging up their parents favourite plants to realise it is a natural instinct and only need look at ourselves to realise collecting tat is inbreed. The signs are refusing to throw anything away and when we do we replace it with something similar that we brought at a bargain price..

There is a point in history that we know little of, did the caveman collect and if he did why? Initially our collecting instinct must have been that of the squirrel or the pack-rat hording food out of necessity and in preparation for a time experience had taught us that it would not be available. Our initial hording instincts may have been food related, the odd horde of nuts, dried fruit and berries and possibly a favourite stone to crack the nuts.

As hunter gatherers man would have found it difficult to collect anything large as the energy required in moving it to follow the food would have outweighed its usefulness so whatever the caveman horded would have been lightweight, probably a favourite fur, the teeth form a good kill or a good club. All things we could wear or adorn ourselves with that had some use or link with the past.

Then we got religion. Man probably had religion from the moment he set foot on earth, we need religion to explain the unexplainable otherwise we would not be able to cope with life as we move from one disaster to another. Having religion gives us another day or two to cope, religion provides a future, a better world and someone to blame for our ills even if that person is ourselves because we failed to follow a certain ritual that if we follow it in the morning when the sun rises life will get better.

Religion needed to be portable, something we could carry as we followed the food from woods to plain, experience taught us to fast when following the food at certain times of the year, we could pray to the sun, moon, stars and wind. Places on our food route could be spiritual, trees set in a certain why to form a natural cathedral or rocks providing the same service. So whatever it was man initially collected had to be portable, could be worn or hung around our neck or attached to our body burning little energy.

Perhaps those collections were a few teeth, seashells, small bones an unusual stone or piece of ore that linked us to better days, displayed our wealth and indicated to others we met that we were good hunters and providers, our display driving interlopers away without a fight or attracting new members to our clan and increasing the gene pool.

At some stage during our evolution we discovered animal husbandry and farming, built elaborate shelters and settled down, then we discovered smelting and began make metal objects. Our religion became static so we made effigies we could place in our homes to protect us against evil spirits. As a community and humans we needed to maintain our links with the past so we appointed a community historian who collated and retained our history speaking it often to the people of our clan.

Like the wheel no one is quiet sure who invented it and exactly when but the most important invention for collectors came about. It was an invention that created new industries, artists, the printing press, the retail industry, the junk shop, antiques markets, spirit level and possibly even the motorcar and certainly the flat pack industry, out of town shopping malls and Ikea, such a momentous invention was never recorded in history or attributed to one man it was the shelf. Of course before he invented the shelf he invented houses with square walls.

Man in his infinite wisdom had created something he would regret for the rest of his and his male offspring's life, something he would be nagged about for several millennium, told that it was not level or secure. The woman of the man that first put up the shelf sat for days looking at it and wondered what her stupid man had invented, what use was it? After several days she realised he had only created something to gather dust and create more work so she placed a load of junk on it that someone had given her and forgot about it.

Perhaps it was at the gods next celebration when the woman of the house invited neighbours round to exchange gifts and share food that the wives of the visiting men noticed the cheap gifts they had exchange the previous year had been given a place of prominence in the host home and felt out done.

Arriving home after a night on the mead and a good meal the men's wives began nagging their husbands to build a shelf and why had they not thought of it first, their husbands did not love them as much as so and so loved his wife. The berated men called on their friend, the man they knew as Chris the Master of his tribe, the man who had invented the shelf and explained that their wives were carping on about his new invention and offered him several dozen sea shells and selected stones to enter their homes and build shelves.

After several years of building shelves for his friends and family Chris the Master of his tribe was invited to distant villages to build shelves. To cope with the work he trained his male children and tribes children to build shelves and became known as Chris "The Man you ask to enter your home to stop carping wives". This was soon shortened to Chris the Carp-enter and then Chris the Carpenter and the wives in celebration and in remembrance of his original name named a feast day after Chris the Master of his tribe that was soon shortened to Chris t' Mas a day you invite your friends round to eat and exchange gifts for your shelf.

That small invention lead to the creation of the bookcase, the display cabinet, the dresser and even the wardrobe and so man became a collector and invented more and more products to store his collections that probably lead to the invention of the stamp and then the postcard.