Grasshoppers clatter away from me as I walk the verge of a country road. Crickets chirp from hiding places in the unkempt thatch of grass. A fritillary butterfly wings past. Every minute or two, I pass through a thin cloud of midges and I wave my hands to sweep away their mote-like bodies. The cicadas, loud and persistent yesterday afternoon, give only sporadic croaks and stuttering whines in the cool morning.
On one side of the road, exposed rock the color of raw liver angles up the valley slope. Entombed within this stone are the ancestors of the insects that fly and sing around me. One of this fossilized swarm bears the earliest known sound making structure of any animal, a ridge on the wing of an ancient cricket. This fossil is the oldest direct physical evidence of sonic communication.
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