Cave Capitalists

To: 2 grunts & 1 cluck
From: 3 clucks & 2 funny back-of-throat noises
Re: Your invention

We over here in the Land North of the Tar Pits Venture Capital Cave were both amused and inspired by your request of funds for your "wheel" project.

Yes, we certainly believe that perpetuation of our species is linked to a wider range of migration patterns, thus the need for development of faster-than-foot technologies. But while your vision of a future in which humans routinely "ride" upon round things have certainly made for some sensational wall paintings that please our herd very much, we simply cannot provide the capital investment your company requires.

Your project is too high-risk, with little promise of return on investment within five cycles of really hot and really, really cold time periods. Plus, what you're proposing is not simply investment in a technology, but would require massive infrastructure changes that would alter transportation as we know it. A complex system of "paths" would need to be dug into the brush to accommodate the "wheels" and other related inventions you say they would enable ("carts," "bicycles" and – we were especially amused by this concept – "Hummers.")

You tell many fanciful stories about what your technology may someday do, yet this "wheel" concept is still just a theory. I realize your team believes it is close to chiseling a proper shape for such a device, but even if a prototype leaves the laboracave, it would need to undergo a series of tests required by the Herd Council before approval could be granted. And we haven't even mentioned mass-production and standardization.

Also, have you ever even considered the societal and ethical implications of such a "wheel" on our society as a whole? Those things could rip up our hunting and grazing land, and even "roll" out of control, destroying all living things in its path.

We recommend you take your funding proposal to the council's high-risk Advanced Technology Program and see if they'll be willing to dip into the herd's banana fund to pay for these far-fetched ideas.

We also recommend you study a project that our firm has decided to back: 4 Oogs and 5 Funny Sqeaky Noises recently discovered that vertical faster-than-foot travel is possible when one jumps off the rocky ledges that lie between our land and the Tar Pits. Surviving members of his company are confident that further tests will achieve sufficient horizontal escape velocity.

Thank you for contacting us, but please confine your dimwitted ideas to the three or four people who read your "clog" (cave log).

Sincerely,

Draped Fish and Jerky's Sons LLC