On the Artificial Creation of the Gremlins

Of all theories concerning racial origins, the proposition that Gremlins were manufactured is perhaps the most difficult to kill, chiefly because Gremlins themselves find it hilarious and frequently encourage it.

The tale holds that some vanished civilisation designed them as maintenance creatures: small enough to crawl inside engines, clever enough to repair machinery, dexterous enough to manipulate fine mechanisms, and temperamentally incapable of leaving any device unexamined. The modern Gremlin’s notorious fascination with gears, boilers, locks, electrical apparatus, chemical valves, and objects bearing warning labels is presented as hereditary evidence of this original purpose. There are, I admit, moments when one understands how the idea arose.

Unfortunately for the theory, Gremlin remains considerably predate every known machine civilisation capable of such an undertaking. Skeletal finds from the Lower Rusk deposits are anatomically indistinguishable from modern Gremlins and exceed the earliest known precision metallurgy by several millennia. Their peculiar manual dexterity is likewise not a singular adaptation for machinery; it is equally useful for climbing, burrowing, extracting food from narrow cavities, and stealing another researcher’s instruments while he is attempting to catalogue them. Proponents respond by suggesting an even older civilisation, now wholly vanished, a manoeuvre popular because an extinct civilisation leaves very few colleagues available to object.