If you'd ever watched the opening scene to 2001: A Space Odyssey, you might have come out of the cinema feeling a bit confused as to the real meaning and artistic intent behind Kubrick's masterpiece-- even if your subconscious may have figured it out in a way that you've struggled to put into words, ever since. Before we really dive into it, you can rest assured, that it has little to do with Evolution. In fact, in the universe of 2001: Space Odyssey -- natural selection never quite takes place in the way we normally understand it. In fact -- the monolith presented in 2001: Space Odyssey is something they call a Bracewell Probe, or perhaps more of a Von Neumann Probe; a self-replicating, autonomous machine sent out by an extraterrestrial civilization in order to tamper with, and/or'uplift', a primitive and savage species of apes. The opening scene of the movie starts out with a gang of apes banding together in order to fight over a small pond they found in the middle of the desert, where resources are scarce.