e times were able to imagine things that had never been, and then they were able to make them, just as the human beings of today use their imaginations to think of new things, and then use their hands to make them. You can imagine, for example, a bowl that you want to make from clay, and then you are able to make it. The ability to imagine something new, and then make it, is a power that the very first human beings also had, and it is what enabled them to survive in their world.
Human beings had one other gift. This was the most precious gift of all, and it is what truly made them human beings. Human beings were able to love.
Human beings can love their mother and their father, their sisters, brothers, uncles and aunts. They can love their friends. Human beings love the many people close to them. Humans can also love and care about others they have never met! Think of the child who is hungry in another state, or of people in trouble in another country. They may find that help comes from someone that they didn't even know! It could be you or I, or some other person far away, who heard about their problems, and cared, and did something to help.
The story of human beings began a long time ago on the earth. It is an exciting story, which has chapters that contain the cave lions and cave bears. Other chapters tell about the first people to reach new parts of the earth, and their dangerous journeys over great plains of ice, or raging oceans, or burning deserts. On these voyages into new places that no one had visited before went fathers and mothers, children just like you, and babies, held carefully in their mother's arms.
As different groups of people traveled all over the world, they told of their adventures and their lives by the light of their fires. In the flickering light of the flames, the storyteller would first tell one story, and then another, and the children drank in every word. One day, they would tell the same stories to their children, and perhaps they would add another chapter, telling of their own lives.
Some of these first people left beautiful paintings and carvings for those that followed them. These too told their story. It is a story that we can still understand today, as we find these messages in forgotten caves, and on the sides of ancient boulders.
Other groups of people wrote down the story of their lives. On clay tablets that have been buried in the ruins of deserted cities, and on crumbling scrolls made of papyrus reeds, we are able to read of the lives of ancient kings, and of the adventures of the great heroes of those times. In our minds, we are able to hear the words of people who passed from the earth thousands of years ago.
In the story of human beings you will meet knights in armor, queens in castles, the musicians who wrote the beautiful music that we enjoy today, and the men and women who have made journeys into space. There is an enormous amount to find out about what has been happening since human beings appeared on the earth.
This is the first story that we have had about human beings, but it is not the last! Another day we'll talk more about the first human beings to live on the earth. They lived a very long time ago, but they were just like us.They had a mind with which they could think and imagine, and they had hands with which they could work, and they could love, just like you and I.