 the sun to rise in the sky, then fall and disappear into the night. Human beings could think about what happened in the past, and they could think about what might happen in the future. Right now, you might be thinking about what I just said, or perhaps you are wondering what I'm going to say next! The minds of the first people, just like yours and mine, were able to imagine answers to the questions they asked themselves, and they were able to find many ways of discovering the reasons for things.
This ability to think, to wonder and imagine was what enabled human beings to invent language, so that they could tell each other what they were thinking. It was how numbers, mathematics, and geometry came to be. Art and music were created by the first humans, too. It is thanks to them that we have statues and paintings to enjoy, and songs to sing, for the first humans taught each other to do these things, and that knowledge has been passed on to us.
The first humans were not suited for any particular part of the earth. You may think that this must have been a terrible thing, and perhaps you are partly right, because this meant that they couldn't just live somewhere without any trouble. But this turned out to be a great gift, too. You see, because they had their minds with which to think and imagine, and because they had hands with which to work, human beings could say when the weather got cold and the snow began to fall: "I'm cold! I need some sort of covering for my body, to keep me warm like the lion's fur keeps it warm. Some sort of a shelter, like the nest of the squirrel would also keep out the snow and the cold!"
And so, human beings invented clothing and houses. They didn't need bodies that were especially adapted to a particular place in the world. Instead they used what they found around them to adapt the environment to themselves! In this way, human beings spread across the world, and found ways to live in the plains of the lion, the forest of the deer, and the icy lands of the seals. The human beings of those 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 live