The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the dinosaurs had long since ended. Here on the Equator, in the continent which would one day be known as Africa, the battle for existence had reached a new climax of ferocity, and the victor was not yet in sight. In this barren and dry land, only the small or the swift or the fierce could flourish, or even hope to survive.
A new animal appeared on the planet, spreading slowly out from the African heartland. It was still so rare that a hasty census might have overlooked it, among the teeming billions of creatures roving over land and sea. There was no evidence, as yet, that it would prosper or even survive; in this world where so many mightier beasts had passed away, its fate still wavered in the balance.
For a hundred thousand years, the manages invented nothing. But they started to change, and developed skills which no other animal possessed. The tools they had been programmed to use were simple enough, yet they could change this world and make the manages its masters. The most primitive was the hand-held stone, that multiplied many-fold the power of a blow. Then there was the bone club, that lengthened the reach and could provide a buffer against the fangs or claws of angry animals. With these weapons, the limitless food that roamed the savannas was theirs to take. They were no longer defenseless against the predators with whom they had to compete. They could drive away the smaller carnivores; the larger ones they could at least discourage from attacking, and sometimes put to flight. But they needed other aids, for their teeth and nails could not readily dismember anything larger than a rabbit. Luckily, nature had provided the ‘perfect’ tools, requiring only the wit to pick them up.
There was a crude but very efficient knife or saw, which would serve well for the next three million years. It was simply the lower jawbone of an antelope, with the teeth still in place; there would be no substantial improvement until the coming of steel. Then there was an awl or dagger in the form of a gazelle horn, and finally a scraping tool made from the complete jaw of almost any small animal.
The bone club, the toothed saw, the horn dagger, the bone scraper these were the marvelous inventions which the manages needed in order to survive. Soon they would recognize them for the symbols of power that they were, but many months had to pass before their clumsy fingers would acquire the skill or the will to use them. The odds were still against them, and there were endless opportunities for failure in the ages that lay ahead. Yet the manages had been given their first chance. There would be no second one; the future was, very literally, in their own hands.
Their massive teeth were growing smaller, for they were no longer Essential. The sharp-edged stones that could be used to dig out roots, or to cut and saw through tough flesh or fiber, had begun to replace them, with immeasurable consequences. No longer were the manages faced with starvation when their teeth were damaged or worn; even the crudest tools could add many years to their lives. And as their fangs diminished, the shape of their face started the snout receded, the massive jaw became more delicate, the mouth able to make more subtle sounds. Speech was still a million years away, but the first steps toward it had been taken.
The world began to change. In four great waves, with two hundred thousand years between their crests, the Ice Ages swept by, leaving their mark on all the globe. Outside the tropics, the glaciers slew those who had prematurely left their ancestral home; and everywhere they winnowed out the creatures who could not adapt.
When the ice had passed, SO had much of the planets early life including the manages. But, unlike so many others, they had left descendants; they had not merely become extinct they had been transformed. The toolmakers had been remade by their own tools.
For in using clubs and flints, their hands had developed a dexterity found nowhere else in the animal kingdom, permitting them to make still better tools, which in turn had developed their limbs and brains yet further. It was an accelerating, cumulative process; and at its end was Man.
The first true humans had tools and weapons only a little better than those of their ancestor’s a million years earlier, but they could use them with far greater skill. And somewhere in these shadowy centuries they invented the most essential tool of all, though it could be neither seen nor touched. They learned to speak, and so won their first great victory over Time. Now the knowledge of one generation could be handed on to the next, so that each age could profit from those that had gone before. Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, humans acquired a past; and they were beginning to grope toward a future.
Humans were also learning to harness the forces of nature; with the taming of fire, they laid the foundations of technology and left their animal origins far behind. Stone gave way to bronze, and then to iron. Hunting was succeeded by agriculture. The tribe grew into the village, the village into the town. Speech became eternal, thanks to certain marks on stone and clay and papyrus. Presently they invented philosophy, and religion. And they peopled the sky, not altogether inaccurately, with gods.
As their bodies became more and more defenseless, so their means of offense became steadily more frightful. With stone, bronze, and iron, they ran the gamut of everything that could pierce and slash, and quite early in time they learned how to strike down their victims from a long distance. The spear, the bow, the gun, and finally the guided missile gave them weapons of infinite range and all but infinite power.
Without these weapons, though they often used them against themselves, humans would never have conquered their world. Into their weapons they put their heart and soul, and for ages the weapons served them well. But now, as long as weapons existed, humans were living on borrowed time.
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