Humanimal

Humanimal — page 3
FOREWORD All over the world and for hundreds of thousands of years the ancestors of today's indigenous people lived close to wild animals They passed along cultural traditions of respect for animals as the equals or sometimes the superiors of humans As time passed many humans left their homes in the wild and gathered together in cities and towns Seeing less of wild animals changed our ways of thinking about them We began to believe that humans were better smarter more powerful and more important than the animals around us Look at us we said to one another we have figured out how to farm the land and raise the few animals we like to eat We communicate using language We invent things We live in big cities We build giant buildings We organize our societies Some of us even vote to decide what to do Plus on top of all of that we are fantastic problem solvers we are aware of ourselves as individuals and we feel deep emotions All of those things make us special Scientists agreed They came up with a simple definition of humans that went like this Humans are tool makers Making and using tools sets us apart from the rest of the animal world Things went along that way for a while Then in the middle of the 1900s something big changed A small number of scientists started doing something that scientists hadn't done before They went out into the wild and watched animals And they didn't watch for a few hours or a few days the way tourists and hunters did They watched for many years taking 4