Human

HUMAN

 With the first rays of the sun he awoke; leaping to an alert stance. His immediate needs, those of excretion, water and food entered his mind; though he had no words for them. Cautiously he approached the mouth of the shallow cave in which the family slept. He tasted the air, widening his nostrils and allowing his mouth to hang open.
      The cave itself could only be reached by climbing the face of a shallow cliff, here alone in his entire world was safety. Immediately below was a clearing ringed with bones and refuse, here the family ate and took care of most of nature’s calls. Beyond this was the savannah, areas of dense woodland interspersed with wide open grasslands. Here large cats stalked and the family were a staple of the huge feline’s diet. Nearer the water there were crocodiles and giant otters, in the woodlands carnivorous bears lay in wait and everywhere was the threat of another family of hominids moving in. The cave was more than just safety, the cave was life.
      Today the wind was coming from the south, and though he could not smell (or see or hear,) any predators in the area; the river was north, so he would need to be cautious. A predator could be on him before he was aware of it and there was little cover close to the river itself.
Whilst the others slept, he headed out. It was his duty to scout around and return when it was safe for the family to slake their thirst. It was not a role he was given, he would not have even understood the concept of family roles; he wouldn’t have understood the concept of concepts, he just did what he did out of instinct. 
He flitted from shadow to shadow, sometimes running with knuckles and feet; sometimes lolloping on just two legs, sometimes standing still and tall for a long while, listening, smelling and tasting the air. He reached the river and cautiously made his way to the shore. 
There were no other animals in sight and so carefully, he put a foot in the water, drawing it back quickly and searching for some sign of movement from under the surface of the wide flowing water. A few minutes later he repeated this ritual, splashing to a degree that no aquatic terror could resist and then satisfied; he waded into the swift-flowing middle stream and drank deeply.
His thirst abated he sat on the shore for a few moments, allowing the sun to dry him before he went back to the family. He emptied his bladder on a nearby bolder, marking that this stretch of the bank was taken. 
Suddenly the world grew dark around him; he looked up, expecting any moment to feel rain upon his face but the sky was empty of clouds. The darkness continued to increase, and the birds began crying their evening song. He tried to look up as the darkness reached almost pitch, It took him a few goes to look directly as his instinct was to close his eyes or shield them with his hand but eventually he managed it.  
 There, in the sky, where every instinct told him a bright sun should be shining, was nothing… just a black hole ringed with fire.
The surprise of the dark sun was only just abating when suddenly the light shone again. He cried out in shock and pain for the light had hurt his eyes and lay still in a fettle position whilst light returned to the world.  
Nature went back to its usual routine, though the songs of the birds seemed confused for some time. Eventually, he rose and made his way back to the cave; every now and then, he lifted a hand to protect his eyes while he searched the skies. Though the pain had faded fast the fear of the dark remained.
Reaching the cave he entered, the others by now were up and seemed anxious that he had been gone so long. The darkness in the cave reminded him of the dark sun. He was slow in entering, looking around, and noticing for perhaps the first time the link between the sun and the caves dark.  
After much pawing and grooming, the family were ready to go to the water. He led the way, and before long they were drinking and grooming each other in the water, the young ones playing. He sat on the rocky bank, keeping watch for the predators which stalked the riverbank. The alpha sat some distance away, also on guard, there was no rivalry between them yet, but the time was approaching.
The sunlight glinted off the water and again he shielded his eyes.  
Then as if struck by some sudden thought he raised a paw-like hand against the sun; looking around almost as if he expected the world to darken; which, naturally, it utterly failed to do. He tried covering the sun with his thumb; maybe he hopped to recreate that startling halo of flame but again he was frustrated. He tried blotting out the light with leaves and sticks, all to no avail… eventually, he tried stone, a small black pebble, smoothed by the water and round in shape. To his eyes maybe it looked not dissimilar to the black circle of nothing he had seen in the sky. 
He held it up, but when the world failed to turn black he threw it down in frustration. With a crack it broke into two pieces; he stooped to pick up the closest one, and screeched in pain, flinging it away from him. 
The family were startled to a watchful stillness for a long moment, then, when nothing more untoward happened, the elder females approached him cooing and hooting softly, stroking his hair as they would a child while he starred at the blood dripping from his cut finger. A younger female showed concern but a low grunt from the alpha kept her back. She was approaching maturity and would soon have to leave the family. Unless that is a male from another troop challenged, but that was unlikely; though alpha was aging he had support, and the family had the cave.  
The evening came in and he struggled back to the family with the carcass of a young quadruped. Some other creature had made the kill and eaten much of it, but there was enough left to fill the bellies of the family. 
They sat in the clearing, tearing at meat, fat and sinew with blunted teeth. His wounded finger pressed against a shard of bone, sending a shiver of pain; and to his underdeveloped mind came an image of the broken stone; the stone that had sliced so easily through his own flesh. 
He took a large foreleg out from the clearing, only the hardest gristle remained on it and normally he would spend many hours gnawing until it was picked clean. He soon found many stones which were similar in size and shape to the one he had broken earlier, and after many tries, smashing them against a rock, he managed to make one that looked as sharp. 
Gingerly, and with great expectation, he put the razor edge against the bone.
Homo-Habilis was born.

A month later he awoke with the sun, totally unaware that the world was now irrevocably changed. Already the advent of technology meant the family had something they had never had before; time, time to think, to ponder and to plan. He still scouted to the river each morning but now he would pick up choice stones. He was learning which stones were most useful, and it was knowledge he shared with the family.
There was no going back. With each generation the tools would be refined, perfected and expanded. Sometime in the next few hundred thousand years, a Homo-Habilis would attach a piece of sharpened flint to a branch or reed. Suddenly they would go from hunted to hunters.
In the next million and a half years, one of his descendants would try striking two pieces of flint together and, perhaps there being dry grass close by, would discover how to make fire. After that, the night would no longer be something to fear and the hominids would go from hunters to masters of every environment they ventured into.  

One day, roughly two and a half million years after the moon had eclipsed the sun and caused a little chimp-like creature to cut his finger on a stone, his direct descendants would stand upon that moon, and look back at the earth and still there would be more to learn and to see and to do.   

Today, billions of us look to the sky with no less wonder than he had.

Humans all.