Humans have no equals in the animal world. What special characteristics does nature give to humans? Read the text and find out.

    The story of the beginning of mankind takes us far, far back through time to a world entirely different from the world we know today. Looking back across hundreds of centuries we come to a time known as the Ice Age, a time when nearly half the world was locked in ice.

     The caps of ice that cover the north and south poles today spread right down over the Temperate zone then, nearly half-way to the equator. In places the ice was a mile thick, and these regions could support no life. In Europe the only land where life was possible lay mainly to the south, around the Atlantic and Mediterranean shores, and even this land was cold, and barren. There were hardly any woodlands, forests, except some small trees that were checked from full growth.

     Some of the first people like ourselves in this world lived side by side with some of the largest, fiercest animals in the earth’s history. What’s more, there were other dangerous animals such as cave bears and cave lions, and tigers and wolf packs that often attacked people.

     In such a world, how could people survive? Nature gave them no warm fur pelts against the cold, no swiftness to escape any enemy, no weapons for fighting. If they crept into a cave for shelter, the lion or bear that made its lair there would tear them to pieces.
Compared with the animals around them, men and women were poor, feeble creatures. They were thin skinned, two-legged, unprotected against a bitter climate and a large number of natural enemies. They had no books to tell them what to do, no histories of earlier people to learn from. They had no warm houses, no cloth for clothing, no wagons for carrying, no plants in gardens, no cows for milk, no iron for instruments and weapons. Such things lay thousands of years away in the future, and these people could not even imagine them.

     Yet these distant ancestors of ours made a life for themselves in this rough, barren land and survived its dangers, for like fairy-tale heroes they had certain remarkable gifts --- seven in number.Their first gift was that they stood erect, with head held high. They could see over tall grasses and rough, rocky ground. They could turn head and body and, with one swift glance, look in any direction to track the animals they hunted or to escape the animals that hunted them.

     Their second gift was linked to their first and that was their two legs. They might not outrun any animals, but they could outwalk them all. They could track the game steadily and patiently for great distances, keeping the beasts moving, keeping them from grazing, until the animals and not the people were exhausted.

     From their upright posture also came their third gift, their arms. The beasts had only forelegs, useful for running. But human beings had arms that could bend to many tasks. When they walked, their arms were free to carry and use a weapon, to transport the kill back to camp instead of having to eat their fill on the spot and then go hungry until the next successful hunt (as the animals did)

     Their fourth gift was their hands. The forelegs of animals ended in hoofs or claws, useful only for running and fighting. But the hands of men and women had four slender and flexible fingers and a short, strong thumb that moved opposite to the fingers. This meant that they could hold things. They could pick up a stone and use it as a hammer, a cutting tool, or a weapon.

     Their fifth gift was their vision. Both eyes were set at the front of the head and looked in the same direction. Because of this they could see in depth.

     They could judge distances with great accuracy. They could also focus their eyes on an object held up close and could see it sharply and clearly in every detail.The sixth and greatest gift was their human brain. The brain of these people was as large and as fully developed as our own. They could remember experiences from the past and learn from them for the future. They could plan, question, reason. They could discover ways to do things and to make things that would help protect them from the dangers of their world.

    Their seventh gift was a gift of that intelligent brain: it was the power of speech. Although the beasts could also communicate with each other by voice (using calls, signals, and warning cries), only people could communicate in words. Only men and women could call to their fellows to bring something, lift something, cut something. Only they could express themselves well enough to accomplish difficult tasks together. Only they could say where they had been, what they had seen and done. Only they could instruct their children in the complicated skills they must master, could explain beforehand about dangers they must avoid. They alone could pass on to the young the wisdom and experience of the old.

     Those seven gifts stood between the people of the Ice Age and the many dangers of their difficult world. There were other creatures that had one or several of these abilities, but no creatures on earth had them all, except humans.

     And so humanity survived. Because of the seven gifts that permitted them to conquer a hostile environment, the people of the Ice Age lived to produce children and to become the ancestors of today’s men and women.

Approximately 950 words