Rebelling..........................

People who are recognizably human have walked the earth for roughly two hundred thousand years.  During those millennia, we survived by continuously adapting to our fickle environment.  We braved harsh winters and punishing landscapes, and feared animals much fiercer than we were, bowing to nature, whose spell overwhelmed us, whose magnificence humbled us, and around which we anxiously rigged our lives.  After a passage of time too long to fully imagine, and too many impression-mad lives to tally, we began rebelling against the forces of nature.  We grew handy, resourceful, flexible, clever, cooperative.  We captured fire, chipped tools, hewed spears and needles, coined language and spent it everywhere we roamed.  And then we began multiplying at breathtaking speed.
-Diane Ackerman,  The Human Age:  The World Shaped By Us