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The Earth is a miracle.

Life remains a mystery.

Families of animals form,

united by customs and rituals

that are handed down

through the generations.

Some adapt

to the nature of their pasture

and their pasture adapts to them.

And both gain.

The animal sates its hunger

and the tree can blossom again.

In the great adventure

of life on Earth,

every species has a role to play,

every species has its place.

None is futile or harmful.

They all balance out.

And that's where you,

homo sapiens, wise human,

enter the story.

You benefit from a fabulous

bequeathed by the Earth.

You are only 200,000 years old,

but you have changed

the face of the world.

Despite your vulnerability, you have

taken possession of every habitat

and conquered swathes of territory,

like no other species before you.

After 180,000 nomadic years,

and thanks to a more clement climate,

humans settled down.

They no longer depended

on hunting for survival.

They chose to live in wet environments

that abounded in fish,

game and wild plants.

There where land,

water and life combine.

Even today,

the majority of humankind

lives on the continents' coastlines

or the banks of rivers and lakes.

Across the planet,

one person in four

lives as humankind did

their only energy that which nature

provides season after season.

It's the way of life

of 1.5 billion people,

more than the combined population

of all the wealthy nations.

But life expectancy is short

and hard labor takes its toll.

The uncertainties of nature

weigh on daily life.

Education is a rare privilege.

Children are a family's only asset

as long as every extra pair of hands

is a necessary contribution

to its subsistence.

Humanity's genius

is to have always had a sense

of its weakness.

The physical strength, with which

nature insufficiently endowed humans,

is found in animals that help them

to discover new territories.

But how can you conquer the world

on an empty stomach?

The invention of agriculture

turned our history on end.

It was less than 10,000 years ago.

Agriculture

was our first great revolution.

It resulted in the first surpluses

and gave birth to cities

and civilizations.

The memory of thousands of years

scrabbling for food faded.

Having made grain the yeast of life,

we multiplied the number of varieties

and learned to adapt them

to our soils and climates.

We are like every species on Earth.

Our principal daily concern

is to feed ourselves.

When the soil is less than generous

and water becomes scarce,

we are able

to deploy prodigious efforts to extract

from the land

enough to live on.

Humans shaped the land with the patience

and devotion the Earth demands

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