The Day We Stopped Being Animals — And Became Gods

The Day We Stopped Being Animals — And Became Gods

— A Poetic Journey Through the Birth of Civilization, Power, and Myth

By: [uzair hadi]

I. Fire, Bone, and Silence

In the beginning, there was no history.

Only wind through trees.

Only blood on the fangs of wolves.

Only footsteps that left no names behind.

We were animals once — clever, yes —

but still beasts beneath the stars.

We ate when we could, ran when we must,

and died nameless under skies we did not yet question.

No one knew “tomorrow.”

There was only “now.”

Only the hunt.

Only the hunger.

And yet—

Something stirred in us,

Not just instinct.

Not just fear.

But wonder.

II. The Whisper of Wheat

Then came the seed.

The most dangerous weapon we ever held

was not a spear —

but the soft, silent promise of a grain of wheat.

We bent our backs to soil.

We stayed in one place.

And we planted certainty

in rows and fields.

We were no longer chasing the world.

We were shaping it.

Taming it.

Owning it.

We built walls —

not just to keep others out,

but to keep our gods in.

And so the first village

grew beside the river.

We called it “home.”

We called it “ours.”

And with that word — ours —

we invented war.

III. The Invention of Tomorrow

We wrote on clay

because we feared forgetting.

We built temples

because we feared dying.

The gods we carved from stone

looked more like kings than sky.

And the kings we carved from men

claimed to speak with thunder in their mouths.

Thus, history was born.

Not as a record—

but as a weapon.

We named our enemies.

We erased the rest.

We built pyramids of bones and belief.

One man’s myth

became another man’s law.

One empire’s story

became another’s silence.

And the gods?

They looked on,

amused, perhaps,

to see beasts become masters of illusion.

IV. The Blood of Progress

We called it progress—

when we shackled each other

and called it order.

We called it growth—

when we stripped forests bare

and called it destiny.

We looked into the eyes of our brothers

and saw only tools.

We looked into the skies

and saw only territory.

And when we marched under banners,

we did not ask what we were fighting for.

Only who we were fighting against.

That was the secret of the story.

We did not need truth.

We only needed belief.

The bones beneath our cities still whisper.

The ruins remember the screams.

But we remember only the glory.

Because we wrote the books.

V. The Rise of the “I”

Time passed.

Languages bloomed.

Empires rose and fell

like tides under a burning sun.

Then came the mirror.

Not the glass one —

but the one in the mind.

We looked inward

and discovered self.

We said: “I am.”

And in saying it,

we made ourselves into gods.

We crowned reason.

We built machines.

We danced with atoms

and called it progress again.

But the jungle was not gone.

It had moved inside us.

We learned to walk upright—

but we had not unlearned the hunt.

We just called it business.

We just called it politics.

We just called it civilization.

VI. The God Who Fell in Love with Himself

Today, we hold the world in our palms.

Not metaphorically —

literally.

A screen,

a satellite,

a signal.

And we are everywhere at once.

We look into the eyes of AI

and see a reflection.

We look at the stars

and ask how to leave Earth behind

before we learn how to love it.

We call ourselves creators.

We build cities that touch the clouds.

We resurrect extinct species.

We rewrite our DNA.

But we still don’t know

how to stop crying at night.

We still don’t know

how to forgive.

We still don’t know

how to remember

what it means to be small.

VII. The Final Fire

And so the question stands—

What did we gain

when we stopped being animals?

What did we lose

when we crowned ourselves gods?

Did we trade truth for story?

Did we trade warmth for power?

Did we forget that to be human

is not to conquer —

but to remember?

The fire is still burning.

Not in our caves—

but in our cities.

In our hearts.

In our myths.

Maybe history is not a ladder.

Maybe it's a circle.

Maybe the end is the beginning,

again.

Maybe one day

we will sit beside the river

and tell stories

not of kings, or wars,

but of the moment we stopped running,

looked at the stars,

and whispered:

“We are more than beasts.

We are more than gods.

We are something in between.”