Ishmael, Chapter 4, By Sarah Demers & Holly Tempini

1. For humankind to achieve its destiny of civilization, it had to abandon the hunter gatherer way of life, and discover agriculture. This meant staying in one place and learning to manipulate his environment so that starvation didn't occur. Man had to become an agriculturalist.

2. Ishmael attributes the birthplace of agriculture to the Fertile Crescent. He describes how human culture came about from settlement, which led to the rise of technology, trade and commerce, mathematics, literacy and science.

3. Ishmael prompts the narrator to imagine the world without man. He pictures a world in chaos, unfinished, and in need of a ruler. This brings the narrator to see that man was put on Earth to conquer the world and bring order. Even as nature fights against man's rule, humankind continues forward because they believe control over the environment is their destiny.

4. To become fully human, man had to rise above the rest of the world's inhabitants, choosing a brief life of glory instead of living the life of a lion or a wombat. Ishmael explains how the Takers believe the gods gave them a choice to rise up out of the slime and rule over the world. Instead of becoming the world's ruler, man becomes the world's destroyer. They justify their destruction by believing it is the price that must be paid in order to advance human culture.