How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The future was, very literally, in their own hands. (4.6)
The man-apes hold the future in their hands because their hands, and the tools in those hands, will be their future. Technology takes you to the future, to the moon, and out into space, where you are turned into an alien space-baby.
Quote #2
They had learned to speak, and so had won their first great victory over Time. Now the knowledge of one generation could be handed on to the next, so that each age could profit from those that had gone before. (6.7)
History is seen as a victory over time—but you could just as easily see it as a kind of victory of time. After all, if you're a happy man-ape, without speech, living day to day, you don't know that time is passing. It's only with history and knowledge passed on that time really comes into being as a big weighty thing sitting on your forehead.
Quote #3
Three million years! The infinitely crowded panorama of written history, with its empires and its kings, its triumphs and its tragedies, covered barely one thousandth of this appalling span of time. Not only Man himself, but most of the animals now alive on Earth, did not even exist when this black enigma was so carefully buried here….(12.11)
The slab is three million years old, which is really old. It's older than the human race (or about the same age, if you count the man-apes). Time here is presented as awesome or amazing in itself. Time—it will surprise you.