Sharrukin's Palace

As in our own world, the discovery of agriculture was a tremendous revolution. Over time, the Common-folk peoples who committed to this new way of life made a fateful exchange: reliable food sources that could support unprecedented population densities, at the cost of back-breaking labor, social stratification, and subjection to a growing class of gods and priest-chieftains.

While the primary center of agricultural development was around the ancient site of Tar-Karun, in the end five distinct peoples (and one outlier) took advantage of the new technology. These formed new language-group communities, each with its own distinct cultural template. They slowly spread across the Great Lands, displacing the thinly scattered hunter-gatherer population . . . and where the new Neolithic peoples went, their gods went with them.

The Karuni peoples were probably the most religious, devoted to gods of the sky and the harvest, building the first temples in the world. Their societies tended to be strongly patriarchal and rather aggressive, forcing others aside to gain access to the best farming lands.

The Zari peoples took a softer approach, especially after they crossed the narrows of the Sailor’s Sea and took root along the coasts of the northern continent. Zari societies tended to be more egalitarian, dividing authority between male chieftains and female priestesses. Later they took to building megalithic structures, lines and circles of standing stones, possibly in memory of ancient Tar-Karun.

The Mahra peoples took up a mixed lifestyle, some of them farming in the river valleys and by the shores of the Great Lakes, others following herds of goats and sheep in the grassy uplands. They were patriarchal but not aggressive, preferring to move away from danger rather than confront it.

The Tamir–Nandu peoples spread rapidly across the south-eastern coasts, taking advantage of the plentiful monsoon rains and rich soils of the region. They were distinctive for their relative lack of social centralization and stratification. In such a rich land, anyone dissatisfied with the leadership at home could simply pack up and move, setting up new farms or villages at a safe distance. Rather than building temples for a few primary deities, the Tamir-Nandu societies continued in the Mesolithic tradition of venerating myriad local spirits, building small shrines for them.

The Ka-Meret peoples pursued a mix of river-irrigation and monsoon-irrigation, and were the most centralized cultures of this period. Their relationship with their gods was distinctive – their culture put great value on ecstatic states of “possession,” in which gods spoke and acted through human hosts. Some Ka-Meret chieftains became almost permanent hosts for their divine patrons, setting up an early form of divine kingship.

Wherever these people went, they brought a Neolithic technical set with them. Back in the heartland of the Karuni and Zari societies, a Chalcolithic technology had arisen as well, with the use of copper to supplement stone tools. This and the following maps will mark the boundary of each new stage of technological development.

In the far south, the Muri peoples were not yet fully Neolithic, but they had begun independent development of farming and herding in their own territory. Their communities were tied together by a strong tradition of endogamy and matrilocality. Young men tended to leave home and travel long distances in search of a bride, and then settle down in her village after the marriage. This led to lasting links between villages, permitting exchange of trade goods, languages, and ideas.

The ancient Smith-folk looked on all these developments with concern. Before the era of agriculture, the balance between Common-folk and Smith-folk had been stable across thousands of years. Now Common-folk were starting to swarm across the land, bringing their gods with them – no longer so dependent on the Smith-folk for survival, and threatening to outnumber them by wide margins. This admittedly brought new wealth to the old Smith-folk enclaves, but some conservatives feared disastrous consequences in the long run.

Thousands of the Smith-folk departed for the distant north, setting up new enclaves far from the agricultural wave. Unfortunately, in so doing, these migrants unwittingly set up the conditions for the very disaster they had dimly foretold . . .

Here’s a link to the DeviantArt page for this map.

By 9,000 years before Krava’s time, the Ice Age was in full retreat. Although a remnant of the ice sheet remained in the far north and west, most of the northern continent was becoming greener and more hospitable with each generation. Tundra turned to open steppe, and then to deep forests, spreading inexorably northward.

Both of the humanities living in the Great Lands took advantage of the new springtime.

The Smith-folk enclaves grew, and more of them took root in congenial mountain valleys exposed by the retreat of the Ice. Some of these enclaves attained populations in the low thousands, with complex social systems and even a few permanent structures in stone or wood. These enclaves had not yet acquired the mighty fortifications of later millennia, but the structure of the latter-day holdfast was finally becoming clear.

Meanwhile, the Smith-folk had become accustomed to the presence of the taller, more versatile Common-folk sharing the wide lands. They taught the newcomers (some of) their ancient knowledge, and gave away tools and artifacts of power in exchange for meat and hard-to-find materials. Some Common-folk bands even set up trading relationships, carrying light goods and ideas among the Smith-folk enclaves. The result was a tenuous network of trade and communication that stretched across two continents. This system gave rise to a variety of high Mesolithic cultures.

In one small area, the first hints of something even more significant had appeared. At the eastern end of the Sailor’s Sea, some of the Common-folk began to supplement their otherwise-typical Mesolithic lifestyle with the harvesting of wild grains. This was not agriculture – not yet – but it enabled the Common-folk of the region to attain population densities impossible elsewhere.

One of the centers of this pre-Neolithic activity was at a place called Tar-Kuran, the “high place” where a dozen disparate tribes came together to build a common ritual center. The center of Tar-Kuran was a great ring of carved standing stones, the result of thousands of man-years of back-breaking labor. When completed, the “high place” became known among the Common-folk tribes all across the Great Lands, and people came from incredible distances to see it.

What the elder peoples thought of Tar-Kuran is lost in the depths of time. It’s possible that some of the Smith-folk of the southern continent aided in its planning and construction. They could not, however, have been prepared for some of the consequences. For at Tar-Kuran, the placation of land-spirits and hunting-spirits, and elaborate rituals for the grain harvest, gave rise to something genuinely new. Some spirits invoked at the “high place” thrived upon the attention and fearful supplication of the Common-folk . . . becoming the first gods to dwell in the Great Lands.

Here’s a link to the DeviantArt page for this map.

For many thousands of years, the Great Lands remained divided. The early Smith-folk had the northern continent to themselves, while the Common-folk spread across the southern continent. The two land-masses approached one another in the narrows of what would one day be called the Sailor’s Sea, but there was no land bridge to facilitate interaction. Only at the height of the glacial age did the two peoples finally come into sustained contact.

In the north, the Smith-folk had evolved a distinctive way of life. A few bands wandered far and wide across the northern continent, following a primitive hunter-gatherer existence. Others gathered in specific upland areas, alpine valleys or mountain slopes that proved especially congenial. There, they used their growing skills with spirit-magic to build and support extended communities. Hundreds of people might live in close proximity, staying in the same area for years at a time, supporting skilled specialists in the arts of tool-making and spirit-binding. These early tribal communities were the first seeds of the Smith-folk holdfasts of later millennia.

The Smith-folk had long since been aware of the southern continent, but it was not until the Last Glacial Maximum (about 25,000 years before Krava’s time) that some of them found a way across the narrows. Overcoming their natural aversion to the sea, enough tribes made the crossing to establish two new communities on the southern continent. There, they came into contact with the Common-folk, leading to trade and the exchange of ideas. The southern Smith-folk tribes soon became the largest and wealthiest of their kind.

From their new neighbors, the Common-folk learned of the vast new lands to the north. Some of them soon began to venture their own crossings of the narrow sea. It was a slow process, taking many centuries, but over time the Common-folk became well established on the northern continent. Some of them turned west, living in caves and sheltered coastal areas, mostly living on fish, shellfish, and small game. Others, more ambitious, turned north or east, hunting the megafauna of the plains. When the Ice began to retreat, tribes of the Common-folk were there to take advantage . . .

Here’s a link to the DeviantArt page for this map.