OUR JOURNEY STARTS SOME 300~400 THOUSAND YEARS AGO...
... Roughly at the same time modern humans appeared on Earth, so did what we now commonly call Avipoda sapiens ("wise bird-feet") appeared on Auot'zae. They have been named like that mainly for their bird-like legs, strong like those of an ostrich, and with toes like a parrot.
HERE WE USE TWO CALENDARS (maybe three, the Arrene one isn't important as of now)
CE - Year of the Common Era, our typical current way of measuring time.
BFH - Years Before the Fall of Hokushoku, which corresponds to year 64 300 CE.
PRE-INDUSTRIAL STAGE
350 - 4 kyr BFH
350 - 4 kyr BFH
286k BCE - 60k CE.
PRE-STELLAR STAGE
4 - 3.2 kyr BFH
60k CE - 61k CE.
STELLAR STAGE
3.2 kyr BFH - Fall of Hokushoku
61k CE - 64k CE.
The ancestral avipodan was very likely a large arboreal generalist of the rainforest, spreading throughout the continent in bursts of forest expansion, with groups being left behind as the trees receeded south each time
THE CREATURE
The Avipodans evolved as a generalist hunter in the rainforests south of the continent of Azapabaet ("Known World"), its genus has spread across different parts of the continent in the past for 2-3 million years already, during hot-house cycles when the rainforests expand much north and south of their usual extension. During the end of the last hot-house event, a new species of Avipodan appeared with the receeding rainforest, the Avipoda sapiens cer ("meridional wise bird-feet"), which much alike its human counterpart, had more cohesive and coordinated groups, as well as developing further knowledge of the natural world compared to its predecessors because of better inter-group communication.
They are roughly humanoid and of similar stature to that of the Earth-human, with a head shaped like a crocs (the ugly shoe), having two eyes in each side of the head, as well possessing four appendages in the side and back of the head for ears, this not only gives them a great sense of depth but also directional hearing.
They have five fingers on the hands and feet - but on the hands, the index finger is located right by the thumb as a sort of second opposable thumb, while the other three fingers have similar length. On the feet, the digits adopt a zygodactyly form (similar to parrot's feet), with a vestigial fifth finger like a spur further up the metatarsus - these adaptations feed a strong belief that avipodans used to be an arboreal species prior to migration out of the rainforests, perhaps living nocturnal or in morning/nightfall for most of its evolutionary path.
The avipodan also has an incredible capability of distinguishing between different hues of yellow and orange, while being pretty much colorblind to greens and light-blues.
SPREADING ACROSS THE WORLD
Soon with the scarcity of the fading hot-house age, the meridional avipodans started splitting and traveling far across the known continent and into the southern continent of Sideeshazaet ("Volcanic Lands"). This southern group splitting so early and developing in isolation across the vast island chains gave origin to southern Avipodan, and later the great islander nations of the south.
In the following hundred millenia after the split, the meridional avipodan had ventured into the territory previously occupied by the tropical avipodan, being much older and more adapted for the drier climate, though the rainforest diseases brought by the meridional variety were quick to wipe out the local population, they had between some 20 and 10 thousand years to interbreed, generating a variety which was more adapted to the dry climate of the inner continent, coming to further spread into Azapabaet. This was a very arduous and slow journey for the northern and central parts of Azapabaet are occupied by deserted and rugged mountainous terrain where food is harder to find. Another hundred millenia after that, one group of meridional avipodans made contact with the oldest group still alive, which quickly disappeared through disease and conflicts for the rich temperate lands of the west. At roughly the same time window, the eastern group ventured to the sea, never to be seen again until much later, spreading across the continent which would be later be known as Jekaazapat ("New World"), and the horizontal migration meant there would be little distinction between the avipodans of the north Azapabaet and those of the new world.
Because the Avipodan timeline is dislocated from the human one by some 40~70 thousand years, I must give a reference that by the 21st century of our time, the avipodans were yet to make the sailing to the new world. It took them much longer to explore their own world because of sheer size and longer distances, this created some interesting technological and cultural disparities between peoples even in the same continent, and there where lots of different peoples at first.
POST-AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION
The rapid cooling of the planet in the last 100 thousand years allowed for water to collect on the mountainous region in center of the continent as huge glaciers, feeding river systems which flowed thousands of kilometers to the coast, these rivers collected organic debris and sediments along the way and deposited the material in river deltas, giving origin to vast fertile areas, akin to the Middle East's fertile crescent. The Avipodans established themselves in those more fertile regions and oasis in the following thousands of years, coming to later start an agricultural revolution as the rivers and oasis thickened between 20 and 10 thousand years ago. The ever creeping ice north of the planet and in mountainous regions had lowered the sea level by several meters, but also created tall glacier walls, cutting passages between the continent of Azapabaet and Jekaazapat.
The temporal and geographic isolation of early communities made for very cohesive cultural groups, the names of older places have barely changed in some 10 000 years
The eastern tribes of the continent discovered agriculture roughly at the same time, in a span of only 2~3 thousand years, this could have been helped by a strong trade of spices and seeds, since all major city states developed a primitive navy which was used to explore the habitable coast of Azapabaet. The western peoples were not only isolated by thousands of years but also by mountain ranges, and thus had to develop agriculture independently, the most sucessfull of them taking advantage of a huge lake fed by a river, with smaller communities further north, with a similar cereal trade.
BRONZE AND IRON AGES
But the cold climate wouldn't stay forever, the receeding of the glaciers and thus shrinking river fluxes between 13 000 and 10 000 BFH threw the avipodan world into an age of expansionist communities, because with less fertile soil by the century, more land was necessary in order to feed the growing population. During this Ice Age Collapse period we see the rapid fall of several communities that have been stable for thousands of years, and the spawning of wide and expansive kingdoms, also leading to the simplification and absorbing of their neighboring cultures.
During the transition between bronze and iron age, between 7 400 and 6 400 BFH, is where we see the establishment of the classical myths worldwide, inherited and modified from the ancient oral traditions and now properly recorded with the advent of writing.
Even though writing and numerical systems had spread pretty quickly throughout the east, the first kindom to develop it, Mo-Kahikō'shokīqe det-Hōkat ("The Civilized Land of Hōkat"), had centuries of advantage to expand its domain using the new technology, allowing it to organize proper military forces, and economic consistency, because every invention, product, person, and debt could now be tracked through time with outstanding accuracy. Though at first, reserved to higher classes of society. It is this kingdom and its sucessors, which gives the avipodans, their common name throughout the Dominion, "Hoku", meaning "person" in the classical Hukat language. The Hōkat civilization could be compared to what the Phoenicians once were, including the maritimal prowess.
The invention of writing, apart from the unification of peoples and burst of trade, also came with a side effect, by imposing teaching the nomadic tribes their spoken and written language, the eastern peoples spent several centuries trying to assimilate, wipe, and use them as spies and scouts into their neighboring empires and foreign lands, often met with resistance, the nomadic tribes of the steppe served as a sort of cultural and technological bridge between the west and east, finally connected after thousands of years, the nomads of the steppe also occasionally brought pottery and small pieces of bronze and iron technology to the south peoples, strenghtening the equatorial chiefdoms in exchange of the rainforest's goods.
AGE OF SAILING
The development of better sailing technology was originally intended to serve a military purpose, with the inner continent being mountainous and hard to transpose with large armies, an invasion by sea would allow the emerging superpowers to stop skirmishing each other through the steppes. However, once leaked plans arrived to the other side of the Known World, they were used not for maritim warfare, but further developed into long-range sailing, because now, the Gakor Empire could trade directly with the rainforest kingdoms.
Being blocked by the Gakor in between 3775 and 3730 BFH, the Ent'shelari ventured further north, where it made contact with several northern hunter tribes, later using them as an outpost to venture into the far west in an attempt to circumnavigate the world, believing it would be possible to establish a trade with the eastern kingdoms and empires once the Spice Wars were over. Instead arriving at the place later named Port of Queen Ahirama in 3 682 BFH, the first port in the temperate lands of the New World, where they have met an alternate world of societies isolated from them for nearly 40 thousand years...
- M.O. Valent, 21/12/2022
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