It's possible that some of the Smith-folk of the southern continent aided in its planning and construction. What the elder peoples thought of Tar-Kuran is lost in the depths of time. 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. The center of Tar-Kuran was a great ring of carved standing stones, the result of thousands of man-years of back-breaking labor. 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. This was not agriculture - not yet - but it enabled the Common-folk of the region to attain population densities impossible elsewhere. 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. In one small area, the first hints of something even more significant had appeared. This system gave rise to a variety of high Mesolithic cultures. The result was a tenuous network of trade and communication that stretched across two continents. Some Common-folk bands even set up trading relationships, carrying light goods and ideas among the Smith-folk enclaves. 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. Meanwhile, the Smith-folk had become accustomed to the presence of the taller, more versatile Common-folk sharing the wide lands. These enclaves had not yet acquired the mighty fortifications of later millennia, but the structure of the latter-day holdfast was finally becoming clear. Some of these enclaves attained populations in the low thousands, with complex social systems and even a few permanent structures in stone or wood. The Smith-folk enclaves grew, and more of them took root in congenial mountain valleys exposed by the retreat of the Ice. Tundra turned to open steppe, and then to deep forests, spreading inexorably northward.īoth of the humanities living in the Great Lands took advantage of the new springtime. 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. By 9,000 years before Krava's time, the Ice Age was in full retreat.
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