12,000 years ago, man suddenly took a decisive turn. He left the nomadic life to settle in the first villages. Before long, he would invent farming, cattle raising, irrigation, commerce, metal alloys, architecture, medicine and religion.
On his way, man had to overcome many challenges. Property ownership generated the first wars. Livestock spread deadly diseases. Overpopulation caused starvation.
But Homo sapiens continued. He built cities and imagined a complex, organized and hierarchical society. Communicated over great distances, thanks to the written word. In 8,000 years, the population of the planet went from 3 million to 100 million inhabitants.
Man built society as we know it today. Soon, he would no longer be the same man. He became modern man. This is the account of the defining moments leading through the ages to our time.
The history of our evolution to modern man began about 15,000 years ago. As a result of a rapid climate change of tremendous magnitude, global warming wrought immense changes. In a few dozen centuries, two-thirds of the polar ice cap melted away, large sheets of ice broke off, and the ocean rose 120 meters.
Little by little, the continents took shape as we know them today. In some regions, torrential rains caused cataclysmic flooding. In others, drought parched the land, natural fires set forests ablaze. The Ice Age was over. Humans could now embark on a new adventure.
The pioneers of this transformation emerged in the Fertile Crescent, today's Near East. 12,000 years ago, 3 to 4 million men and women inhabited the planet. They were nomads.
They lived in wide open spaces and rarely encountered other humans. This clan was one of the first to have domesticated wolves. They made them into dogs. But another change had occurred on planet Earth.
A strange idea had taken hold. Stone teepees with swirls of leaves on top. They'd never seen anything like it. Arr was their leader.
He was listened to because he was the strongest. Asha, Arr's second companion, was expecting her first child. These nomads didn't know they were looking at houses.
A revolutionary invention, a new way of life that would change human history. Humans had decided to settle here permanently, to stop roaming, and instead radiate out from a center, their village. But where were they?
What were these stones for? They had water in them. ...and food.
Whatever had possessed them to make bags so heavy? Why build structures that couldn't be moved? They had a tree in the middle of their tipis.
They were doing what spiders do. Inhaka! What do you think? You're out there! I'll show you!
Inhaka! Warm outside, and cold inside. Cool inside.
The temperature was pleasant, as was the smell. An odor of men and women and children, along with the reassuring aroma of dried meat. There was a lot of food.
Not being on the move meant having to plan ahead for times when nature stopped providing. Sedentary people had not yet become farmers. They gathered berries and grain. They didn't know wild plants could be cultivated.
Their way of life added a new dimension to the human temperament. A dimension unknown to nomads. The sense of ownership. For nomads, the riches of the earth belonged to everyone. But sedentary people could no longer think this way.
Their survival depended on their food reserves. And this dependency created the fear of having them taken away. Even when food was scarce, survival dictated that they share what they had. For the sedentary man, stranger meant danger. No!
The clan of Ar entered the village as they would anywhere, naturally and without guile. But those who lived there saw it as an intrusion. These people thought they owned everything. Their houses, their stone containers, and even the water in them.
What? What is it? R and his clan couldn't understand their hostility.
Nomads who encountered other humans welcomed them. These people even felt they owned the land. The land where R's ancestors had walked.
You are the one. You are the one who is Our clan had come in peace. They had a pregnant woman among them. They liked this place and were going to stay whether the others welcomed them or not. What had made people settle?
Perhaps their reliance on cereals had something to do with it. To be eaten, their grain had to be crushed into flour, and this required two large, heavy stones. Perhaps they'd stopped roaming to stay close to these stones, and this is what had changed them.
At day's end, nomads watch the sunset. While the sedentary people count the reserves. True, the nomadic life had its drawbacks, as their pregnant women.
I knew only two well. One was that they seldom had sufficient reserves. When nature was stingy, they went hungry.
Asha could no longer digest the puree of half rotten fruit. She needed meat to regain her strength. But there was no dried meat left. Whenever there was a problem, Aka, the one-eyed woman, would tell Arr.
The others didn't dare. It was too late to hunt. And why should they, when there was so much food right there next to them? Arr helped himself.
He probably did not know the meaning of stealing. He simply took what he needed. The villagers lived surrounded by their belongings.
Mostly the heavy tools used to prepare and cook the strange grain that had become central to their survival. Among nomadic peoples, the social cell was not the family, but the group. Settlers made the family unit the norm, with a house for each family. But they had a problem.
Tiny animals coveted their provisions. At that time, the settlers were still hunters and gatherers. Many did not yet have dogs.
Their domestication occurred far from the first villages, in Eastern Europe and China. The dog was used to hunt for food, for hunting, but also for protection, the elimination of food waste, and companionship. And the dog benefited from this new relationship as well. It did not take the villagers long to realize how useful a dog was.
That night, the village was in a state of panic. It suddenly seemed the villagers had accepted them. They brought stone bowls and some of their strange grain. But these were not gifts.
They wanted the dog in return. Arr refused the barter. Then, they tried to win them over by offering to share the secret of the grain. Asha had a bad feeling. Arr wondered whether he shouldn't have trusted her instincts.
The two groups were too different from each other. The cooked grain was mushy and tasteless. Arr would have preferred roasting all the mice his dog was finding. But for the one-eyed woman who had no teeth, it was easier to eat than meat. Two, three, two, three.
Two, three, two, three. Urham, the village leader, had realized that the dog could rid him of the vermin that were eating his grain. To get him, he was prepared to offer more gifts. Three, two, three, two, three. But Ar would have none of it.
He would keep his dog. As sedentary people accumulated things, ownership became a goal In and of itself, they realized that they could use their possessions to get whatever they wanted. This concept was foreign to nomads. A nomad's life consisted of hardship and the unexpected.
His existence was ruled by nature and its forces. His beliefs were inextricably linked to these forces over which he had no control. I can't do it!
No, no! I can't do it! I can't do it! No, no! No, no!
I can't do it! No, no! I'm not going to let you go! I'm not going to let you go! Those who had chosen a sedentary life still feared nature.
But being organized enabled them to minimize the effects of nature's excesses and to protect themselves and make their lives more predictable. Their stone tipis withstood gale force winds and flames. Nomads knew they could lose everything overnight.
What was there yesterday may not be there tomorrow. This uncertainty was precisely what sedentary peoples tried to ward off. They always look for ways to avoid unpleasant surprises. The villagers offer to take Ar's clan in.
Faced with the chaos of life, the villagers solution was reassuring, organized and stable. Even though nomads preferred a life of adventure to a life of work, discipline and routine, security had tremendous seductive power. The villagers freed up one of their stone houses for them.
But one who has always slept under the stars, unfettered and free, finds sleep elusive in confined spaces. What we back here? What we back here? One night, Aka quickly got used to eating the soft bread. But Asha was so wasted and weak that she could hardly eat it all.
Aka fed her by chewing the bread first. Nomads adapted to their environment. Sedentary peoples adapted their environment to suit their needs. A few days went by and Ar and his group did their best to adjust. The villagers, who initially had pretended to be happy to help, were soon won over by their guests.
A friendship was struck. Orham still wanted Ar's dog, but was resigned to never getting him. But, like Arr's first woman, Asha died in childbirth.
She was no longer breathing. She joined the ancestors in the sea of stars. One Gaia girl child had left. Another had arrived, with no one to feed her. These nomads believed in Gaia, the Eternal Mother.
Gaia would provide them what they needed. At that time, it is possible that men did not understand the concept of fatherhood. They may not have known that the children from the wombs of women were also part of them. The nomads left the village the following day at dawn.
Arr gave his best dog to Urham to thank him for his generosity. He also left Asha's daughter behind. It was the only way she would survive.
And Gaia would survive through her. Attracted by its comfort and security, most nomads would soon adopt a sedentary life, leaving in our genes traces of their free spirit, wanderlust and love of discovery. Sedentariness profoundly changed human behavior, propelling man into an era of invention and innovation. The gathering of wild berries and cereals would soon give way to actual farming.
Wheat and barley in the Fertile Crescent would extend through all of Europe and the Indus. Rice and millet in China, corn, potatoes and peppers in America, sorghum in Africa. More or less consciously, sapiens made the first genetic selections by choosing the seeds of the strongest, most productive plants.
To cultivate the land, man would open clearings. The landscape became more human. It was 7,500 years before Christ, in the Near East. The Hamlet had mushroomed into a village, with greater security and greater stability. More children were being born, and fewer were dying.
More people, more homes, and more tensions as well. Increasingly, the round houses which were hard to extend were being replaced by rectangular structures that could be enlarged or divided into separate rooms. Uki's amulet told him that he was a descendant of the Gaia lineage. Uki had been in love with Niki ever since he could remember.
He wanted to make her his wife. The village now boasted a house of the dead, where the bodies of the ancestors were kept. This place perpetuated their memory. To remember the dead, the villagers preserved their skulls and painted their faces so they resembled who they'd been.
In this way, they knew where and whom they came from. Uki was not the beautiful Nihil. Niki's only suitor. Uku, of the Baluta family, was his eternal rival. The Balutas were an important family.
But Uku used his family's name to commit wrongdoings. What happened that day should never have happened. Niki's father would choose a husband for his daughter based on the interests of the family and the home.
of the animal spirits. But the fight scared Uki, and he decided to request permission for Niki's hand immediately. By this time, the villagers had domesticated a few animals. After the hunt, they would bring young animals back to the village, young wild boars, mountain goats. They kept and fed them to have a reserve of fresh meat available when they needed it.
These animals were quite rare, but Uki decided to give his family's only baby boar to Niki's father as an engagement gift. But Uku's family had gotten there ahead of him, with the gift of two extremely rare animals. Cats were attracted to the villages by rodents feeding on the stores of grain.
They'd quickly proven their worth. I love them all. I love you, Niki.
I love you, Niki. Para. Para.
Niki. What are you doing? Having possessions had an impact on what people could obtain from others. And the poorer you were, the less power you had. Competition between humans was changing.
Survival of the fittest was becoming survival of the richest. Uki loved Niki, and Niki had been given to another. He could not go against village law or the elders'authority. It would be an offense to Uku, his family, and Niki's father.
But Uki decided to take Niki far away, to start a family in another village. They had their lives ahead of them. They were free, and they loved each other. They felt they were in paradise. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Nikki was getting cold. Uki could cure her with plants. At first, he had to make a fire to keep her warm.
It was risky, but he had no choice. Of course, Uku refused to lose the woman he had won. His powerful family and determination to have Niki made him a formidable, tenacious and merciless enemy. They had destroyed Uki's body.
He was barely breathing. With each breath, Uki struggled to stay alive. At that time, humans understood that you could bury seeds in the ground and they would grow shoots after a few weeks. They even knew how to select the best specimens and improve their crops. Uki!
Uki's father and brother searched far and wide. Uki! But Uku had covered his tracks well.
Uki! Days went by. His life was hanging by a thread. He held on thanks to the blades of wheatgrass he reached out to touch. He saw they'd grown every time he regained consciousness.
They gave him hope. They represented life. The rivalry between Uki and Uku had escalated into a feud between two family clans.
It would divide the village. Man had long known of the powers of medicinal plants, but surgery was still in its infancy. Trepanation had only recently been invented. The skull was opened up to cure traumas, dementia and other unknown ailments.
Conflicts that were easily resolved in small groups could threaten the cohesiveness of large groups. The feud heated up, some villagers siding with Uki, others with the Beluda family. No resolution was in sight.
The hole in Uki's skull had released the blood that had paralyzed him. He would survive, but as a parasite, unable to help his family in the fields. There had been no rain that year. The soil was barren, and the village was suffering. Oddly enough, at that time no one had ever realized how essential water was to the reproduction and growth of plants.
Nobody had made a direct connection between the lack of rain and crop failure. A connection had, however, been made between Uki and hardship. Uki had defied the spirits. They were punishing the village. Even his father blamed him.
Buki spent his days observing nature, trying to understand its secrets. His body was weak, but his mind was strong. Suddenly, an idea came to him. An idea, even a simple one, can change the course of history. Rookie's muddy hand making a furrow in the wet earth.
Water trickling. Seeds sprouting. Tender green shoots growing.
Water is the secret of life. It had always been there right before their eyes, but they hadn't realized it. Irrigation was born. Uki's father and brother thought it was madness. But they humored him and spared no effort.
Understanding the role water played in farming would greatly strengthen the sedentary way of life. Well irrigated crops were far more productive and the years of scarcity would soon be over. Uki was ecstatic.
He felt he had robbed the heavens of their powers and shamed the rains. He was stronger than nature, stronger than all the spirits. Uku came to spy, trying to figure out why these fields were so green while his were barren.
He still believed Uki was cursed. Irrigation had made all the difference. The fields were producing an abundance of cereals.
Much more, in fact, than they needed. They had a production surplus that could be used for local trading. It was a form of wealth that gave them power over those who were lacking.
Niki's father and those who had ostracized Uki's family now came with gifts they wanted to trade for grain. Trading, the bartering of goods and services brought people together and ease tensions. Uki and his family, descendants of the Gaia line, had become the most powerful and most respected family in the village. However, Uki could not forgive Uku's family for what they'd done to him.
He would never sell them so much as one grain of wheat. Wealth would therefore become a form of violence. By observing the young boars Niki's father had traded, Uki had another stroke of inspiration.
If he kept the females and males together, they multiplied. This discovery would quickly make its way around the world. Uki? Uki still loved Nikki.
He'd never stop loving her. But he'd given up hope of her ever returning to him. With farming, animal breeding and irrigation, man could now legitimately say that he had a measure of control over the living world. He had overcome the elements.
His newfound power filled him with enormous pride. He began to think that he was more powerful than nature. In fact, to represent his deities, he replaced the images of animals and spirits with his own image. Ho!
Ho! Ouki even found himself a woman and started a family. The Gaia lineage would continue.
The trading of goods soon led to the exchange of know-how and techniques. Information and innovations would circulate over great distances, and human evolution would accelerate. After farming, Animal husbandry spread around the globe like wildfire.
After the wolf became dog, other animals followed. Wild sheep and goats were domesticated in the Near East and Asia. The boar became the pig and the aurochs cattle.
Hens were domesticated in Pakistan, donkeys in Palestine, horses between Europe and Central Asia, and llamas in Peru. Even insects, bees, were domesticated in Egypt. The domestication of animals fostered a population explosion, but it also brought with it a number of evil effects.
Terrible hardships awaited mankind. It was 3,500 years before Christ. The village had grown into a town, with a population of more than a thousand. Since travelers had introduced the wheel and carts, work had become easier. People had trades, stonecutters, masons, blacksmiths, potters and so forth.
Not full-time trades, though, because everyone still worked in the fields and raised cattle. There were many families. Conflicts were commonplace. A council of experienced men mediated disputes, dispensed justice, and took all major decisions.
decisions involving the community. Waka and Urhu were brothers, both descendants of the Gaia line, one of the oldest in the town. Waka, the elder of the two, wore the Heda family amulet. These brothers were well respected by everyone. Everybody now had their own field, their own animals, and their own house.
They all had possessions, and the problems that came with them. Owning also meant defending. The Tanners goats had spent the night in the in the old potter's fields.
Needless to say, they destroyed his crops. In such cases, people appealed to the council. The council made its rulings on a case-by-case basis, and generally according to custom. An exchange of goods, usually made up for the offense.
These collegiate... arrangements maintain the town's delicate balance. However, the misfortune soon to befall the town would completely destroy that balance, thanks to Urhu and his insatiable greed for riches.
Ike was the son of Waka, the eldest in the Gaia lineage. The family had fields and goats, but his father's first job was as the town's blacksmith. The first metals had just made their appearance, and their strength fascinated humans. Ike brought ore back from the mountains for his father, ore found in its natural state like copper and gold.
Waka would melt and mold them to make containers and small tools. But the tools made from these metals were too soft to turn over the soil. Lately, Ike's mother had developed red blotches on her skin.
No one had any idea that these marks heralded a terrible tragedy. Manolo Atta! Atta! Every week, a goat was slaughtered to feed the family. This was Ike's job, and he hated it.
He never knew which one to kill. Atta! Little did he know he was treading on deadly, invisible organisms. The half-dead goat was a sign of the tragedy that lay ahead. Due to the concentration of men, animals, filth and excrement, there was also an exponential increase of germs, bacteria and viruses.
I'm Shalidi Weeshalmat. Ike's mother was becoming sicker and sicker. The red rash had spread all over her body.
She had a very high fever and was vomiting violently. Urhu, Ike's uncle, was a healer. He had mastered the science of plants and concocted potions and ointments for the whole town. There had always been illness among humans, but this was a mysterious new type of illness. It was more dangerous, more devastating.
Urhu tried to be reassuring. He cared about his reputation and his reward. His power as a healer would prevail.
Urhu loved gifts. He never hesitated in seeking compensation. He should have refused the reward from his brother, but his greed was too great. Wild pigs, sheep and cattle were sick. The villagers could not have anticipated that by breeding them, they had created conditions which led to the transmission of these illnesses to humans.
Initially, no one made the connection, not even Urhu. In those days diseases such as measles, tuberculosis, influenza and smallpox are all transmitted to humans by their animals. Ike's mother was dying.
Her whole body was wracked with pain, and her final moments were excruciating. There was nothing they could do. By that time, funeral customs had changed.
They'd become more complex. The bodies of the deceased were not kept in the family home, testimony to the greater importance given to each lineage. All family members, including Urhu, had to give something to the dead. Within a few days, it was absolute carnage. The potter's whole family suddenly died.
And there were more. Entire families. Until there was nobody left in the house to bury them. The wise men of the council decided to put all the corpses in a pit outside the town, to keep the smell of death away. The council had been gathered in the meeting house since the previous day, but no one, not even the shaman Idru, could explain what had caused the plague.
How could they have known? Their only clue was the skin rash. It always started with the rash. With Urhu leading the way, everyone was summoned to show their bodies. If they bore the blotches, they were cursed.
Apparently, the mysterious illness chose its victims. Those who were infected developed a rash. Now, no unlucky victim could escape detection. Urhu had identified the sign of the scourge and established himself as the only one able to stop it. They had to listen to him and obey his orders.
Every person marked with the curse was banished. Even Ur, whose brother was forced to leave. Faced with plagues, men who had no knowledge of bacteria or viruses blamed invisible forces. Almost overnight, Urhu had invented a new form of power. That of chief.
He became the most important man in town. Having banished his brother, Urhu remained as the one person who decided for all the others. He alone headed the Gaia lineage.
Who better than Idru, a shaman, to validate the chief's discovery? The chief had identified evil, and evil had to be cast out. Before long, religion and the state would be in league.
Urhu believed that fire kept the evil spirits away. Without knowing it, he made a wise move which stopped the epidemic among the animals. He ordered...
that all the dead animals be burned. They hailed their chief for his great clairvoyance and for saving them. At last.
Urhu's power, intelligence and wisdom had been recognized. The hunt for the tainted individuals continued. In his new position of power, Urhu knew he needed armed men to help him carry out his decisions. All houses were searched. All villages were searched.
checked. Those bearing the telltale rash were banished and their homes marked with lime. A chief who made good decisions for the community received thanks in the form of gifts.
Urhu became richer. His prestige among the villagers soared. But, or whose pride would be his downfall? The band of outcasts wandered aimlessly, hopelessly, its members dying one after another.
Epidemics share certain characteristics. They spread rapidly from one infected individual to another. But infection doesn't always mean certain death. The surviving outcasts realized that they were getting stronger. The plague was leaving their bodies.
They had been spared. Only three of them had survived. After a few weeks of walking, they found life again.
These people had come from Anatolia to the north. They too had been stricken with the disease, and many of their men had died. All these women without men. Welcome the newcomers with great generosity.
Ike and the other two survivors were surprised to see that among these people, a woman made the major decisions. Where they came from, men issued the orders. This was new behavior. From the high Anatolian plateaus, the women had brought with them two major discoveries.
The horse, a fiery, shy and untameable animal, now stood before Ike, calm and docile as a newborn lamb. But the women had not tamed the horse solely for its meat. Ike was smitten with Kele. She brought out in him a feeling he had never experienced before.
He wanted to sing, to dance, to take her in his arms and kiss her mouth. The second discovery would change his father's life, and later the lives of all men. It was a metal as hard as rock, something his father Waka had never seen before.
How had they made it? Waka was dying to know, but it was a closely guarded secret. Back in the town, the epidemic had ended suddenly, propelling Urhu to even greater power. He was now the keeper of the belongings of all those who were gone, including his brother. These things were of no use to anyone in empty houses.
Urhu's brother's house held many treasures. Urhu helped himself. Soon, all the belongings left in the deserted houses had been appropriated.
Ohu proclaimed that they were now community property. They soon became his property. But this was more than one man needed. Idru was not pleased.
Urhu had to make the shaman a true ally. His support would have to be bought. The chief began to share some of his riches with his supporters, thereby creating an elite, an upper social class.
Bronze, a remarkable metal. The Anatolian blacksmiths were reluctant to divulge their secret. But the tattooed woman who had the power also had great tenderness for Warka. Popper, pewter, mixed together in the same bath.
It was simple, but someone had to think of it. Bronze would make much stronger and harder tools. They would increase the productivity of farming communities. Bronze would also be used to fashion much deadlier weapons.
Who had had the idea? How many alloys had they tried before finding this one? In the town, everything had changed, especially Urhu. His status now required that Urhu live in the largest building, the former meeting house. He had ordered that statues representing Gaia be erected everywhere.
Urhu was no longer like other men. He no longer worked in the fields or raised animals. As chief, he couldn't debase himself by performing such menial tasks.
It was reasonable that he should be supported by those he led. All citizens were therefore required to make a contribution to the chief. Attacks of sorts.
Not everyone was happy with this practice, but everyone accepted it. A new form of... organization of power was born chieftain ship or who was being kept by the efforts of everyone else part of the fruit of the villagers labors was given to the chief who in turn shared it with the ruling class and in the chiefs intimate circle a hierarchy was established this brought greed and power struggles Kili had changed Ike.
Love had made a man of him and given meaning to his life. Where is she? She's calling you. Though curiously, at that time, no one had actually mounted a horse.
It would take another 2,000 years before horseback riding was invented. Completely cured and armed with what they had learned, Ike and Waka decided to return home. Discontent was brewing in their town.
Urhu had become a despot who would not be contradicted. This homecoming had not been expected. Waka had been one of the most esteemed men in the town. More importantly, he was the eldest in the Gaia lineage. Urhu wanted to know what his brother had brought him from his voyage to distant lands.
Dirt. What kind of honor was this? Where were the riches?
How did his brother plan to reward him for his extraordinary genius? Power beget power. Ownership called for more wealth, and all of this corrupted the mind.
Idru realized that his chief had gone too far. What could he do? Anna, without a mini-push...
Ike's most precious treasure had been stolen. I will not let you die here! But his knowledge of bronze would get Kili back for him.
When power becomes abusive, and the balance between what it gives and what it takes is upset, power is doomed. When a powerful man makes decisions for his own benefit, and ignores the needs of those who depend upon him, he is doomed. Urhu had gone too far. Urhu was doomed.
Bastille, Bastille, camarades! Aaaaaaah! Idru, the Shaman, had betrayed him.
The love of ownership, the love of power, and the fear of losing it, created man's vanity. And his vanity would consume him. Waka decided that Ike should reign. Ike would guide his people in the new world unfolding before their eyes.
Ike and Kele would be worthy of their trust. Chieftainships would soon give way to kingdoms. Enlightened monarchs would understand that their power lay in the prosperity of their people.
That riches were to be distributed and not hoarded. But to achieve greater wealth without taking it from their people, meant looking for it elsewhere. And thus, wars were invented.
In the following 2000 years... Great and powerful cities would emerge around the globe. In Asia, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, the Americas.
The richer agglomerations would want to expand. They would take up the first arms, take over neighboring villages and towns and federate them. This was how cities came about.
The first such city would flourish in today's Iraq and give rise to the great Sumerian civilization. It was the year 2500 before Christ, in Mesopotamia. This is Tobar, the shepherd of the Gaia lineage. Since his childhood, Tobar had dreamt of seeing the great city. He was spellbound, the size of the buildings.
Who could have built them? The gods? As soon as they appeared, cities held a tremendous fascination for humans.
For the first time in the history of mankind, peoples of various origins and different languages lived and built their futures together. These people, what were they doing? They were passing each other without so much as a glance. It was a feast for the eyes, an abundance of things to see, objects from faraway places, jewels, perfumes, spices, wines, some utilitarian, others just for the pleasure of the senses.
The state was also present everywhere. The king had many representatives. Heading the list were those who collected the taxes that supported the city. The scribe was responsible for the accounts, but it was the chief of guards who carried out the decisions of the king's treasury. The king's treasury.
Some subjects were already attempting to minimize their wealth in order to lower their contribution to the state. To record trading and taxes, a system of codes engraved in clay had been invented. Writing was born, though it was only used to record transactions. Tobar was fascinated by the scribe.
Sarkhi had mastered the science of signs, which he saw as magical knowledge. Could he count the stars in the skies? The weaver created fabrics for the notables, but his debt to the state had tripled, and he was unable to pay. Sarki and the weaver had become friends. Why demand so much right away?
Could he not pay in installments? The chief of guards did not know how to read, but he had the memory of an elephant. Nothing would deter him from his mission. The chief of guards'loyalty to his king was unshakable. But he used his authority to satisfy his cruelty.
Shalom! How could he serve the king if he deprived him of his best craftsman? The more Sarki defended the weaver, the harder the chief of guards thrashed him. King's Palace.
The center of this hive of activity was an immense house, bigger than the biggest dune in the desert. This was where the taxes were sent. Tobar wanted to see what was behind the walls. But it was a restricted area.
Tobar had never encountered such a thing. A place open only to a chosen few. He wanted to know what went on in there.
Why were they hiding their activities from the citizens? In his village, anyone could see the chief. You only had to ask.
It was like a golden village within the city. A place where all decisions were made. It looked wonderful.
It housed architects, artists, and scholars, the greatest concentration of knowledge ever brought together. The riches of the state were used to maintain the city and the king's prestige, but also to protect the kingdom. Thieving nomads had made a foray into the northern part of the kingdom. The king had to increase his army, hire more soldiers, and manufacture new weapons.
He needed more resources. Tovar was drawn to the scribe. He was mesmerized by his knowledge.
He wanted to meet him and especially to learn from him. It was now clear why he had come to the city. He wanted to write.
The king's son was a great man. He Their messages, however, had to remain secret. It was important that no one be able to decipher them.
Hence, the strategic importance of having knowledge of the symbols. By accepting to help Tobar learn, Sarki was taking an enormous risk. He was not allowed to teach the secret code to anyone.
Watch and keep quiet. Sarki liked the shepherd. His naivete and openness appealed to him. requires discipline and rigor it must be learned one step at a time the principle is simple a sign on a clay tablet a sign on a clay tablet and we decide what it means Gaia was an old lineage, but Tobar knew nothing about his heritage. If only his ancestors had been able to write.
The first lesson was a disaster, but it gave Sarki an idea. An idea that might save his friend the weaver. Sarki's friend had been chosen to contribute to the extra war effort and the chief of guards was about to strip him of everything he had. The sophisticated organization of the city had its share of injustices and imbalances. The functionaries had to carry out orders without consideration for people's lives.
This time, they were asking too much. The weaver had hidden his last reserves. Sarki was appalled by the abuse. He was prepared to lie to save his friend. After twenty years of loyal service, he would betray his king.
Talented scribes would soon do much more than simply copy data. They would invent new symbols to represent concepts, ideas and words. The young shepherd began to see how writing could become a very powerful tool. It could be used to communicate knowledge, the natural and scientific laws, and to disseminate this information broadly.
But writing could also be used to lie, transmit false information and deceive people. Words would prove more powerful than the sword. To redress the injustice against his friend the weaver, Sarky falsified the royal treasury's record.
A few signs were changed and the amount was different. The treasurer was tense. He'd been unable to collect all the goods demanded by the king.
Saki had never cheated before. He was numb with fear. The falsification was well done, but the treasurer had doubts. The chief of guards saw through the trick.
He knew Saki had altered the figures on one of the clay tablets. He just didn't know which one. Saki.
Sarky was hard on his student. Tobar wasn't allowed to go out. He wasn't allowed to sleep more than four hours a night. And the faster Tobar learned...
The more demanding Sarki became. There were times when Tobar missed his village and his sheep. But soon, he would learn to write the word sheep. Odoo Odoo Sarky was under investigation The falsified tablet had been found and compared to the original. I'm not going to let you go!
Sarky! Sarky! Sarky, I'm coming!
Hey! No! You're never sharing! You're never sharing!
Ah! What good would all of Sarki's knowledge be now? His imagination would free him.
Oh no. The chief of guards promised he'd be executed. HUNTY! Sarki was thrown in prison. Having one's freedom taken away is terrible punishment.
For an uneducated man like Tobar, it would have been unbearable. But with intellectual food, Sarki's mind remained free. He was able to endure. Solitude, boredom, persecution. Writing made it possible to transmit knowledge to a large number of people.
But this meant that people had to be taught to read. Sarki determined that he would educate all the prisoners, even the mute. He wasn't allowed to, but he didn't care.
He wanted to pass on his knowledge, to share it before he was sentenced to death. And he only got away with it because Lugar the guard had a curious mind. He listened and learned, and he never breathed a word to his superiors. Indeed, thousands of years would pass before writing was truly democratized. A city's prosperity and vitality are linked to its ability to educate its people.
The monarchs had not understood this at first. They'd wanted to keep knowledge to themselves, so as to exploit it to their own ends. I will not let you go, Aziz. You are a coward, Aziz.
I will not let you go, Aziz. You are a coward, Aziz. You are a coward, Aziz. You will not let me go! I will not let you go!
It would be a long time before mankind would separate justice from power. In the city, public executions offered people an entertaining spectacle. But their real purpose was to reinforce the sovereign supremacy.
Tobar could not let this happen. Saki had taught him everything he knew. He had risked his life for him. It was time to repay his friend. He loved Sarky, and on that day he understood how much Sarky meant to him.
Sarki loved him. He had been his disciple, his protege. Tobar gave his mask to the symbol of Gaia.
It would protect him. By living in large cities, humans gradually lost touch with nature and no longer recognized its dangers. Even though they could read the stars to find their way, they were unable to find water in the desert.
Without shade for protection, their bodies failed them. MG! MG! Saki felt the end was near, but he had no regrets.
He preferred to die free than to live a lie. By this time, the desert people were used to finding city dwellers lost in the sand dunes. As a rule, they had already died of thirst.
What would they do with a dying man? Strip him of his goods and leave his body to the vultures? Who were these people?
Why had they saved him? They were nomads and for them a stranger was a traveler who deserved their hospitality. These people were descendants of the R line, an ancient family that had never converted to the sedentary life.
They knew the Gaia lineage very well. Tobar continued to study on his own, without ever forgetting Sarki. For Sarki's inspired teachings stayed with Tobar, who gradually became an educated man. A master of symbols.
Between the major urban centers, new nomadic peoples had emerged. Moving in caravans, they began to criss-cross the planet, trading goods over thousands of kilometers, unknowingly contributing to the dissemination of knowledge, which would continue to grow. Thanks to these travelers and their interactions with large cities, knowledge and know-how, science, the arts and techniques, grew by leaps and bounds.
Thanks to Sarki, they were able to master figures and symbols. One day, writing would enable all peoples to free themselves from the shackles of their kings. Ten years had gone by.
Sarki had returned to the city he had fled. Tobar had become a royal scribe and a master. Sarki was very impressed.
He was proud of his protege. Sarki had told the desert nomads about Tobar and wanted him to join them. He wanted to show him the world and everything it had to offer.
Toba chose to stay. His place was here. He had a mission. His role was no longer to count the king's treasures.
He was writing the history of mankind. He would write the history of the Gaia Dynasty, so that it could be read and heard in the far reaches of the world for thousands of years to come. The written word would soon become the pillar of human creation, the most powerful means of communication in the universe. There would soon be billions of humans, sharing their knowledge at an increasingly rapid rate. And when they will no longer know where to go, they will look back to see where they came from.