Dawn (In the Beginning)

Prologue

"Eden" by Hourcast is the song you will hear if you press play on the picture above.

Contrary to the beliefs of many religions and Science Fiction enthusiasts, our beginning was not so difficult to figure out. Care to walk through the early years?

Dinosaurs ruled the warm earth first and where they came from, we'll leave to the imagination. It is an obvious deduction that humans, especially as we are now, could not have co-existed with the monstrously huge, lizard-like creatures that roamed the hot, desert-like terrain of our planet at the time they were here. They were cold-blooded, egg-laying creatures who did not care to nourish their young or ensure their species' survival. They lacked the intelligence to do more than lay their eggs and move on, leaving the hatchlings to fend for themselves. In the hot climate, this was not a problem and by chance, the eggs stayed warm, hatched, and the babies managed to survive.

The ages passed and the earth's climate began to change. Ice crept down from the North and up from the South, sometimes in sudden spurts, catching many creatures off guard, entrapping them in ice and snow. The land broke apart in many places and stranded a great number of the land-bound dinosaurs. They ran out of space and food. Their eggs began to parish in the freezing climates. The dinosaurs began to diminish and fewer and fewer remained. Eventually, only those creatures who gave birth to live young, the warm-blooded mammals, survived the frozen continents. Pterodactyls held on for a while because they were able to fly away and seek out the last warm places still available. A handful of land-bound dinosaurs got lucky and found refuge in underground caves near volcanoes, but they could not venture far and food was scarce.

The mammals of the era survived the freezing cold climates because they bore live young and nourished and fed them, keeping them warm and protected. They grew hair or fur to keep their bodies warm. Although many of the huge mammals gave birth to smaller and smaller babies due to the increasingly harsh climate and lack of food, it seemed the smaller they became, the more cunning and intelligent they were.

After many years, huge apes had evolved and the climate gradually began changing once more. The earth started to warm up again. Slowly the environment became more and more hospitable for all living things. The biped apes, the most advanced in brain complexity of the creatures on earth, taught what they learned of survival to their young, and generation after generation, knowledge was added to knowledge, as each new generation became more intelligent than the one before. Unlike other mammals who only passed down the basics for survival before leaving their offspring to fend for themselves, the apes learned new ways to adapt. They experimented and discovered ways to make their existence easier and everything they learned was recorded in their brains and taught to their children. Clans formed here and there, learning new things from each other. Language was developed, although scarcely verbal and far from being written, these apes developed gestures and movements that allowed them to communicate in a far more complex manner than any other creature on the planet.

Eventually these apes, vegetarians mostly, observed carnivores eating the meat of other animals and the apes, who had begun shedding the thick fur they once grew in order to adapt to warmer climates, desired more than the fruits and vegetation of their diet. There were places where these things were scarce as ice clashed with desert and plant-life struggled to survive.

The mostly hairless apes observed the animals who ate other animals and out of hunger, they began to hunt. Not only did they have plenty of food by eating animals, but they realized that they could venture into the icy areas without freezing to death if they covered their balding bodies with the skins of the animals they ate. Hunting became second nature.

Now, there did happen to be a handful of dinosaurs, especially the ones with wings, still cruising around. They picked off the youngest bipeds who strayed too far from their elders and sometimes hunting parties came back missing some of their hunters. So the giant, mostly hairless apes developed weapons that became stronger and deadlier. They learned to use projectile weapons, like spears and slings. Soon, huge hunting groups of the largest males would set off to find and kill the tormenting flying lizards.