Twenty-five thousand years ago, small, migrating bands of hunters and foragers traced converging paths across the freezing earth. Evidence of their existence is etched in their long-buried bones, turned to stone as hard as the tools they shaped over the millennia. They followed the vast herds that flourished as the earth cooled and the seas lowered, adapting to hard life in arctic and desert, forest and savannah.
They traveled immense distances to trade objects-some vital, some merely useful, others prized for beauty alone. What knowledge and beliefs did they also exchange, what features and bloodlines? Did they have a religious ideal or a moral code? Were they altruistic, practicing a selfless tribalism for the greater good, or were they governed by base instinct that allowed only the strong and ruthless to survive?
Proof of their humanity, along with suggestions of cruelty, have endured: a splinter of bone that required the tender help of another person to heal; a shard of rib cage shattered by a spear. Teeth worn flat like overused tools freed nimble hands to create artifacts of lasting grace, utility, and imagination.
They were predators and prey. They made up for what they lacked and what they feared by shaping the equivalent of tooth and claw, weight and warmth. They took only what they could carry on their backs, staying in one place just long enough to strip the fruit from their knotty stems. They competed with the birds for the berries, swallowing flinty seeds, bitter leaves, and unyielding rind, their hard stomachs wringing the last bit of nutrition to sustain their strength. When the final fruit was plucked, and their prey took flight, they moved on in a race against time, when the ground would freeze and the vines would fold into the harsh sleep of winter.
