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<h3>-1550 — First states of men</h3>
The necessity for organization grew with the population and the complexity of agricultural techniques, until village chiefs had authority over several thousand people. The first true state is considered to be <b><a href="Javascript:parent.al('Yenine');">Yenine</a></b>, which united the Xengi delta around -1550. Epic records assign this feat to the king of the city of Tewor, <b>Akba:un</b>.
<p>A number of city-states have appeared on the middle Xengi; the most important and also the oldest was that of <b><a href="Javascript:parent.al('%C5%9Aima:i');">Śima:i</a></b>. (The other three shown on the map, going upriver, are Losuji, Śinji, and Yokye.)
<p>The Wede:i were polytheists, whose gods (<i>nanui</i>) were associated with wild animals— e.g. Wila:r (X. <i>Meša</i>) with the hawk, Akru: (<i>Inbamu</i>) with the lion, Aklu:ma (<i>Xivazi</i>) with the whale. They divided history into cycles (<i>bu:na</i>), which provide a hazy recollection of Almean history: before the present cycle of men was one of elcari, then two cycles of iliu, then a cycle of noble human heroes (the <i>źe:reŋ</i> cycle). For more see the description of <b><a href="Javascript:parent.updir('meshaism.htm');">Mešaism</a></b>.
<p>This map marks the end of prehistory, as the Wede:i had invented <b>writing</b>. <a href="Javascript:parent.updir('wedei.html#script');">Their script</a> was logographic, and in its early stages almost improvisational— glyphs were only slowly standardized. At first only symbols for content words were written— no grammatical endings or particles. The symbols were mostly pictograms and ideograms (e.g. <img src="../wedei/ru.gif"> ‘sun’, <img src="../wedei/kou.gif"> ‘mouth’, <img src="../wedei/nun.gif"> ‘tripod’); once enough of these had been settled upon, they could be borrowed as phonograms for words for which no symbol was readily apparent. (For instance, <img src="../wedei/kur.gif">, standing for <i>kur</i> ‘ram’ was also used for <i>ku:ru</i> ‘give’.) In the earliest stages they seem to have been written on stone using chalk (or any other brittle substance that left a mark).
<p>A Telise people, the <b>Ur-Kagöt</b>, has learned to hunt the larger game in the northern steppe, including horses. They’ve begun to move down the Lernukh river and into the Barbarian Plain where horses are even more plentiful.
<p>The Monkhayu in the Rau delta and northward had gradually abandoned Monkhayic languages in favor of Western ones, and by this time can no longer be distinguished from the Westerners, though to this day the area remains a cline between the two races.
<p>The <b>icëlani</b> were able to retain large territories free of humans (which is what the orange outline represents) so long as their neighbors were hunter-gatherers; but they were displaced by farmers— not by direct conflict but by the clearing of forest for cropland. A smaller population survived in the remaining forests or isolated regions.
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