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<h3>-22000 ZE - The mesolithic</h3>
The last of the iliu-ktuvok wars seems to have destroyed all Almean civilizations.
<ul><li><b>Humans</b> were thrown back to the stone age, losing not only cities and culture but agriculture. As the <i>Count of Years</i> says, “All the kingdoms of men were overthrown. Their cities were destroyed, their arts lost, and their understanding confused. Men were reduced to wandering nomads, poor and rootless, for ten thousand years.”
<p>That is, they lived as hunter-gatherers in the plains and forests, hunting animals with stone weapons, and gathering herbs, grains, roots, fruits, and nuts.
<p>The checkered pattern symbolizes the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. We have confirmation from ilian sources that humans lived in the areas shown; they may well have ventured into other regions as well.
<li>The <b>elcari</b> had also lost all the arts of civilization. They also were reduced to hunting and gathering, but in the mountains, to which their durability, surefootedness, and resistance to cold made them well-adapted. The múrtani had not yet differentiated from them.
<p>Around the date of this map they domesticated the goat (<i>kapro</i>); on the basis of this reliable source of milk and meat their population soared.
<li>The <b>ktuvoks</b> lost all their empires and high technology. As we will see, they were later able to teach the Munkhâshi agriculture and bronze working, but anything more, even iron metallurgy, had to wait for humans to develop it.
<p>They do not seem to have changed their habitat much in the present age; within Ereláe they were found, as today, in the Êtwegashdakh and Êtwegashlim marshes.
<li>The <b>iliu</b> told at least some questioners that they “lost much”, and they seem not to have interacted with other Thinking Kinds for thousands of years. So they too may have experienced a long dark age.
<p>Since then their lifestyle is not far from that of their precivilized ancestors— rather as if we decided that this whole business of cars, houses, and clothing was a huge mistake and we should go back to the savanna. Nonetheless it’s clear that they’ve recovered a level of technology far beyond ours. In part, after thousands of years they’re simply no longer gadget-obsessed; and in part the technology they do have is highly miniaturized and designed so as to harmonize with their largely undersea lifestyle.
<p>The Qaraus were told that the iliu now thought it was an error to direct the affairs of men and elcari, even for their good— it infantilized them, and ultimately led to the destruction of their civilizations as they were caught up in the iliu-ktuvok wars. They’ve mostly intervened only to keep the ktuvoks, who have no such scruple, from becoming too powerful.
<p>At the time of the map they had a larger presence on land than they do today. Their land settlements are built to facilitate activities such as metallurgy that cannot be done underwater. As human and elcarin societies develop, the iliu can acquire goods by trade rather than making them themselves; this explains why the iliu regions shrink over time.
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The map shows large concentrations of <b><a href="Javascript:parent.al('Ic%C3%ABlani');">icëlani</a></b>, a very primitive hominid which lives in the savannas and forests. Smaller populations were and are scattered across the continent. They avoided humans, but were able to hold their own territory better when both were at the hunter/getherer stage.
<p>The <b>flaids</b> must have been somewhere, and somewhere else than Flora; the iliu and their own legends agree that they moved to the island later. But their original location is unknown.
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