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<h3>-30000 ZE - The iliu-ktuvok wars</h3>
<i>All dates are given in Z.E. (<i>zonî erei,</i> ‘years of the south’), which are relative to the founding of Ctésifon. The present date is Z.E. 3480.</i>
<p>We begin the atlas with a glimpse of a spectacular world we know little of: the height of the iliu-ktuvok wars.
<img src="http://www.almeopedia.com/almeopedia/mediawiki/images/d/df/Ilisea.jpg" width="163" height="244" align="right" title="An iliu warrior">
<p>We are unable to read iliu records, so all we have is echoes of the early world in mythology; the fullest account is the Cuzeian <i><a href="Javascript:parent.updir('ciroma.htm');">Count of Years</a></i>.
<p>The primary habitat of the <b>iliu</b> is the continental shelf; though they are omnivorous, their diet is chiefly fish. They can live very well on land, and developed enclaves on the coast where they could pursue metallurgy, chemistry, and other activities difficult underwater. By the time of this map their civilization was over 10,000 years old and more advanced than our own.
<p><i>Don’t take these numbers to the bank. Iliu civilization today is said to be over 40,000 years old; but this may exclude an interregnum of indeterminate length. The <a href="Javascript:parent.al('Zone_of_Fire');">Zone of Fire</a> is believed to be an artefact of the wars, and there are clear north-south differences at the species level in many plants and animals. This must have taken time, and it’s not out of the question that the wars were 100,000 years ago rather than 35,000.</i>
<p>Their opponents were the <b>ktuvoks</b>, who lived in the wetlands but hunted large marine animals. Both species have telepathic powers; the ktuvoks use theirs to find and confuse prey— and once they encounter other intelligent species, to mesmerize them and enslave them, forming <b>ktuvok empires</b>. Though certainly intelligent, it is chiefly through human and elcarin slaves that they were able to imitate and then challenge the iliu civilization.
<IMG Align=left SRC="../ktuvok.jpg" width="163" height="194" title="Ktuvok">
<p>The ktuvoks once occupied the Nasuael swamp in Eretald; they were driven from it during one of the wars.
<p>The <i>Count of Years</i> describes the <b>elcari</b> as creating their own civilization, in the mountains, but <b>humans</b> being mentored by the iliu. Their exact technological level is uncertain, but the few ruins from their time have no exotic materials like steel, plastic, silicon, or carbon nanotubes, so it’s likely that their technology was medieval, supplemented by access to iliu and later ktuvok weaponry.
<p>This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that Almea still has evidently high levels of coal, iron, and oil. The iliu must have used these to some extent, but apparently they quickly passed on to using renewable resources— or magic— and in any case their footprint on the land has always been small.
<p>The book names <b>eight wars</b>:
<p>the war of Nexi, fought with “hands and teeth and claws”<br>the wer of metal, fought with edged weapons
<br>the war of spirit, fought with magic and biological weapons<br>the war of fire, perhaps nuclear; the Zone of Fire is a remnant of this (though it’s magical, not radioactive)<br>the war of machines, fought with battle machines “the size of cities”<br>the war of subcreations, in which humans and elcari joined in<br>the war of corruption, in which most humans joined the ktuvoks <br>the war of chaos, in which “all weapons” were used
<p>The list should be taken as schematized and spiritualized, but suggestive of ever-rising technology and universality, leading up to a final catastrophe.
<p>The <i>Count of Years</i> has <b>humans</b> being created between the fifth and sixth wars. As humans are clearly hominids and lesuniae, they must have evolved long before, but we don’t know where. During the iliu-ktuvok wars both humans and elcari spread to all the continents. We don’t know the continent of origin of any Thinking Kind, though the fact that there are four human races on Arcél/Curym and two on Ereláe is suggestive.
<p>The map shows the concentrations of humans and other species before the “war of subcreations”; the names given are all Cuêzi and are clearly projections of the Cuzeians’ own times, tens of thousands of years later, back into this period. (See the <i>Count of Years</i> commentary for the meaning of the names.) The book claims that <i>Āeressār</i>, today the desert of Rhânor, was then a fertile land, inherited by the Rāutigō, one of the few groups which did not correspond to an ethnicity contemporary with the Cuzeians.
<p>The <i>Count of Years</i> refers to the múrtani participating in the war, but we know from elcarin sources that this is ahistorical (see second map following). However, some elcarin groups were certainly enslaved by the ktuvoks.
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