The First People

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Have you ever thought about how the human race got its act together, how the first people emerged? You know, people who cared about their appearance, maybe with a bit of jewelry or makeup, who might laugh at a joke or sway to the pleasing rhythm of a song? People that you could relate with and maybe laugh together at a Geico commerical. It's a given that from a physical and brain development point of view, humans in the form of modern homo sapiens have been ready for prime time for about 200,000 years.

But from 200,000 BCE to say, 15,000 or 10,000 B.C., there is the big gap of prehistory where man presumably developed the ability to communicate in familiar and complex ways. Did it happen all at once about 50,000 years ago or evolve over time? Presumably, a certain advanced language ability allowed the articulation of  abstract thought and perhaps helped formulate the first manifestations of spirituality and religion as seen in cave paintings and burial rituals. Interestingly, crude funeral rituals may go back at least 60,000 to 70,000 years.

Along the way, social activities blossomed, such as communal feasting, gaming, story telling, gossiping, flirting and joking and ultimately fishing and farming and bitching about the weather.  Once folks had put the key cultural concepts together in small communities, they were ready for the next step, building a civilization. It is in these earliest efforts, where communities continued to grow and evolve that we see the emergence of the earliest towns in the Cradle of Civilization from Sumer to Early Dynastic Egypt. Some communities stood out and were able to leave a record and set an example that has be documented and  survived down to our present age.

But some group of people, some community, did it first. Before the history writers were around. They didn't necessarily leave records. Somehow, at least for now, evidence of them has been lost. Fortunately, for those of us today curious about the past, we have Gettysburg Passage, an Amazon book, by John Callahan.  The key characters of Gettysburg Passage are modern, normal people, alive today. But somewhat against their wishes, people in the book are given the responsibility to influence the formation of a critical-mass community back in the most ancient times. Before Memphis in ancient Egypt, before Jericho, before Eridu in Sumer. Members of this ancient, forgotten community are oppressed, scattered and disheartened. Their lands have been overwhelmed, defenses defeated and homes occupied. But no matter how dire their plight, they must follow divine prophecy. They have the job of carrying the precious seeds of a young civilization to a land where they can be planted, sprout and flourish. Our current existence depends on it.

These concepts are explored in  Books I, II and III of the Gettysburg Passage series. The first book is available today for $5.99. Why not visit Amazon today?

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