World Sapiens

Homo sapiens were one of the least successful species on the planet in the millions of years prior to the tracheoglythic era. The longer they persisted, the more difficult their survival became.

When they first appeared, finally severing their DNA from that of the great apes and becoming their own species, the world’s array of creatures was not as intensely biodiverse. When a person could emerge from a forest, and feast on the sight of grass expanses so wide and flat, they saw an infinite countryside. The grass cushioned the people’s rough and calloused feet like an animal pelt. Trees accentuated the smell; bodies of water reflected the sky’s physique. 

Peaks in the mountains, scattered in the background like a bag of jacks, their bases wide and green and bumpy, were everywhere. The more inquisitive members of this species thought the mountains held an intense intrigue. Thousands of years later, they were sleeping in crevices in the mountains, waking up and falling asleep to the pitter-patter of water droplets, while those who remained at ground level were sprawled in pelt hammocks on piles of viles and weeds, the large trees shielding them from rainwater.

It was a lot louder in the rainforests, but they all lived louder lives, forced to talk over the forests. (Their harder and more stoic mountain-living relatives could afford long stretches of silence.) Millions of years later, the mountain people grew smaller feet to slip into the rocks, and their pupils always dilated to let them look through the dark. They could maneuver up and down the cliffsides and in and out of caves with ease. They could sit waiting for hours on end, like a polar bear, waiting for a guinea pig or rat or cat to scamper out of one of the crevices. Pouncing onto them, they would grab them and pummel them into the ground, creating interesting cave art. If the animals were big enough, they would put up a fight, gnawing and clawing at the mountain people’s wrists. Sometimes the animals would escape and leave them with a raw and bloody arm.

The mountain folk would walk around, making sure to not touch their bloody arm against anything, until the rain came down again. They would stick their arm out to rinse the blood off. If they managed to get the raw meat from the fight, they would would gnaw on it and run the warm blood over their bodies and through their hair. It would dry and cake onto them, making them look skinless, with black bones and organs. When they got their own blood on them, it was filthy and frowned upon.

A tradition so old that none of them had any idea where it came from: years before, unsuccessful hunters would drain their own blood and smother them and their families with it. The deeper and more robust the layers of blood cake a family had, the more respect they garnered amongst their peers.

After days on end of catching nothing, the embarrassment was overwhelming for the hunter. He would show up one day to the fire with a small brood sitting around his great big basket full of warm, fresh blood. His family was ecstatic. Right after he showed everyone, he passed out, spilling his basket onto the fire, putting it out. Quickly after, his pulse faded and he died. They did not preserve this history.

When the ground people saw the mountain people up in the mountains wearing blood as a suit, they thought they more closely resembled a bear that a member of their own species.

Millions and millions of years went by. Beautiful long ice ages and long periods of drought. People persevered in the caves and in the forests. As time went on, the forests cramped up. The food they had been hunting for centuries slowly dwindled and dwindled — not in any single generation of course, but over the millennia.

As more and more species appeared, they needed more and more ways to hunt, and had more and more things to remember. Their heads grew bigger so they could remember more and more things.

Even more time later, the biodiversity became even more intense. Hundreds of yards away felt like a different continent. Their heads grew exponentially. One pair of twins was born, and they could not fit their head through the trees.