There Are No More Campfires

Prologue: This is a story of two Stone Age chieftains, who migrated to America during the last Ice Age, approximately twenty thousand years ago: one came from the East and one came from the West, but before you begin to recite the teachings of Archaeology from twenty years ago, you might be surprised to know of startling new discoveries about the migration of man and the inconvenient facts surrounding the theories of Anthropomorphic Global Warming.

The Whale People, Their Homeland (Europe’s Western Coast, now submerged)

Yellow Hair was an anomaly; he was ancient, almost forty years old, but strongest among all the men of the Whale People. He was chief of the Whale People, and he ruled his tribe with rules etched in flint. Breaking the rules often meant death for the offender; for life was a tedious and constant struggle between survival and death, and death came all too often twenty-thousand years ago, during the height of the last great Ice Age in the area off the coast of Western France.

Much of the world’s water was locked up in ice sheets that a mile high covering much of Europe, Asia, and North America; in fact, the ice sheets covered one-third of the earth’s land masses and depleted the oceans of so much water, the ocean depths were a hundred meters less than they are now. There were coast lines connecting Europe with North America, and Asia with North America, they extended nearly a thousand miles from north to south on each corridor. It was a temperate area of grasslands and coniferous forests with limited precipitation, because of the amount of water frozen in the glaciers. There were thousands of creeks and rivers fed by springs and lakes that are now a hundred meters under water. It was a harsh ecosystem that supported the mastodon, a creature much larger than the elephant, as well as musk ox, giant sloths, saber toothed tigers, large bears, caribou, giant moose, elk, horses, and camels, all of whom migrated freely back and forth from Asia and Europe to North America.

No one knows why the giant glaciers appeared or why they receded, but the Ice Ages were real events in the story of the earth; the Ice Ages spanned tens of thousands of years and facilitated the dispersal of man all over the world.

The Whale People were a hardy bunch that had drawn their genetic pools from the blue and green eyed traders from the East, the tall, blonde haired, white skinned people from the land to the North, and the darker people of the South. It was a fairly short walk from North Africa to what would become Spain; the drought conditions of the world brought on by so much water being sequestered in ice forced many of the darker people of Africa to migrate north to be near the life giving water from glacial melt in summer and the springs that formed creeks and rivers on the Southern boundaries of the European Glacier and to the western shores of Spain and France.

The Whale People had originally occupied a coastal area that was next to the Southern ice shield of Europe approximately twenty-thousand years ago. Almost nothing could survive on these ever increasing glaciers that covered large portions of the continents, but there was a strip of new land exposed from the ocean depths, extending well beyond our present shorelines, because of so much of the earth’s water being frozen in the glaciers. This strip of land was warmed by the ocean, but it still remained a cold climate in summer, from the cooling effects of the great mass of ice on its borders. On this narrow strip of land, a micro-climate existed that had allowed animals, grasses, and a few hardy trees to proliferate in a wondrous abundance for tens of thousands of years, but the pressure by humans and the ever encroaching ice was reducing the availability of food sources and thus the livable space was under fierce competition by all species, but the competition among humans was the probably the fiercest.

Yellow Hair’s tribe had occupied the Southern coastal regions since the beginning of time or at least as far back as their oral history recorded their time here on earth. Yellow Hair wasn’t a singer who memorized the family lines and history of his tribe, but he knew his fathers had been chiefs far back in time. He had remembered his fathers and his personal history by assigning each of them, one of his fingers. He could go back in time by looking at a finger and tell you the name of that father, going back in time, nine generations.

The Ice People, The Migration (From Central Asia)

Tiger Paw loved to hunt and here in the land of the North Star, this land the North People call Beringia (the land bridge connecting Siberia to Alaska), the hunting was better than in the stories of the First Days.

It was told in the oral traditions of history, on the nights of the full moon, of how his people, the Ice People, had followed the herds over the Great Grasslands and forests to the West, just South of the great walls of ice. In the beginning, they were the first people, because the Father of the Ice had shown them great favor by providing them with flint for spears and the many animals to hunt. At first everyone was hungry during the winter, but the Father of the Ice liked the Ice People and gave them the beasts of the Steppes and the stone technology to kill the beasts, he also gave them fire and taught the women how to cook and how to brain tan furs and leather.

They learned that the brain of each animal, when allowed to break down to a gelatinous mass in a covered ceramic bowl, was sufficient to tan its own hide. They marveled at the skills of the ice Father and how he put all these mysteries of life within reach of those with the intelligence to figure out the answers. The Ice Father taught the women to love the hunters and to entertain them at night, so the tribe would be happy and always have new little ones.

Tiger Paw’s belief was essentially correct in the oral history of his tribe, but his concept of time wasn’t capable of comprehending the enormity of his tribe’s migration. His ancestors started moving east through the mountains and grasslands of Southern Russia and Northern Asia, several thousand years ago. Using the logic of 20,000 years ago, they figured the sun was always refueled in the East and traveled overhead to the West, only to get tired at the end of each day, needing to sleep through the night to be strong and hot the next morning, much like the hunter who hunts all day, breeds his woman at night, and then sleeps to be strong in the morning. They wanted to see this land where the sun is refreshed; there is surely much fuel to warm the sun, just beyond the horizon to the east. Sadly, the sun seemed to be weakening, because the great ice sheets were getting larger and eating more and more land. They were over a mile high and moving to the South at the rate of several man strides every day.

The idea of a great source of fuel to the East, was essentially the idea for migrating to the East. For over a thousand years, they followed the basic idea of moving east, always east. There were hostile tribes to contend with and periods of starvation coupled with disease, but they kept moving east.

Their culture and customs were ill suited for sedentary life. It was a simple matter of hygiene; a concept that was understood by sedentary tribes, for they knew that human waste was dangerous and should be deposited in a hole dug specifically for that purpose, they also understood the need to maintain clean drinking water.

It seems a simple concept, but migrating people rarely suffered from the ravages of cholera and dysentery, for they rarely made camp for longer than it took for a kill to be consumed or to spoil, except in the winter and the effects of disease were lessened during the extreme cold of winter.

Sedentary tribes, without cultural customs for contending with human waste, were condemned to die of disease if they stayed too long in one place. The problem was self-correcting in time, since tribes that lacked certain cultural conventions were weakened and often annihilated by other tribes who looked upon them as unclean or they simply died out from the ravages of disease.

During the migration of the Ice People, they had acquired many customs from the women they had traded for and the occasional lost hunter they had adopted. Even though Tiger Paw believed his tribe to be the only true people walking the earth, he understood advantages in acquiring new people with new technologies and customs.

http://youtu.be/flY8pWoyZq4

The Whale People of Europe

Nine generations would place Yellow Hair’s father in the time when the great mother whale, Olalla of the big wild salt water, gave birth to man and all the creatures of the earth. In Yellow Hair’s mind, his distant relative was the first human to slide through Olalla’s birth canal and swim to shore; therefore, his birthright was one of leadership and a semi-divinity, for he was a direct descendant of Olalla. He couldn’t explain the bloodlines of other people or even those in his tribe and he forbid himself and others from asking frivolous questions that complicate the simple explanations of their life.

It was this natural birth of Yellow Hair’s relative that intrigued the Whale People and provided the common bond that held them together. The secrets of their existence and their connection with divinity was thought to exist through the navel of Yellow Hair, for that umbilical connection was directly related to Olalla the Whale Mother who had birthed the first relative of Yellow Hair, the very first human.

Unfortunately, it was the natural scheme of their life that was in jeopardy at this time; for the success of the Whale People made them the envy of many tribes. They had mastered the science of not only trapping great bounties of salmon in the rivers, but more importantly, they smoked and dried the salmon over smoldering fires to preserve them for months. This was a quantum leap in technology for the people of the world. News spread for over a thousand miles to the East along with the tasty morsels of the pink colored fish flesh.

Tribes with many huge warriors and advanced stone weapons ventured into the traditional lands of the Salmon People and brought many wondrous trade goods to trade for the smoked salmon of the Whale People. Trade was good for the Whale people, but some of these tribes decided to stay and there were now tribes camped in their winter hunting grounds and on their fishing grounds.

The winters were too cold to fish in the great salt water and the rivers and creeks were frozen. Rather than eat smoked salmon all winter, the Whale people had learned the different migration routes of the Caribou and devised traps to catch the Caribou in blind canyons for the winter. If there was enough feed for the Caribou, they would slaughter them as they needed meat; if the valley floor ran out of the lichens that the Caribou eat, they would slaughter them all at once and smoke the flesh like that of the salmon. In a gaunt world of starvation and hardship, the Whale People lived in a world of plenty.

They were happy to live under the leadership of Yellow Hair; not only was he divine, but he was a fair and intelligent leader, who could sense when and where the Caribou were migrating and when the Salmon started their runs or when there was a whale trapped in a small estuary by the tide. His people made boats with oak frames with greased leather for hulls that worked well if you kept the hide well greased with seal oil or whale blubber.

If his people observed the rules, they lived in harmony within the group: if they broke the law, Yellow Hair might cut their throat or trade them into slavery. He was feared, but loved as well. He was the nucleus that kept his tribe strong.

In these early days and up up until the present, there were several aspects of a society that needed to be worked into a particular culture for that society to exist and thrive. Survival, procreation, food, and leadership were all important elements that had to be defined culturally for a tribe to exist. If the rules or laws were broken, the society broke down.

Yellow Hair could control his own people; unfortunately, there were other tribes moving in and occupying their traditional Caribou hunting grounds. They observed the Caribou techniques of the Whale People and just repaired the log fences and gaits while waiting for the Caribou to pass through the mountain valleys.

This was no problem for Yellow Hair, he knew the mountain passes and could divert the Caribou with fire and by dressing his men in wolf and bear hides to drive the Caribou into different blind canyons. He would just build new gaits and fences at the entrances. These new people would have to live off the few Caribou that might be separated and the odd elk, horse, camel, or moose they could kill. If they were desperate or if they found a mastodon trapped in mud or lame, they could fight the mastodon to the death, for it was only possible to kill one at great risk to the hunters. He knew these new green and blue eyed people would often be facing starvation and that the Whale People almost always had plenty of Caribou and fish; therefore, they were at risk from these starving tribes.

These interlopers should have stayed in their own country, Yellow Hair reasoned. They were unfit for life between the ice and the salt sea. Their eyes were light colored and they suffered from the sun’s glare, their skin was too white in color and they couldn’t work naked in the glacier fed waters to catch the salmon. They didn’t engage in ritual washing and smoking their bodies in the traditional way. That alone prevented them from being hardy enough to survive the fierce cold and winds of these ancient lands. The blue and green eyed people were weak beyond measure, but they were large people and dangerous.

Yellow Hair knew he carried the seed of the first human, but it was this first human’s lusty ways and hunger for wild women of the forests that had produced all these uncultured barbarians. This ancient father had produced these excess humans of his own blood, and were now posing a threat to the very existence of the Whale People.

Yellow Hair had little sympathy for weakness, he had seen a weakness of character in the previous chief, his own father, and challenged the chief to personal combat for leadership of the tribe and to possess the young princess wife of his father. He killed his own father and claimed his father’s earthly goods and wives as his own. He was hardy enough, but that was back when men were men. (The weakest of the men was many times stronger than an NFL linebacker.) In those early days they hunted and killed the near humans for sport. There weren’t enough of them left now to worry over; besides, they can’t speak words, the men run like pregnant women, and they make the crudest tools and weapons. They are laughable, but in a wrestling match they are deadly, for they are strong like the mastodon. No, it is much safer to kill them with spears from a goodly distance. The near humans’s muscles are so large, they can only thrust a spear, if they try to throw a spear it is laughable.

He didn’t like to think about it, but these near humans, might be the result of his relative, the First Human, coupling with some creature of the forest. It was an ugly thought, but how else do you explain the presence of these near humans. He tried not to dwell on the negative aspects of the heritage of the First Human, but sometimes this irresponsible behavior of his family was embarrassing and impossible to ignore.

Yellow Hair had several wives and at least nine children, aged from twenty-four years to one winter. He enjoyed his kids; however, they were expected to meet the same requirements for life and work as everyone else, if the rules were relaxed for his family, he knew there would be resentment among his people.

Women who chose a mate from another tribe were expected to leave, but if a suitable mate was a loner and could prove himself as far as fishing, hunting, courage, and work, he could be accepted into the tribe. Yellow Hair would never allow slackers and free loaders a wooden soup bowl; charming a maiden of his tribe, did not warrant a free meal around the cook fire.

Everyone had to contribute with meaningful work or be banished or possibly executed by Yellow Hair. Life was a precious gift, but the nature of living next to the ice made it imperative that everyone worked to insure survival of the group. When the Salmon got lost and didn’t return to their rivers and creeks in sufficient numbers or the Caribou were called by Olalla to rest a year and not migrate, the old frail people were expected to walk alone into the night and not return, infanticide was also practiced to keep the numbers of the tribe down when food was scarce to help keep the nutritional requirements low. There were always hard decisions to be made, but the Whale People realized they must be ready to sacrifice just to survive next to the ice.

Killing a huge mastodon could mean survival through the winter, but unless they were mired in a bog hole or suffering from a severe lameness, it was far too dangerous to try and kill them and even when they were trapped, it often took hours to kill the monsters and many times his hunters were killed as well.

Sea lions were also dangerous to kill for they could travel much faster than a man can run. They were usually killed with a fusillade of spears when the animal was caught sunning himself beneath a ledge. The spears were made with sharp narrow points and heavier shafts, but the lighter javelin was also used, these weapons were designed to penetrate a tough hide and several layers of blubber; unless, the spear throws were lethal, the animal would run to the sea to escape and a valuable cache of spears and javelins would be lost with him. The sea lions were unafraid of humans and would run over a man who stood in his way as if he wasn’t there. The man would be crushed under several tons of sea lion, traveling faster than a horse.

The wild horses were trapped in blind canyons like the caribou, but they were more wary than the caribou and often sensed a trap and would turn just before being caught, to run over the men and sacrifice a few members of the herd to insure that the herd would survive.

Stealth and hunting discipline was primary in killing any of these animals, for even though man was a strong lethal killer, if an animal turned to fight and a man was caught without his weapon, humans always died. Yellow Hair explained to his elder sons, Sea Otter and Ivory Tusk, that Olalla, the whale mother that had birthed their first father, had given them superior brains to stand against the fierce animals of the grasslands and the ocean; otherwise they would have starved long ago. They accepted these truths without question; yet, there were many unanswered mysteries for the twenty year old lads.

http://youtu.be/URTWWQ1sikQ

The Ice People of Asia

Often the men had some hunting trick or knowledge of nature that helped them secure food: the women the hunters acquired for wives, always brought new knowledge of food preparation and garment making that made life better for the Ice People.

Several generations ago, the Ice People adopted a small band of tiny people with black silky hair (from the tribes that would form Japan, then a mountainous area connected to Asia and on the Eastern shore of a large lake). Their tribe had been wiped out by barbarians and they were starving. Chief Four Fingers, Tiger Paw’s grandfather, was intrigued by the women and thought if they had some meat on their bones they would be intriguing bed warmers.

The kindness shown by Four Fingers was rewarded not only by having attractive bed warmers, but these people were excellent fishermen, they also knew how to smoke fish and meats, but most importantly, they understood boatbuilding and using a mast with a short gaff rigged sail and rudder.

Although, the Ice People were on the coast, it is important to remember that so much water was frozen in the great ice sheets, that the ocean depth was reduced by over a hundred meters. The land bridge connecting Alaska and Siberia was over a thousand miles wide. Coastal areas often extended hundreds of miles farther into the sea than they do now. Thousands of rivers and creeks existed that are now on the sea floor. Beringia was a dry grassland that teemed with migrating herds traveling freely between Asia and North America.

Four Fingers had welcomed these fishermen into the tribe and did his best to insure the little people adopted the Ice Culture, but the technology that was gained by the little people was transforming their culture. He was primarily concerned with the combining the two DNA groups by spreading his seed around as much as possible, but the cultural and technological aspects of these ancient fishermen kept the Ice People from starving many times.

The original DNA pool of the Ice People had been slowly diluted for thousands of years as they traveled through Asia, along the borders of the ice; but rather than weakening the gene pool of the Ice People, they became stronger. Instead of a fair-haired tribe with green and blue eyes, they were primarily dark haired people with almond eyes. There would be an occasional child born with round blue eyes and fair hair, amid great laughter and jokes directed toward the mother and father, but the Ice People were a loving people and the throwback was always accepted as one of the true people.

The Ice People had managed to keep their own numbers close to one hundred hunters, not counting women and children. They lived well, but there were dangers from larger hostile tribes. Many tribes were driven into Beringia by starvation, but killing the great mastodon required advanced hunting skills and coordination among hunters; and yet, the skills for hunting horses, camels, muskox, caribou, and other animals of this huge grassland were advanced as well. Fishing required the skills and knowledge for building fish traps and a willingness to work naked in near freezing cold water. Boat building skills consisted of carefully burning and scraping a log with sharp instruments, until a boat shaped form appeared. Their sails were abbreviated, since the heavy keel technology would take thousands of years to be discovered; however, with paddles, these fairly fast, sleek canoe type vessels could be used for fishing and sealing and perhaps more importantly for continued migration to the land of fuel to the East.

The Ice People were hunting and fishing on the Northern edge of the glacier that extended into Southern British Columbia and north into the Yukon and Alaska. Although, it was an enormous glacier, in comparison to the glacier to the East, covering the rest of Canada and much of the US, it was a miniature glacier. Tiger Paw’s People knew there was a corridor of excellent winter hunting between the two glaciers, but they were also enjoying excellent fishing and sealing in the stormy salt sea, during the summer months.

Life was good for the Ice People, but with success in the struggle for life, comes those who want to steal that success.

http://youtu.be/Va4EzoBcrFY

The Whale People of Europe

Both of Yellow Hair’s sons had chosen good mates from outside the tribe. Yellow Hair had examined the potential mates closely for sickness or deformities and then deemed them sound women suitable for work and childbirth. He had paid a man’s weight in smoked salmon and several pairs of winter moccasins for the young girls, but each one had been an excellent purchase from the barbarian tribes of green and blue eyes, since they each produced a healthy son for the tribe. Thus his tribe would be guaranteed to survive with the superior intellect and knowledge that Yellow Hair was passing on to his sons. Yellow Hair was respected by his tribe for his infinite knowledge of nature, animals, survival, food preservation, weather, the seasons, and the land itself.

Mates were an important aspect of tribal life, adultery was not permitted without a formal declaration by a woman in front of the tribe at dinner. A man could have several wives if he could care for them, but if one of them stated her desire to be with another, there might be a fight to the death or the choice might go unchallenged for various reasons. Yellow Hair was a detached observer and official of these domestic disputes. Someone might die in a fight as a result of hard feelings and tempestuous desires, so the divorce option was not to be taken lightly. He thought it was a good system that helped keep his tribe strong and stable and especially, in helping to control these wild mating desires of both men and women.

Yellow Hair liked to keep about a hundred men in the tribe and twice that many women. The number of children fluctuated, because so many children died from the harsh life. It was obvious that Olalla wanted only the strongest of children to survive and she had to test them every winter. Everyone was expected to work in the cold glaciers streams to help catch the salmon and the boys were expected to join in the difficult and dangerous hunts. The work of women was much safer, but many of them died in childbirth, so in time, Olalla provided twice as many women as men. Yellow Hair also purchased wives for his men, when there always seemed to be a shortage of unmarried women.

He gave them a thorough physical exam before purchase. He demanded clear eyes, preferably of the earth colors and not the colors of plants and sky, broad hips for child birth, good sound teeth that met in a fairly uniform manner, well formed milk paps, and a well formed birth canal with no infection.

He had an unfortunate incident in the past, a woman was infected and gave birth to two blind children. Yellow Hair had been forced to kill the babies and after becoming suspicious, he examined the woman and discovered that she was infected. He killed her and drove her husband out of the village to prevent the spread of infection to other members of the tribe. He hesitated to only banish the man, who was a cousin of his, rather than kill him, for he knew the infection would probably continue through the populations of other tribes.

Yellow Hair had picked his eldest son, Ivory Tusk, to succeed him as chief. The lad was strong, had good eyes, and an uncanny way of understanding the animals and fish. He was a good strong son.

It all happened very quickly. A group of several tribes raided the fishing camp in the early morning before the sun chased away the thick fog. They intended to kill and rob the Whale People of their dried salmon. Many of the Whale men were overwhelmed and killed, the survivors were forced to retreat to their canoes. They lost over half the adults and most of the children in the initial minutes of the attack. They had few personal belongings with them, but they felt lucky to escape with their lives. They pushed the canoes into the surf as spears were landing around them. They managed to retrieve a few of the spears that were thrown, but they escaped with only a few stones for knives and a few spears.

Yellow Hair counted people, there were forty-five men and twenty-three women with just a few suckling children and adolescents that had survived the raid. They had suffered a terrible defeat. The raiders might be following them in the extra canoes, they kept paddling all day to the North. Ivory Tusk was wounded in the gut and in a few hours, he could no longer continue to paddle. Yellow Hair took the time to transfer him to his canoe.

He looked his brave, handsome son in the eye and felt tears for the first time, since he was a child. “Olalla is calling you home” he said, “You have the chance to see her in this world, before you cross over to the spirit world. Are you ready, to see the Whale Mother?”

Ivory Tusk nodded his head, yes, and looked to the blue sky of morning, while thongs secured his legs and arms to prevent him from swimming and prolonging his agony. He was proud to be a strong leader like his father and made sure to maintain his honor and dignity as the men prepared him for the depths.

His father said to him, “We will sing of you at the winter fires and I will see you in the Spirit World, my son,” as he slipped his son’s bound body into the great salt sea.

The Whale People all said their goodbyes as Ivory Tusk disappeared under the waves and still looking up at them, the Whale People then resumed paddling as the storm clouds began forming.

http://youtu.be/Q3bW8zI81DQ

The Ice People of Asia

Tiger Paw knew there were food thefts taking place by some of the other tribes and some of them were making threatening signs at kill sites. Life was hard in Beringia, starvation was everywhere, the Ice People were well fed, their women had meat on their bones and produced children every year or two; they were successful, but the other tribes wanted this good life and the riches associated with success and eating well.

The Ice People had a simple life and a simple formula for success, but it required a keen observation of nature, the intelligence to apply the skills of hunting, and the willingness to work tirelessly to secure food; for everything was easier if you secured food. If you had excess food, like dried and smoked fish and meat, you could trade for tools, weapons, furs, and women.

Tribes who weren’t successful had to trade their women and girls for food to live; eventually, the young men of less successful tribes became despondent and angry. They looked at the wealth of Tiger Paw’s people and wondered why their tribe wasn’t rich with the bounty of the world. After all, the bounty was put on earth for everyone, all the tribes should have healthy women and dried fish; the Ice People were just acting like bears, they took their share and everyone else’s share as well.

Blue Duck, the only son of Chief One Eye, of the Muskeg people, was one of those consumed with envy and hatred. He and several of his companions watched as a small band of Ice People brought down one of the giant moose with several well placed spear throws. He was incredulous that women accompanied the men on the hunt. This fact alone made his heart burn with hatred and anger; these people had no respect for the ancient customs of his people and now they were going to enjoy the tasty internal morsels of this magnificent animal, an animal that rightfully belonged to Blue Duck and his people. He decided it was time for the Muskeg people to assert their authority over the greedy tribes of the world and take what is rightfully theirs.

The three men of the Ice People had the moose deboned and cut into roast sized pieces that were packed into six backpacks, while the women prepared a feast of the heart and liver cut into small chunks and stuffed into the stomach with blueberries, onions, and edible grasses that the moose had eaten on his own. The stomach was roasted over the coals until it swelled and pressure cooked the contents into a nutritious feast for the three couples.

Blue Duck gathered his hunters around him and devised a plan; they would sneak up on the camp and attack the group when they started to eat the wrongfully acquired feast. They would kill the men and try to capture the women; if the women fought too hard, they would kill them as well. They would then eat the feast and pack the meat back to their own camp. It was a momentous decision, the men were reluctant to resort to murder and theft, but their stomachs had been empty for a week and they had not known a woman for months.

Blue Duck had five men to attack three men and three women in a camp that was celebrating. It was almost dark by the time they had crawled close enough to hear the Ice People laughing and talking. They crawled to within several caribou strides, just after dark. The stomach had the entrance and exit sections tied in a knot and it was under extreme pressure from the steam and heat locked inside. One of the men split the top with his flint knife and the delicious aroma made the Ice people cheer and laugh, while the Muskeg men felt their senses sharpened by the scent of food; until, they were even more determined to commit murder and mayhem.

The Ice People let their meal cool for a few minutes, while they waited with their wooden spoons ready to dig into the stomach.

Blue Duck had his right index finger in the air to remind his men to wait for his signal, before beginning the attack.

Just as the Ice People closed around the stomach to eat, Blue Duck and his men attacked with a fierce savagery. The Ice men were each killed with multiple wounds from the spears. An older woman managed to jump on the back of one of the attackers and mortally wound him through the neck with a knife, before a spear entered her rib cage from the side and pierce both her lungs. A second woman was hit in the mouth with the butt end of a spear and fell backwards in an unconscious state. The men fell on the meal and had turns breeding the woman like a pack of ravenous wolves. It was an hour or two later, before Blue Duck noticed a woman was missing. He tried to get his men to leave, but once a leader encourages his men to break the cultural laws, the men begin to lose respect for that man’s leadership and authority; besides, their bellies were distended after eating like animals and they were exhausted after having their way repeatedly with the woman, who now appeared to be lifeless. They wanted to sleep and leave in the morning, and there was nothing Blue Duck could do to get them moving.

Blue Duck realized it was hopeless and drifted off to sleep. Just before morning, a well disciplined group of hunters, led by Bear Killer, son of Tiger Paw, descended on Blue Duck and his men and within seconds, three more of the Muskeg men were dead, Blue Duck and another were wounded, but still alive.

They brought the wounded men back to Tiger Paw’s camp and tied them to a tree. Tiger Paw raged inside, but he didn’t show emotion to his people or to these criminals. He used his serrated flint knife, with an edge as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, but far more durable, to cut the fur clothing from the two men, exposing their nakedness.

Blue Duck was screaming threats and insults, but his efforts were wasted, for the Ice People noticed the silhouette tattoo of a right hand on Blue Duck’s chest. It was a well known symbol of a chief’s hand, designating his choice for leadership; it was a black tattoo done with ashes.

This was big medicine for the Ice People; it could mean war, the Muskeg tribe was a large tribe with oversized people, who were often starving.

http://youtu.be/MMRS-SPBV50

The Whale People of Europe

The Whale People followed the shore line and passed camps on shore with people who waved to them, but yellow Hair pushed on wanting to find a new hunting and fishing ground. The shoreline no longer allowed them to head north, they had been paddling west for several days when the storm clouds finally unleashed a fury on the Whale People. The waves were higher than the boats were long. Yellow Hair yelled to the other leaders to paddle to the peak of the waves at an angle and to paddle down at a high rate of speed to keep the waves from cresting and breaking over the top of them and burying them under a wall of water.

It was hopeless, the canoe captains couldn’t hear him over the noise of the storm; hopefully, his captains would follow his lead and survive the storm. He saw one of the canoes trapped in the trough, when a huge wave many times as high as a man buried them and drove them to the bottom of the salt water.

The storm raged for three days and at the end, the Whale People were so exhausted they collapsed in the hulls of their canoes and let the storm have its way with them. Yellow Hair awoke on the fourth morning and looked out to see only one other canoe floating near-by. The temperature was mild, nearly seventy degrees, Yellow Hair had never felt such a mild temperature, on the shore, there was a forest of huge trees he had never seen before. He thought he might be in the Spirit World. He called out to the other boat, three men, including his youngest son, sat up and waved. There was also a woman in that canoe with a suckling child. There were three men and an adolescent girl in his canoe. Yellow Hair made a motion with is hand towards shore and the two canoes landed on a sandy shore; although, they were a hundred and fifty miles from the present coast of Virginia, they were the first Europeans to reach the East Coast of North America.

That night at low tide, they walked far out on a sand bar to look for the tell-tale yellow flickering of campfires in the distance: for the first time in their lives, they realized they were utterly alone in the world, like the beginning of time and being born by Olalla, they were alone in the world.

The Ice People of Asia

Tiger Paw knew this was a crucial and defining moment in the leadership of his tribe. His son and his raiding party had been correct in their method of revenge on this Chief’s son and his raiding party and now Blue Duck was screaming for mercy. Tiger Paw yelled for a wooden gag to be placed in each of the captive’s mouths and tied behind their heads with a leather thong. He skinned the tattoo from the chest of Blue Duck and tied it with a thong to the neck of the other captive.

Tiger Paw then ordered his son to take half the tribe and circle the North end of the glacier and head south through the Yukon and into British Columbia. They were loaded and starting their migration within the hour. It was a big gamble; Tiger Paw had no idea whether the two glaciers maintained a corridor of land between them, he just had a fairly good hunch that there was a corridor of good hunting between the glaciers.

They had to leave this country or be annihilated by the Muskeg People. There were only enough canoes for half the tribe. He might be sending his son and half his tribe to their doom, but he knew the coast line couldn’t support people traveling by land; therefore, there was no choice, he had to send half his people inland. He told his son to follow the Western Glacier and he would meet him at the southern end of the ice, in the area that was to become Seattle; Tiger Paw would take half the tribe by boat and they will join up at the end of the ice.

He turned to Blue Duck and emasculated him, so that his father would know he would never reproduce in the spirit world and certainly not on this earth ever again. He waited until Blue Duck had accepted his fate and was no longer struggling, he then cut his throat and ordered the rest of his people into their canoes. He let Blue Duck’s warrior go with his hands tied behind him and the tattoo still tied to his neck.

Tiger Paw and the rest of the Ice people left Beringia forever.

Tiger Paw and his did meet each other in the Puget Sound area, but Tiger Paw had no idea it would take twelve years for his son to make the trip. Tiger Paw’s son had gray hair and Tiger Paw was now little more than an ancient old man, but for the survivors it was a great reunion and a chance for marriages and procreation.

Eventually, nearly five hundred years later, the descendants of Tiger Paw and Yellow Hair would meet in the area that was to become Omaha, Nebraska. The names of Tiger Paw and Yellow Hair had been forgotten, but traces of their DNA are still present in many Americans. The same qualities that drove these chiefs to succeed against all odds and care for their people were carried down through the eons and it is still in the blood of tens of millions of their descendants, now walking the earth in North America.

Epilogue: This story is of course fiction; however it is based in fact, since we now know that there were land bridges that connected Europe and Asia to North America. Cultural and technologic traits as well as DNA evidence record the presence of DNA tracings of ancient Europeans among our indigenous native people of North America. This is significant, because the DNA evidence illustrates, that in spite of superficial cultural differences and phenotypical variation, people are much more closely related than anyone’s wildest imagination ever dreamed.

It is the author’s dream, that as new DNA science is discovered, people will have a softening of preconceived ideas of racial differences and a greater harmony can be achieved through knowledge and science, rather than relying on ignorance and cultural division.

Although the events in this article are based on supposition by the author, a man who has experience living on a sharp divide between survival and death, at least more than most people, it is easy to combine human nature with a harsh environment and find these behaviors close to the surface, even with our superior cultural attitudes.

The envious wailings of the OWS people who bemoan their pitiful existence and hide their selfish pleadings behind the cloak of Marxism and a dubious desire for an end to corruption; yet, their cries for equality seem to be hypocritical at best as they perpetuate and promote a code of lawlessness. Yes, under the guise of fairness and equality, greed begets more greed and the veneers of advanced culture become laughable with their pretensions of enlightenment.

This article, the preface of a novel, is not meant to belittle prehistoric man, but rather to illustrate that our advancements are mainly technological and we who consider ourselves so highly evolved culturally, are not that far removed from seeking shelter in caves and tents made of hides.

These people are modern in the sense that a baby from their culture could be raised in a twenty-first century family and no one would know the difference, but switching adults would be nearly impossible because of the cultural differences.

The extent of the land bridge between Europe and North America will be argued for decades, but the new DNA evidence suggests that if it was not complete, the exposed land masses permitted human migration with short trips by boat.