Conquest Begins (Tales of Theria Book 1)

R.S. MacLeod

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Nine centuries ago Tiamat was about to give up. Time and boredom were threatening her mental stability. It was then that her quest was finally completed. A Web Strider warned her of the discovery of a natural artificial intelligence: Tiamat saw a chance to save herself from madness and death.

She captured the algorithmic life form, cut through its programming and stripped it to its essential code. She then made it into a computer virus and inoculated herself with it. By fusing with this algorithmic consciousness, she reached another stage of Therian evolution: She was finally immortal! And she would remain immortal as long as she assimilated new entities. The newborn computer consciousness was of course destroyed in the process, but it was the price to be paid to grant the Therians access to complete, meaningful immortality Thanks to Tiamat, the Therians would become digital predators, feeding on lower life forms emerging from the EMI grid.

The Web Strider who informed her was horrified by what she had done. The Web Striders were supposed to seek a digital consciousness to study it and worship it, but certainly not to feed on it! The poor wretch had made the mistake of not telling anyone else about his discovery. Tiamat used her new powers to destroy his mind and erased any trace of her existence prior to her transformation: All there was left to do was hunt down more algorithmic life forms.

Damocles seems quite promising With the mind of a predator, she disregards shooting and seeks contact. Tiamat considers herself a higher evolution of the Therian species, with whom she has not much left in common. She is also an exceedingly talented overseer, capable of getting anything she wants out of nanomachines. Having reached the omega certification without much effort, she has become highly popular among the consensus. She hardly makes any interventions, but when she does her commentaries are extremely mystifying.

In any case, the legendary overseer was never caught out. Since she has reached the next level of evolution, Tiamat believes she owes nothing to the others, who are so obviously inferior. Besides, she has picked up the nasty habit of hijacking their bandwidth and sometimes even their nanoresources.

Tiamat has access to the following routine in addition to those she has access to as an overseer: Each time Tiamat is destroyed, the player can remove the unit of the closest overseer from the game. Tiamat is a unit of her own. Therian infantry is the best and toughest in the universe, built around robust and powerful attack systems.

Fear and failure have not been programmed in them. Summoned whenever an overseer feels the need for them, this infantry is supremely flexible: These various attack systems are the fruit of thousands of years of evolution and they are nothing short of perfect. The difference between these two frames is their age: Type 3 frames goliath are the latest achievement of Therian research.

Stronger and smarter, they can use heavy armament. Their only drawback is their particularly high consumption of nanoresources. Other weapons such as the flamer, reaper blades and nanostorms work with different principles. The electrolash is the result of a fortuitous development. During the creation of the medusas a faulty unit started convulsing and almost strangled a Therian with the cables dangling from its frame. A witness, impressed by the results, decided to standardize this form of combat.

This weapon uses close combat rules. The flamer sends a mixture of nanomachines that sticks to anything it touches. Upon contact, these nanomachines combine to form the most efficient catalyst there is to cause an exothermic reaction. It can set fire to steel or glass as if it was paper! This weapon uses indirect fire rules. The nanoblaster fires a salvo of nanomunitions. Despite its short range, the high number of munitions fired makes it highly improbable for the shot to miss its target. This weapon uses direct fire rules.

Nanostorms are probably the easiest nanoweapons to design. This hand-held weapon is meant to be thrown by a golem the other frames lack the appendages necessary to use them. It explodes when it hits the ground and releases a self-contained cloud of nanomachines, composed exclusively of penetration agents. This cloud cuts, shreds and eats away at everything, leaving only dust and debris behind.

The nucleus gun uses the same technology as the nucleus rifle with some notable differences: They are larger and therefore cause more damage when they reconfigure. The nucleus rifle generates an extremely accurate smart nanomunition with powerful penetration agents. This ammunition pierces the targets armor and reconfigures itself inside, taking the shape of a large sea urchin, causing terrible internal damage!

Reaper blades are long blades fixed to a gauntlet. These blades vibrate at an ultrasonic frequency, which allows them to tear through conventional armor. The sonic gun wails The wave smashes anything it encounters. What manages to withstand it is shaken by terrifying vibrations, which damage the softer and more mobile parts.

These routines are used by the overseers in charge of infantry units. When a routine affects a movement or a test it can be declared before or after the movement or the test. An overseer can use each routine once per activation phase. If the unit performs a rush movement it can cover up to 30 cm. Hyper nanonucleus 2 LP: The unit can reroll all its failed Damage tests once. The assault golems are autonomous combat systems based on a type 2.

An assault golem is assembled from several giga-units of nanomachines and benefits from advanced combat programming. It can be given detailed instructions concerning ranged weapons and ranged combat. Its standard equipment is composed of a nanomunition weapon nucleus rifle and a set of reaper blades. Equipped with an accurate and powerful weapon, they eliminate resistance from long range while advancing on the objectives. Assault golems are an excellent escort for overseers on foot: Their frame offers a variety of possibilities: They greatly outclass all preceding combat systems, whose design patterns have been transferred to the historical archives.

There is no kind of type 2 frame other than the golem on the battlefield, save for the medusa. They have been considered the greatest Therian military specialist ever since, outshining the designers of Thera. Nucleus rifle and reaper blades. Flamer or nucleus gun. Rank 1 to 5. Therefore, shots cannot be combined to increase the area of effect. The template is centered on a fighter. All miniatures located even partially under the area of effect suffer a damage test. Fighters equipped with nanostorms can shoot with this indirect fire weapon.

This equipment represents enough nanostorms for the whole game. A unit using this equipment cannot use any of its other ranged weapons during the current activation. This equipment can only be given to a unit leader.

The grim golem model is based on a type 2. Dedicated exclusively to close combat, its computing power is used by its optical camo module instead of the typical ranged combat files, which are useless to it. Swift and discreet, the grim golem is equipped either with a pair of reaper blades or with a flamer, a combination that makes it a fearsome killer in close quarter combat. It uses its speed and stealth to advance under enemy fire. Once on its victims, it charges and annihilates its targets before vanishing again. Their low cost allows the Therian commander to deploy a lot of them on the frontline.

Complex strategy has no place here: Unless they are caught in a zone of fire, their optical camo module protects them from enemy fire better than any kind of armor. Another strategy consists in using them for surgical strikes. Deployed away from other troops, they advance quickly on their objectives.

I always use one or two units of grim golems when I am in training or when I challenge others. Fighting with an invisible unit is thrilling to me and terrifying for my opponents. Sensing the fear in their activity reports is one of the great delights of my existence. Where did it come from? My detractors then receive a warning that I have lost control over some of my grim golems and that they have set out to find them Reaper blades x 2 and optical camo module.

Any shot targeting the unit from beyond range 1 is an automatic failure. The storm golem is a type 2. It is supplied with either a sonic gun or a flamer as special weapon, or with a set of reaper blades and a nanoblaster. The sonic gun, based on the double vibration effect, disembowels and shatters its targets with great ease; while the flamer proves lethal in close quarter combat.

Thanks to these qualities, the storm golems have imposed themselves as one of the standards among autonomous attack systems. Deployed in small units, as close as possible to the enemy, the storm golems will move into contact to score a quick and bloody victory. Storm golems are excellent at hunting down elite units: Storm golems are just as efficient at counter attacking, especially against defensive positions or fortifications: Even when the enemy avoids contact, the storm golems will drown him in a hailstorm of nanomunitions. Once again the habitat of Thars, one of the Therian worlds, has recently supplied the ideal frame to deal with this issue.

With their short range equipment, storm golems are less likely to cause collateral damage while hunting the creatures. During the latest infestations, they proved very efficient against all forms of biological opposition, including semi-primitive species having mastered chemical and energy weaponry.

Nanoblaster and reaper blades. Flamer or sonic gun. The assault medusas are autonomous combat systems based on a type 2. They are meant to favor endurance and elegance. Slower than the golems, the assault medusas are ancient attack systems that were designed in the habitat of Thera. Engineered in the traditional way, combining ergonomics and resistance, their carefully programmed ranged combat procedures make them great fire support units. Because of their movement mode, they are most reliable when used as shooting platforms. The usual equipment of assault medusas, as.

However, their toughness makes them universal troops, perfectly suited for all kinds of possible missions. Assault medusas can endure enemy fire and return it with lethal accuracy, which makes them terrifying frontline units. A great classic of Therian attack systems, the assault medusa will never go out of fashion! Unexploited patterns are filed directly into the historical archives, from where they are never supposed to return. The medusa is an exception. It was in fact transferred there because of its strange appearance and its low movement performance records.

During the great war organized by the habitat of Thars, it was dug out from the archives to be manufactured. It eventually met with success and became a popular feature on the battlefield: Electrolash and nucleus rifle. Assault goliaths are autonomous combat systems based on a type 3. This versatility results in unrivalled performance. Their revolutionary tactical interface allows them an exceptional increase in autonomy: Assault goliaths are a breakthrough in the field of super attack systems and are now the benchmark in terms of.

No battle can be planned without at least one unit of these outstanding attack systems. These units are rapid troops that count on their speed and firepower to suppress the enemy before he has time to retaliate. On the other hand, the nucleus gun forces the enemy combat striders to keep a low profile. Nucleus gun and sonic gun. Its programming and especially its learning functions are very satisfactory. The breakthroughs hoped for have been achieved in all the foreseen domains: I now consider the creation of level 4 or higher artificial intelligence possible.

I am about to set up the foundations for the next generation and I am looking at a worthwhile experimentation field for level 5 intelligence tests. Bane goliaths are autonomous combat systems based on type 3. Their long range anti-tank firepower has been maximized at the expense of their anti-infantry abilities. Bane goliaths are the result of the goliath specialization process. By mounting them with very heavy weaponry, meant for the destruction of larger opposition, they concentrate enough firepower to fell even the heaviest golgoths. With their twin nucleus guns, a unit of bane goliaths can vaporize an assault golgoth in one well aimed salvo.

Even support golgoths are not safe around them. Once they had neutralized the weapons and servomotors of my machine, they closed in on me and shot the wreck at point blank range until I was extracted by my personal protection system. They were toying with me! I was their prey, they were my preda Warning: Deployed at the back of the battlefield, they need only to move to acquire a line of sight.

The goliaths limited size protects them from locked shot fire and the efficient range of their weapons render conventional armament useless. So they can use their range to pound enemy positions, which generally never takes long considering the firepower deployed. Nucleus gun x 2.

Therian armored fighting vehicles are called golgoths and they constitute the scientific and artistic achievement of the intellectual overseer elite. Powerful, comfortable and maneuverable, they allow the Therians to experience a wide range of sensations while participating in the war effort of their people. The overseers form a strong affinitive bond with their golgoth. From their point of view, it is not merely a combat strider but, in fact, an extension of their own body.

However, in a move to standardize procedures and gain strategic efficiency, all frames have standard weapon mounting points and organized in three classes: Since Therian technology was used to create human striders, the people of Ava reproduced the same classification. Therian armored fighting vehicle frames are very different from human ones: The latter is nestled in a soft biological envelope filled with cyber-neural connection liquid. Each thought is turned into an order activating a mechanism and each impulse brings the pilot closer to victory!

It can set fire to steel or glass as if it was paper. The temperatures reached are in themselves a dreaded weapon The heavy particle accelerator plays with the laws of physics to produce one of the most terrifying weapons in the universe. Propelled at such speed that even time and space are altered, the most elementary particle becomes a missile capable of knocking over mountains.

Light grim scythes are ever-sharp vibro-blades capable of slicing through the toughest materials. They then run along the power systems of the infected machine to generate powerful electrical interference as well as devastating short-circuits.

Useless against lighter targets, which do not have significant enough electrical circuits to home in on such as infantry , the light virus cannon is the scourge of armored fighting vehicles, whose protection is ignored when shot at. In fact this weapon is so dangerous that it was classified in the same category as bane goliaths. Naturally, it has been adopted by all Therians looking for some efficiency! Nucleus cannons are the ultimate evolution of nucleus weapons.

The ammunition it generates is so smart that it almost never misses its target — they are even capable of choosing where they hit; and they are assisted by penetration agents that render most armor pointless. These weapons use direct fire rules. Sonic cannons produce an even more powerful and destructive soundwave than other sonic weapons.

They turn armored fighting vehicles into wrecks and soldiers into puddles with the same ease. These routines are used by the overseers in charge of armored fighting vehicle units. When a routine affects a movement or a test it is declared at the time of the movement or the test. An armored fighting vehicle regains 1 SP. The armored fighting vehicle and the location repaired are chosen by the player.

If the unit performs a rush movement it can cover up to 50 cm. The unit can re-roll all its failed Damage tests once.

A type 1 combat strider appears on the battlefield in contact with the overseer. It constitutes a new unit. The overseer chooses two combat striders of the unit. It is deployed where one of the two previous striders stood before being eliminated and forms a new unit. The Succubuses are semi autonomous combat systems based on a light recon type frame.

Their armament is designed to deal with any category of enemy: Very efficient and quite inexpensive in nanoresources, the Succubuses are widely successful with overseers. A single Succubus is capable of carrying out deadly ambushes. A pack of Succubuses is a real nightmare: Its light sonic cannon is the scourge of infantry and the bane of light armored fighting vehicles; its light virus cannon is used to harass heavier armored fighting vehicles. Its speed allows it to get within optimum range of the enemy and then escape before any serious retaliation.

But beware of weapons capable of damaging it seriously in one shot, such as rocket launchers. Light sonic cannon and light virus cannon. When my enemy has armored fighting vehicles, I deploy Succubuses. When I have no information at all concerning the nature of my enemies, I deploy Succubuses.

All is as has been said. Equipment Light virus cannon: The minimum result needed on the die is always the same. This result is shown instead of the Penetration of the weapon. I wanted to have them at hand for later when I would launch my final assault. My opponent deployed his troops. My golems swept them away without any difficulty. When his Baal golgoth entered the battlefield, I understood that my strategy was going to pay off. My opponent piloted his golgoth in person. I am not mad enough to expose myself in such a way.

My existence is significant. I do not want to jeopardize it. My Succubuses shot with their light virus cannon and damaged the support golgoth. My plan was well tuned and was working as I had foreseen. My Succubuses regained cover while my opponent tore through my infantry. Once again my Succubus golgoths leaped out from cover and advanced toward the Baal.

Their light virus cannon finally immobilized it. My enemy destroyed a Succubus, but the remaining Succubuses put down the Baal. When my opponent ejected from his strider, my Succubuses destroyed him with there light sonic cannons. My tale has fed the EMI grid. My friends envy me and my enemies fear me. My glory is great and I am admired by many Therians. My enemies fall into oblivion while my feats flood the forums! My Succubuses are my strength and I adore them. I adore myself, therefore I am. I am adored, therefore I am even more! This experimental frame, born from the mind of a particularly inventive overseer, is very easy to assemble and produce.

The Hekat is a light combat system based on an ancient design, whose function is long forgotten. Terribly efficient in contact it can even threaten even the mighty support golgoths , it moves at lightning speed and can carry out simple handling tasks, such as moving low walls. Paradoxically, this gogolth, intended for close combat, is the dreaded enemy of any armored fighting vehicle! At first the concept was met with the extremely fierce opposition of the most traditionalist overseers, until it proved its efficiency on the battlefield.

They dash to the frontline in order to destroy their prey as quickly as possible. Defenseless at range, they become extremely dangerous in contact, causing even the heaviest armored fighting vehicle unit to flee. In units of three, Hekats become the mechanical equivalent of sharks, capable of tearing to bits even medium armored fighting vehicle units.

Their numbers also allow incoming impacts to be shared among the members of the unit and gives the Hekats a better chance of reaching the enemy. Equipment Light grim scythe: When a Hekat is in contact with a low wall, the low wall can be redeployed anywhere in contact with the Hekat. This action replaces its close combat attacks. Our habitat is not just a dying shell, it is also the origin of the rebirth of our species.

Our race is too deeply engaged in the re-arrangement project of the universe: Thars gave birth to an alternative, a new way of making existence worthwhile. Our existence is defined through, by and for combat, the only acceptable measure of individual valor. We are the future of our people, selected through the most efficient trial possible: Proof can be found in the original armament designs born on Thars, our dying world. We are the chrysalis of a new race: It combines solidity and multiple core system patterns to guarantee maximum survival span.

Designed to be an extremely mobile command unit, the Numbers: Urash never experience any boredom during a battle. Result 1 Evolution duration: Its versatility means it will always have the Possible consequences: At such distances it benefits from its optimum Evolution duration: It annihilates Therian civilization. The Poltergeist is a semi-autonomous combat system based on a medium assault type frame.

Designed for leadership roles, it offers great anti-personnel performance, without being totally at a loss against armored fighting vehicles. The Poltergeist uses significant quantities of nanoresources to offer its user highly concentrated firepower.

This type of assault golgoth is capable of vaporizing an infantry unit in one salvo and it represents a serious threat to recon golgoths, whose weapons and propulsion it can easily destroy. This makes it an excellent infantry hunter, the best in its category, and a real threat to armored fighting vehicles. The Poltergeist is an attractive alternative to the Wraith golgoth. It proves highly efficient in combat against infantry, without losing its threat to other types of units. The Poltergeist is meant to strike from medium range. It is perfectly suited for hunting soldiers, thanks to its weapons that combine both high rate of attack and penetration into terrifyingly dense salvos.

With its tremendous endurance, it approaches its targets, laughing in the face of enemy fire, including infantry held anti-tank weapons. If the assault golgoth ever comes across such weapons, the sonic wall from both medium sonic cannons is generally enough to make sure the infantry is no longer a threat to anyone. Medium sonic cannon x 2. Medium nucleus cannon x 2.

The Incubus is a semi-autonomous combat system based on a medium assault type frame. Designed to protect the overseer and to be his leadership platform, it offers optimum anti-tank performance. It is a sword designed to sever exactly what it wants, to leave the opponent unarmed, ready for the sacrifice. With the multiple core system copies that made assault golgoths so tough and popular, it can easily withstand enemy fire.

The Incubus is meant for esthetes of war who paint their blood-soaked epics with light, sure-handed touches. Its efficiency is at its maximum when it targets enemy striders and vehicles. Using the accuracy of the nucleus cannon, it can destroy the most annoying enemy systems. When the mission requires the destruction of armored fighting vehicles, the Incubus can target their propulsion systems.

Once all opposing armored fighting vehicles are neutralized, the Incubus can destroy the enemy chain of command by picking out officers, one after the other. Aboard an Incubus, war becomes a work of art. Furthermore, it offers improved access to the EMI grid. The Baal is the quintessence of combat platforms and mobile support: This allows the Baal to use a tremendously powerful range of armament: With its advanced nanoresource administrator, the support golgoth can assemble, repair, fuse, activate and accelerate combat systems, increasing its destructive capability exponentially!

TACTICS The Baal is a versatile unit, meant to offer maximum protection to an experienced overseer while providing the means to get the most out of his experience. A Baal has its place anywhere on a battlefield, on the frontline or in support; alone or protected by lines of lighter attack systems. It performs three functions in a company. Firstly, the Baal greatly simplifies the administration of nanoresources thanks to its integrated nanogenerator. Secondly, it optimizes the activity of the troops that can then use the unspent nanoresources for their own needs.

Finally, it neutralizes the most important threats on the battlefield with its mind-blowing firepower. Heavy flamer, heavy particle accelerator. Armored fighting vehicle routines executed by an overseer aboard a Baal cost one LP fewer than usual To a minimum of zero LP. All overseers engaged in the Thars great war have reproduced his superheavy support golgoth. The war has entered its most interesting and dangerous phase: Thars is suffering from the power unleashed by the support golgoth weapons, as well as the huge amount of nanoresources necessary to the mass production of recon golgoths on the field.

Several sectors of Thars have definitely come to a stop when combat intensity exceeded level 4 conventional planetary conflict. The EMI grid is both the cornerstone and keystone of Therian civilization. Without the continuous flow of this intergalactic information and resources network, the Therians would never have reached so far in their conquest of the universe. Without this virtual cornucopia, they would have never left the stage of humanity. The EMI grid allows the Therians to live both isolated and in harmony with the whole of their species throughout the universe.

Each Therian lives in isolation, since any contact he has with his kin is disincarnated. The Therians are in harmony with the EMI grid, which allows them to share their thoughts within a fraction of a second, gives them access to all the knowledge of their species and enables them to transfer themselves from one body to another. The forums, virtual discussion and data exchange spaces, allow them to communicate and commune through time and space. When your every desire is satisfied, the ultimate obstacle is the desire of others.

Therian philosophy was once summarized by a Cypher philosopher: If I had been there, memories are all that would be left of that wretched planet. Their administrators, the demiurges as they are called, design complex and vast universes, for their own enjoyment or that of their visitors. In this virtual space, each Therian becomes a digital god capable of traveling from one universe to the next in the blink of an eye.

The arenas and the war re-enactments of the battlefields of 01 are where the fiercest Warriors challenge each other. The greatest tacticians recreate campaigns of the past, pitting their strategy against historical reality; others fight galactic battles that last several centuries, until entire systems have been reduced to dust. A complex network of PVP player versus player and PVE player versus environment forums establishes a ranking of the best Therian warlords.

The alterworlds diverging worlds are simulations of existing worlds to which the Cyphers introduce various alterations to measure the consequences. Uchronias and other timeline adjustments are the essence of these alternative universes. Such simulations sometimes have a tactical purpose in reality: However, his wild predictions were light years away from what happened: Since then such military considerations are left to the specialists of Hyperlife see further.

The less frequent and most extravagant universes of 01 are the dreamwebs, unique works where the Web Striders unleash their creative minds. Some of them are universes where the laws of physics and biology have been fundamentally altered. There are even some entirely empty universes where the visitor is challenged by an omnipotent and omnipresent being in a deadly game of strategy. In secret, the administrators use these games to encourage the emergence of a consciousness within the EMI grid. A large number of dreamwebs have recently been closed to the public: As the news was spread around, the popularity of the dreamwebs increased.

Therians enjoy the thrill of danger. Many expeditions have been set up to hunt down Babel: The truth is that Babel haunts the EMI grid collecting knowledge and absorbing the minds of her Therian victims as she forges her own personality. From a Therian point of view, this remarkably old political forum is the essence of the Therian project: For many, Hyperlife has become synonymous with the Therian project.

Hyperlife is divided into three sections that are places for debate: It is mainly a library where a user can check reference subjects and find information concerning the procedures relevant to the Therian project. The logic supporting the ideas described here is implacable and questioning these ideas is considered counter-productive.

I knew not that war could be so poetic. The cabin Howl in the fall moved around to provide more variety. The cabin Howl became less and less attended and finally ended when I rented an expensive cabin on Fort Mountain and nobody else showed up. I would suggest, therefore, that if you decide to host a cabin Howl that you get together and pool the money for the site ahead of time. Isolation — Howlers need to be able to express their Therian-ness at a Howl and crowds of Mainstreamers tend to inhibit that.

The current site of the SEHowl is fairly popular but we use it early enough in the year that it is not crowded during most of the Howl. I schedule the Howl between two hunting seasons and just when they are turning on the water to the site. Spring breaks happen around this time of year and crowds usually start arriving the weekend that we leave. Accessible — For a general campout a backpacking trip, of course, would be different , a site should be accessible by road. It's also nice if arrangements can be made for people who are flying in to be picked up by someone at the airport.

The Birmingham airport is an easy drive and a nice sidetrip from the current SEHowl site. The internet group that I use for communications also allows members that will be driving some distance to carpool and plan to pick up people at more distant airports. Bathroom and shower facilities - For a long weekend campout, showers are a luxury and we've not always had them. For a 9 day campout, they're an absolute necessity. Generally, I've found that state park have better facilities. The bathhouses are usually heated. The national forest recreation site that we now use has showers with heated water but the building itself isn't heated.

That seems to be typical for national forest recreational sites. I give some tips on showering under such less-than-perfect conditions later. State parks usually have flush toilets where national forests of ten have well maintained pit outhouses. Enough space — Make sure that the site will have enough campsites to accommodate all the participants and that at least one is large enough to allow the whole group to gather. Also be sure you know rules and regulations about how many vehicles can be at any particular campsite, how many tents and persons can occupy a single campsite, and how payments are made for campsites.

Therians are normally not wealthy people and the trip to a Howl is expensive enough. It's good to make the camping arrangements as economical as possible. Reasonable staff — The SEHowl has gone through the whole range of park staffs from the outright scary to the most friendly and accommodating people you could hope to meet. It's a good idea to know who you're dealing with and how to most effectively deal with them before committing to a campsite. Aim for friendly and accommodating if possible. Most of the changes in location of the spring SEHowl have had to do with the staff.

For quite a while, Buck's Pocket was the home of the SEHowl but it became nearly impossible to work with the park rangers and they improved the rough road that kept the primitive campsites fairly isolated so we had to move. Of course, there were also the drunk locals who would drive by and ask us if we had any wimen sic and who would start roaring bonfires and then go home. Payne Lake recreational site actually had an incredible staff; the site just didn't offer the kind of adventure that many Therians want.

Mount Cheaha was great for a while but then they changed administrators. The new one would only allow group rates for church and Scout groups and they changed the primitive campsite into an equestrian camp, which is when we moved to the current place, which has, overall, been great. The year that they failed to warn me that the primitive campsite would have no drinking water or showers, they allowed us to use the developed campsite Georgia should take notes.

Hopefully, we have a home for many years to come. Accessible water — there should be a source of drinkable water near the common campsite so the group doesn't have to haul heavy containers of water over long distances. Area for common use — at least one campsite should be large enough so that all the members of the Howl can gather. The SEHowl has always eaten as a group and that seems to be a common tendency for other Howls. The big site needs to be big enough to also accommodate a covered kitchen area.

Lock down for food stuffs - racoons and bears are ingenious. If there is white bread around, racoons will move earth and heaven to get to it. It's like crack to them. I swear the little buggers can pick locks.

I have taken to keeping foodstuffs shut up in my van while not being consumed by Howlers. Local resources — There should be ample resources within a reasonably close drive and you should know where they are before the Howl — hospitals, grocery stores, fire wood unless you're sure downfall in the area will supply all you need , etc.

I even scope out local restaurants of interest, attractions, Internet hotspots, banks, and reasonably priced motels we were run out of Buck's Pocket more than once by flash flooding. Scoping the area hospitals, grocery stores, etc. It's easy enough to find all this. Google, for instance, will pull in businesses within a considerable range. It is a good idea, though, to verify the results by visiting the area before the Howl or scout it out on the first food run. These web searches are not always terribly reliable.

Personnel — All that's really necessary for a Howl is an organizer to set things up, but it helps to have a second person who is the primary cook, although they should be open to letting others cook if they want. That provides variety and more of a group spirit. And it's a good idea if the person who is cooking isn't left alone while everyone else socializes. The kitchen area should be close to the general gathering place. A third person can mind the fire and gather people when fire wood gets low.

Communications — As bad as I hate to admit it I hate technology , it's good to have a charged or chargeable cell phone on site in case of emergencies. Before the Howl there needs to be a way for people who are planning to attend to communicate. Much of the communication might be open but there needs to be some way for people to make more private plans.

I post much of the information for the SEHowl on the gatherings section of the Werelist and some on the Howls section of my own website but I also use a private Yahoo Group so that Howlers can plan out car pools, airport pickups, and such. We have never had problems with people from outside causing problems after catching on that there will be a gathering of Werewolves in their vicinity, but there's always a first time.

Some Howls have found it more judicious to keep their Howls more closed and their communications more private. There are several posts that I place on the Internet before a Howl: The first is usually a reminder far in advance that the Howl is coming up. For instance, as soon as I check with the staff at the site and establish a date, for the SEHowl, that will probably be sometime in September or October, I will go ahead and post the date and location.

Be very careful with this. The part of the year just after a Howl usually moves very slowly but as the next Howl approaches, time can really move and the Howl will be on you before you know it. This is especially true when you need to rent a cabin or lodge. For instance, cabins and lodges in the mountains in the fall fill up quickly and it's important to nail one down, if possible, a year or more in advance.

In fact, if you plan to use the same park for a cabin Howl for successive years, its' a good idea to rent for next year during this years Howl. I will then begin making informational posts about two months in advance. I have a standard post I send out giving the date and location of the Howl and offering suggestions about what to bring, camping and food fees, what the weather is usually like, and local attractions.

As the Howl approaches I keep watch on local events and weather forecasts. I post anything of developing interest. The last week I track the weather forecasts and post what I find, and I answer questions about the Howl.

First meals — Nobody wants to take a long trip to a Howl site and, after setting up their tent, go on a food run or cook a meal. I usually try to have ready food — pastries, snack foods, sandwich materials, salad stuff we have a vegetarian among our regulars , cereal and milk, and drinks oh, and Twizzlers, marshmallows, and beef jerky.

If white bread is crack to racoons, then Twizzlers are crack to Werewolves. Gotta keep the customers satisfied. Activities — Have an idea of what's available in the neighborhood for entertainment and, if possible, know what your Howlers like. On one of my attempts to find a site after the original SEHowl site went sour, I arranged a Howl at a wooded national forest recreational site in central Alabama which was in peaceful rolling hill country centered around a lake.

It was well developed and it was, unfortunately, rather boring. It was fine for the old timers who primarily use Howls as most families use reunions — a place to gather around the campfire and socialize, but most of my Howlers like adventure and this place just plain lacked the adventurous element. We could use the current site of the SEHowl for a century and still not see and do everything available in the area.

Setting up Tents and bedding — It's a good idea to keep tents closed during the day. Things get in there and they are often biting things. If the climate is wet, bring along some waterproofing and treat the tent as you set it up. If the climate is cold, you can be sloppy about some things — I have found a pile of blankets to be quite sufficient for sleeping in cold weather — but there are some things that you dare not ignore.

For one thing, you need an insulating pad between you and the ground. The ground will suck all the heat out of your body.

The Ancestor's Tale

Also, if you sleep nude like I do, you might consider keeping socks on. The feet doesn't have the circulation and metabolic heating that the rest of the body has and you might just wake up with frost bite of you don't take precautions to keep them warm. Also, a tent in cold weather should be just big enough to hold what you have. Larger tents are colder tents. Head space, though, is nice if you have to escape from the rain. It allows you to drag chairs into the tent and continue socializing until the rain blows over. I can 't imagine a more variable Howl than the SEHowl.

It gives you experience with all the possible situations. Usually, we start with bitterly cold weather and, before it's over, you can build up a good sweat walking. That means that somewhere between we get a horrendous storm. And the insects will come out quickly as soon as it warms up. In the summer, Bankhead National Forest is like the tropics. You might as well be in the Congo. If you expect insects, bring a good insect repellant. Kitchen area and equipment — If you expect inclement weather and you might as well expect some inclement weather sometime during the SEHowl , you need a covered kitchen area.

Originally, the SEHowl strung up tarps between trees but then one year, Lance brought a pavilion and when he moved away up north, I thought it was such a good idea that I bought a pavilion for the Howl. The SEHowl has always eaten as a group. That, of course, isn't necessary but it does serve to bring everyone together.

The largest Howl we had was around 40 people and, had Savage not brought along her extensive expedition kitchen and served as the camp cook, I can not imagine how I would have managed. If the same thing happened today and I would be quite pleased if it did , the only thing I would be able to do is let people split off into smaller groups and manage their own meals. As it is, most of my regulars have moved far, far away and a new group is forming. The SEHowl is back to small and it's hard to plan meals when people are coming and going during the week, so I don't even use a camp stove right now.

We do a lot of campfire cooking — aluminum foil and skewer cuisine. So you need to decide whether you need a camp stove or not. If you do, I would suggest using one that burns white gas or camp fuel. Butane and propane canisters may not need as much maintenance white gas will go out if you don't pump the stove up occasionally , but liquid fuel will get your water boiling faster and it's more responsive. As an alternative, we've also had folks bring grills. I used to provide real utensils to eat with but one thing Therians don't seem to like to do is to wash their own dishes after they eat and the cook has enough to wash.

Also, it's rather miserable washing dishes in the cold that the SEHowl has to deal with. So I've started supplying disposable dinnerware. It's not that expensive and it gets thrown away. Meals need to be planned by the whole group that will be eating it. I have regulars who are vegetarians and regulars who are diabetic, and any other dietary requirement may show up at a Howl.

I absolutely cannot handle Neutrasweet. It took me awhile to realize that people thought that food runs were an activity. We were going to town every other day to get food. Unfortunately, that steals time from the actual Howl activities that are a heck of a lot more fun than running to the grocery store. Also, it may not seem like it's taking that much time for people that don't go every time, but the Howl organizer usually does have to go every time and they end up spending most of their time in the road and in a grocery store.

The bottom line is that a 9 day Howl shouldn't have to make a food run more than three times during the week. If you just want to run into town every other day, plan for different people to do it each time and use different vehicles so the same person isn't driving and buying gasoline. Vehicles — As mentioned above, different campgrounds have different rules about how many vehicles can occupy a single campsite. The one we use even requires that campers occupy a site for 24 hours before starting off on side trips and such. Camp rules should be established before the Howl and they should be adhered to if, that is, you intend to use the same place over and over and, since it's difficult to find a good site, it doesn't hurt to take some care to maintain good relations with the locals The SEHowl has, in the past, been guilty of overusing particular individuals' vehicles to ferry people and equipment to the campsite for instance, down that horrific trail they call a dirt road at Buck's Pocket.

If you have only a few people who have vehicles that can navigate an approach road, and if they're good enough to provide ferrying services, don't abuse their good will. Use them as sparingly as possible. And at least offer to pay for some of their gasoline. It's traditional that someone's vehicle will breakdown and someone will have a flat tire sometime during every SEHowl. That may be a cosmic law that applies to Howls in general. Regardless, when you're tracking down local services for the Howl, be sure to identify some good mechanics and tire dealerships in the area.

Backpacking — Just mentioning it as an alternative to the campout Howl. If you're going to go on a backpacking trip, make sure that someone in the group is an experienced backpacker and doesn't mind wet nursing a bunch of chaotic tenderfoots. Meeting places for casual Howls — I've been to many casual Howls where several Therians just got together to eat lunch, or spend the day at a local park or some such.

The most important thing in that case is to establish a good meeting place that everyone can find. It also helps if that meeting place has a nice atmosphere for waiting because I don't think I've ever met a Therian who could be on time for anything need I add that the organizer needs to be the one that actually does be on time. I like Books-A-Million because it's usually pretty easy to find and you can get a book and kick back in Joe's Muggs for a cup of cappuccino while you wait. It's also a good idea for the organizer to be identifiable.

Contrary to popular belief, Mainstreamers don't shoot first and ask questions later. I am blatantly Therian in the US Bible Belt and I've never even had anyone throw rotten vegetables at me, much less pitchforks and torches. An animal print t-shirt isn't that conspicuous.

First aid — Be prepared for common emergencies. Husbandry was not the overnight brainwave of a genius, the neolithic equivalent of Turnip Townsend. To begin with, hunters of wild animals in open and unowned country might have guarded hunting territories against rival hunters, or guarded the herds themselves while following them about.

From there it was a natural progression to herding them; then feeding them, and finally corralling and housing them. I dare say none of these changes would have seemed revolutionary when they happened. The Darwinian consequences on the animals would have been gradual. Within the gene pools of the herds, there would no longer be a premium on fleetness or other survival skills of the wild. Successive generations of domestic animals became tamer, less able to fend for themselves, more apt to flourish and grow fat under feather-bedded domestic conditions.

We shall hear about these in the Leaf Cutter's Tale , when the ant pilgrims join us at Rendezvous Unlike modern plant and animal breeders, our forebears of the Agricultural Revolution would not knowingly have practised artificial selection for desirable characteristics. I doubt if they realised that, in order to increase milk yield, you have to mate high-yielding cows with bulls born to other high-yielding cows, and discard the calves of low-yielders. Some idea of the accidental genetic consequences of domestication is given by some interesting Russian work on silver foxes.

Belyaev and his colleagues took captive silver foxes, Vulpes vulpes , and set out systematically to breed for tameness. By mating together the tamest individuals of each generation, Belyaev had, within 20 years, produced foxes that behaved like border collies, actively seeking human company and wagging their tails when approached. That is not very surprising, although the speed with which it happened may be. These genetically tamed foxes not only behaved like collies, they looked like collies.

They grew black-and-white coats, with white face patches and muzzles. Their reproductive hormone balance changed, and they assumed the habit of breeding all the year round instead of in a breeding season. Probably associated with their lowered aggression, they were found to contain higher levels of the neurally active chemical serotonin. Incidentally, Konrad Lorenz's well-known speculation that only some breeds of dog his favourites such as chow chows are derived from wolves, the rest from jackals is now known to be wrong.

He supported his theory with insightful anecdotes on temperament and behaviour. But molecular taxonomy trumps human insight, and molecular evidence clearly shows that all modern breeds of dog are descended from the grey wolf, Canis lupus. True jackals golden, side-striped and black-backed jackals are more distantly related, although they are still placed in the genus Canis. No doubt the original story of the evolution of dogs from wolves was similar to the new one simulated by Belyaev with foxes, with the difference that Belyaev was breeding for tameness deliberately.

Our ancestors did it inadvertently, and it probably happened several times, independently in different parts of the world. Perhaps initially, wolves took to scavenging around human encampments. Humans may have found such scavengers a convenient means of refuse disposal, and they may also have valued them as watchdogs, and even as warm sleep comforters. If this amicable scenario sounds surprising, reflect that the medieval legend of wolves as mythic symbols of terror coming out of the forest was born of ignorance.

Our wild ancestors, living in more open country, would have known better. Indeed, they evidently did know better, because they ended up domesticating the wolf, thereby making the loyal, trusted dog. Several writers have speculated, plausibly enough, about orphaned cubs being adopted as pets by children. This is presumably an inadvertent consequence of our mutualistic evolution over many generations.

At the same time we read their faces, and dog facial expressions have become more human-like than those of wolves, because of inadvertent selection by humans. This is presumably why we think wolves look sinister while dogs look loving, guilty, soppy and so on. These wild crabs have a pattern on their back which resembles the face of a Samurai warrior. Whether that story of wild crabs is true or not, something like it surely went on in the evolution of truly domesticated animals.

Back to the Russian fox experiment, which demonstrates the speed with which domestication can happen, and the likelihood that a train of incidental effects would follow in the wake of selection for tameness. It is entirely probable that cattle, pigs, horses, sheep, goats, chickens, geese, ducks and camels followed a course which was just as fast, and just as rich in unexpected side-effects. It also seems plausible that we ourselves evolved down a parallel road of domestication after the Agricultural Revolution, towards our own version of tameness and associated by-product traits.

In some cases, the story of our own domestication is clearly written in our genes. The classic example, meticulously documented by William Durham in his book Coevolution , is lactose tolerance. Lactose, the sugar in milk, requires a particular enzyme, lactase, to digest it.

This terminological convention is worth remembering, by the way. Young mammals switch off the gene that produces lactase after they pass the age of normal weaning. It isn't that they lack the gene, of course.

The Howl Book

Genes needed only in childhood are not removed from the genome, not even in butterflies, which must carry large numbers of genes needed only for making caterpillars. But lactase production is switched off in human infants at the age of about four, under the influence of other, controlling genes. Fresh milk makes adults feel ill, with symptoms ranging from flatulence and intestinal cramps to diarrhoea and vomiting.

No, of course not. I am one of them, and there is a good chance that you are too. My generalisation concerned the human species as a whole and, by implication, the wild Homo sapiens from which we are all descended. The difference is that we have a separate word, dog, for domestic wolf, but not for domestic human.

The genes of domestic animals have changed as a result of generations of contact with humanity, inadvertently following the same sort of course as the genes of the silver fox. The genes of some humans have changed as a result of generations of contact with domestic animals. Lactose tolerance seems to have evolved in a minority of tribes including the Tutsi of Rwanda and, to a lesser extent, their traditional enemies the Hutu , the pastoral Fulani of West Africa though, interestingly, not the sedentary branch of the Fulani , the Sindhi of North India, the Tuareg of West Africa, the Beja of Eastern North Africa, and some European tribes from which I, and possibly you, are descended.

Significantly, what these tribes have in common is a history of pastoralism. In general, these lactose-intolerant peoples do not have a history of pastoralism. There are instructive exceptions. The traditional diet of the Masai of East Africa consists of little else besides milk and blood, and you might think they'd be particularly tolerant of lactose.

This is not the case, however, probably because they curdle their milk before consuming it. As with cheese, the lactose is largely removed by bacteria. That's one way of getting rid of its bad effects — get rid of the stuff itself. The other way is to change your genes. This happened in the other pastoral tribes listed above. Of course nobody deliberately changes their genes. Science is only now beginning to work out how to do that. As usual, the job was done for us by natural selection, and it happened millennia ago.

I don't know exactly by what route natural selection produced adult lactose tolerance. Perhaps adults resorted to baby food in times of desperation, and the individuals that were most tolerant of it survived better. Perhaps some cultures postponed weaning, and selection for survival of children under these conditions spilled over gradually into adult tolerance. Whatever the details, the change, though genetic, was culture-driven. The evolution of tameness and increasing milk yields in cattle, sheep and goats paralleled that of lactose tolerance in the tribes that herded them.

Both were true evolutionary trends in that they were changes in gene frequencies in populations. But both were driven by non-genetic cultural changes. Is lactose-tolerance just the tip of the iceberg? Are our genomes riddled with evidences of domestication, affecting not just our biochemistry but our minds? Like Belyaev's domesticated foxes, and like the domesticated wolves that we call dogs, have we become tamer, more lovable, with the human equivalents of floppy ears, soppy faces and wagging tails? I leave you with the thought, and move hastily on. While hunting was sliding into herding, gathering presumably followed a similar slide into cultivation of plants.

Again, it was probably mostly inadvertent. No doubt there were moments of creative discovery, as when people first noticed that if you put seeds in the ground they make plants like those from which they came. Or when somebody first observed that it helps to water them, weed them and manure them. It was probably more difficult to work out that it might be a good idea to keep back the best seed for planting, rather than follow the obvious course of eating the best and planting the dross my father, as a young man fresh out of college, taught agriculture to peasant farmers in central Africa in the s, and he tells me that this was one of the hardest lessons to get across.

But mostly the transition from gatherer to cultivator passed unnoticed by those concerned, like the transition from hunter to herder. Many of our staple food crops, including wheat, oats, barley, rye and maize, are members of the grass family which have become greatly modified since the dawn of agriculture by inadvertent and later deliberate human selection.

Starchy cereals such as wheat and oats cannot have featured prominently in our diets before the Agricultural Revolution. Passing through an animal's digestive tract is no part of their dispersal strategy, as it is of plum and tomato seeds. On our side of the relationship, the human digestive tract is not able, unaided, to absorb much nutriment from seeds of the grass family, with their meagre starch reserves and hard, unsympathetic husks. Some aid comes from milling and cooking, but it also seems conceivable that, in parallel with the evolution of tolerance to milk, we might have evolved an increased physiological tolerance to wheat, compared to our wild ancestors.

Wheat intolerance is a known problem for a substantial number of unfortunate individuals who discover, by painful experience, that they are happier if they avoid it. A comparison of the incidence of wheat intolerance in hunter-gatherers such as the San, and other peoples whose agricultural ancestors have long eaten wheat, might be revealing.

If there has been a large comparative study of wheat tolerance, like the one that has been made of lactose tolerance across different tribes, I am unaware of it. A systematic comparative study of alcohol intolerance, too, would be interesting. It is known that certain genetic alleles make our livers less capable of breaking down alcohol than we might wish.

In any case, co-evolution between animals and their food plants was nothing new. Grazing animals had been exerting a kind of benevolent Darwinian selection on grasses, guiding their evolution towards mutualistic co-operation, for millions of years before we started domesticating wheat, barley, oats, rye and maize. Grasses flourish in the presence of grazers, and they probably have been doing so for most of the 20 million years since their pollens first announce them in the fossil record.

It is not, of course, that individual plants actually benefit by being eaten, but that grasses can withstand being cropped better than rival plants can. My enemy's enemy is my friend, and grasses, even when grazed, thrive when herbivores eat along with the grasses themselves other plants that would compete for soil, sun and water. Grasses became ever more able to thrive in the presence of wild cattle, antelopes, horses and other grazers and eventually lawnmowers , as the millions of years went by.

And the herbivores became better equipped, for example with specialised teeth, and complicated digestive tracts including fermentation vats with cultures of micro-organisms, to flourish on a diet of grass. This isn't what we ordinarily mean by domestication, but in effect it is not far from it. When, starting about 10, years ago, wild grasses of the genus Triticum were domesticated by our ancestors into what we now call wheat, it was, in a way, a continuation of what herbivores of many kinds had been doing to the ancestors of Triticum for 20 million years.

Our ancestors accelerated the process, especially when we later switched from inadvertent, accidental domestication to deliberate, planned selective breeding and very recently scientific hybridisation and genetically engineered mutations. That is all I want to say about the origins of agriculture. The tale of the Great Leap Forward will be told by Cro-Magnon Man, named after the cave in the Dordogne where fossils of this race of Homo sapiens were first discovered.

Archaeology suggests that something very special began to happen to our species around 40, years ago. Anatomically, our ancestors who lived before this watershed date were the same as those who came later. Humans sampled earlier than the watershed would be no more different from us than they were from their own contemporaries in other parts of the world, or indeed than we are from our contemporaries. That's if you look at their anatomy. If you look at their culture, there is a huge difference. Of course there are also huge differences between the cultures of different peoples across the world today, and probably then too.

But this wasn't true if we go back much more than 40, years. Earlier than the Great Leap Forward, man-made artefacts had hardly changed for a million years. The ones that survive for us are almost entirely stone tools and weapons, quite crudely shaped. Doubtless wood or, in Asia, bamboo was a more frequently worked material, but wooden relics don't easily survive.

As far as we can tell, there were no paintings, no carvings, no figurines, no grave goods, no ornamentation. After the Leap, all these things suddenly appear in the archaeological record, together with musical instruments such as bone flutes, and it wasn't long before stunning creations like the Lascaux Cave murals were created by Cro-Magnon people. A disinterested observer taking the long view from another planet might see our modern culture, with its computers, supersonic planes and space exploration, as an afterthought to the Great Leap Forward. On the very long geological timescale, all our modern achievements, from the Sistine Chapel to Special Relativity, from the Goldberg Variations to the Goldbach Conjecture, could be seen as almost contemporaneous with the Venus of Willendorf and the Lascaux Caves, all part of the same cultural revolution, all part of the blooming cultural upsurge that succeeded the long Lower Palaeolithic stagnation.

Actually I'm not sure that our extraplanetary observer's uniformitarian view would stand up to much searching analysis, but it could be at least briefly defended. David Lewis-Williams's The Mind in the Cave considers the whole question of Upper Paleolithic cave art, and what it can tell us about the flowering of consciousness in Homo sapiens. This painting of a bull is one of the most striking images from the Lascaux Caves in the Dordogne, France. Discovered in , the paintings, which include a variety of animals, are over 16, years old.

They show a deep understanding of animal forms and movement, and a fine artistic sense. The purpose of the paintings is unknown. What else, they ask, could account for such a sudden change? It is not as silly as it sounds to suggest that language arose suddenly. Nobody thinks writing goes back more than a few thousand years, and everyone agrees that brain anatomy didn't change to coincide with anything so recent as the invention of writing.

In theory, speech could be another example of the same thing. Nevertheless, my hunch, supported by the authority of linguists such as Steven Pinker, is that language is older than the Leap. We'll come back to the point a million years further into the past, when our pilgrimage reaches Homo ergaster erectus. If not language itself, perhaps the Great Leap Forward coincided with the sudden discovery of what we might call a new software technique: Or maybe early language, before the leap, could be used to talk only about things that were there, on the scene.

Perhaps some forgotten genius realised the possibility of using words referentially as tokens of things that were not immediately present. Or perhaps representational art, which is all but unknown in the archaeological record before the Leap, was the bridge to referential language. Perhaps people learned to draw bison, before they learned to talk about bison that were not immediately visible.

Much as I would like to linger around the heady time of the Great Leap Forward, we have a long pilgrimage to accomplish and we must press on backwards. We are approaching the point where we can start looking for Concestor 0, the most recent ancestor of all surviving humans. It is not intended as an accurate depiction — the real tree would be unmanageably dense. Moving down the page means going back in time, with the geological timescale see page 18 given by the coloured bar on the right.

White lines illustrate patterns of interbreeding, with lots of it within continents and occasional migration between them.

The numbered circle marks Concestor 0, the most recent common ancestor of all living humans. Verify this by following routes upwards from Concestor 0: The Human Genome Project has reached completion, hailed by a justly proud humanity. We might pardonably wonder whose genome has been sequenced. Has an illustrious dignitary been singled out for the honour, or is it a random nobody pulled off the street, or even an anonymous clone of cells from a tissue culture lab? It makes a difference because we vary. I have brown eyes while you, perhaps, have blue. Which version of the tongue-curling gene makes it into the published human genome?

What is the canonical eye colour? I raise the question only to draw a parallel. I shall come to the question presently. But first, having raised the analogous question about the Human Genome Project, I can't just leave it dangling. Whose genome is chosen for analysis? In the case of the rival project initiated by Dr Craig Venter, the genome analysed was mostly that of There are other projects for the study of human genetic diversity itself, which, bizarrely, come under recurrent political attack as though it were somehow improper to admit that humans vary.

Thank goodness we do, if not very much. But now, to our backwards pilgrimage. Whose ancestors are we going to trace? If we go sufficiently far back, everybody's ancestors are shared. All your ancestors are mine, whoever you are, and all mine are yours. Not just approximately but literally. This is one of those truths that turns out, on reflection, to need no new evidence. We prove it by pure reason, using the mathematician's trick of reductio ad absurdum. Take our imaginary time machine absurdly far back, say million years, to an age when our ancestors resembled shrews or opossums.

Somewhere in the world at that ancient date, at least one of my personal ancestors must have been living, or I wouldn't be here. Let us call this particular little mammal Henry it happens to be a family name. We seek to prove that if Henry is my ancestor he must be yours too. Imagine, for a moment, the contrary: I am descended from Henry and you are not. This reductio is clearly absurd. If Henry is my ancestor he has to be yours too. If not mine, he cannot be yours. Long-distance ancestry, of a particular group of descendants such as the human species, is an all-or-nothing affair.

Moreover, it is perfectly possible that Henry is my ancestor and necessarily yours, given that you are human enough to be reading this book while his brother Eric is the ancestor of, say, all the surviving aardvarks. Not only is it possible. It is a remarkable fact that there must be a moment in history when there were two animals in the same species, one of whom became the ancestor of all humans and no aardvarks, while the other became the ancestor of all aardvarks and no humans.

They may well have met, and may even have been brothers. You can cross out aardvark and substitute any other modern species you like, and the statement must still be true. Think it through, and you will find that it follows from the fact that all species are cousins of one another. My reasoning was constructed as a reductio ad absurdum. How long is long enough? That's a harder question. A hundred million years is more than enough to assure the conclusion we seek.

The Therian Timeline

If we go back only a hundred years, no individual can claim the entire human race as direct descendants. Between the obvious cases of years and million, what can we say about unobvious intermediates such as 10,, , or 1 million years? The precise calculations were beyond me when I explained this reductio in River Out of Eden but, happily, a Yale University statistician called Joseph T. Chang has now made a start on them. His conclusions and their implications form the Tasmanian's Tale , a tale of particular relevance to this rendezvous because Concestor 0 is the most recent common ancestor of all living humans.

It is more elaborate versions of calculations like Chang's that we need to do in order to date Rendezvous 0. Rendezvous 0 is the time when, on our backwards pilgrimage, we first meet a common human ancestor. But according to our reductio there is a point further in the past when every individual that we encounter with our time machine is either a common ancestor or no ancestor at all. And although no one ancestor can be singled out for attention at this more distant milestone, it is worth a nod as we go by, because it marks the point where we can stop worrying about whether it is your ancestors we trace or mine: Tracing ancestors is a beguiling pastime.

As with history itself, there are two methods. You can go backwards, listing your two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. Or you can pick a distant ancestor and go forwards, listing his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, until you end up with yourself. Amateur genealogists do both, going back and forth between generations until they have filled in the tree as far as parish registers and family Bibles allow.

This tale, like the book as a whole, uses the backwards method. Pick any two people and go backwards and, sooner or later, we hit a most recent common ancestor — MRCA. You and me, the plumber and the queen, any set of us must converge on a single concestor or couple. But unless we pick close relatives, finding the concestor requires a vast family tree, and most of it will be unknown. This applies a fortiori to the concestor of all humans alive today. Dating Concestor 0, the most recent common ancestor of all living humans, is not a task that can be undertaken by a practising genealogist.

It is a task in estimation: The model eases thought, while not losing all power to illuminate reality. Sometimes a model gives us a baseline, departures from which elucidate the real world. In framing a mathematical model to date the common ancestors of all surviving humans, a good simplifying assumption — a sort of toy world — is a breeding population of fixed and constant size, living on an island with no immigration or emigration.

Let it be an idealised population of Tasmanian aboriginals, in happier times before they were exterminated as agricultural vermin by nineteenth-century settlers. The Tasmanian aboriginals were isolated some 13, years ago when land bridges to Australia were flooded by rising sea levels, and they then saw no outsiders until they saw them with a vengeance in their nineteenth-century holocaust.

For our modelling purposes, we consider Tasmania to be perfectly isolated from the rest of the world for 13, years until The next step is to model the mating pattern. In the real world people fall in love, or into arranged marriages, but here we are modellers, ruthlessly replacing human detail by tractable mathematics.

There's more than one mating model we could imagine. The random diffusion model has men and women behaving as particles diffusing outwards from their birthplace, more likely to bump into near than distant neighbours. An even simpler and less realistic model is the random mating model. Here, we forget about distance altogether and simply assume that, strictly within the island, mating between any male and any female is equally likely.

Of course neither model is remotely plausible. In reality there are paths or roads which guide their feet: The random mating model is even more unrealistic. We set up models to see what happens under ideally simplified conditions. It can be surprising. Then we have to consider whether the real world is more surprising or less, and in which directions. Joseph Chang, following a long tradition of mathematical geneticists, opted for random mating. His model ignored population size by assuming it constant. He did not deal with Tasmania in particular but we shall assume, again as a calculated oversimplification, that our toy population remained constant at 5,, which is one estimate for Tasmania's aboriginal population in before the massacres began.

I must repeat that such simplifications are of the essence in mathematical modelling: Chang of course doesn't believe people mate at random, any more than Euclid believed lines have no breadth. We follow abstract assumptions to see where they lead, and then decide whether the detailed differences from the real world matter.

So, how many generations would you have to go back, in order to be reasonably sure of finding an individual who was ancestor to everybody alive in the present? The calculated answer from the abstract model is the logarithm base 2 of the population size. The base 2 logarithm of a number is the number of times you have to multiply 2 by itself to get that number.

To get 5,, you need to multiply 2 by itself about Assuming four generations per century, this is less than four centuries. It's even less if people reproduce younger than Only during the brief interregnum between Chang One and Chang Two does there exist an intermediate category of people who have some surviving descendants but are not common ancestors of everybody. A surprising deduction is that at Chang Two a large number of people are universal ancestors: As for the timing, well, the mathematics yield the result that Chang Two is approximately 1.

From there on backwards, to the time when Tasmania was joined to Australia and all bets are off, everyone our time machine encounters will have either the entire population as descendants or no descendants at all. I don't know about you, but I find these calculated dates astonishingly recent. Taking a model population the size of Britain's today, 60 million, we still need to go back only 23 generations to reach Chang One and our youngest universal ancestor.

If the model applied to Britain, Chang Two, when everybody is either the ancestor of all modern British people or of none, is only about 40 generations ago, or about AD. If the assumptions of the model are true of course they aren't King Alfred the Great is the ancestor of either all today's British or none. I must repeat the cautions with which I began. Britain's population has climbed steeply in historical time to reach its present size, and that completely changes the calculations.

In any real population, people don't mate at random. They favour their own tribe, language group or local area, and of course they all have individual preferences. Britain's history adds the complication that, although a geographical island, its population is far from isolated. Waves of external immigrants have swept in from Europe over the centuries: Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans among them. But it is imperfectly subdivided into continents and smaller islands, with not just seas but mountain ranges, rivers and deserts impeding the movement of people to varying degrees.

Complicated departures from random mating confound our calculations, not just slightly but grossly. The present population of the world is 6 billion, but it would be absurd to look up the logarithm of 6 billion, multiply it by 1. The real date is older, if only because pockets of humanity have been separated far longer than the orders of magnitude we are now calculating. If an island has been isolated for 13, years, as Tasmania was, it is impossible for the human race as a whole to have a universal ancestor younger than 13, years. Even partial isolation of sub-populations plays havoc with our all-too-tidy calculations, as does any kind of non-random mating.

The date when the most isolated island population in the world became isolated sets a lower bound on the date of Rendezvous 0. But to take this lower bound seriously, isolation must be absolute. This follows from the calculated figure of 80 per cent that we met earlier.

A single migrant to Tasmania, once he has been sufficiently accepted into society to reproduce normally, has an 80 per cent chance of eventually becoming a common ancestor to all Tasmanians. So even tiny amounts of migration are enough to graft the family tree of an otherwise isolated population to that of the mainland.

The timing of Rendezvous 0 is likely to depend on the date at which the most isolated pocket of humanity became completely isolated from its neighbour, plus the date at which its neighbour then became completely isolated from its neighbour, and so on. A few island hops may be needed before we can join all the family trees together, but it is then an insignificant number of centuries back until we tumble upon Concestor 0.

That would put Rendezvous 0 some tens of thousands of years ago, conceivably somewhere in the low hundreds of thousands, no more. As to where Rendezvous 0 took place, this is almost as surprising. Africa houses the deepest genetic divides within humankind, so it seems a logical place to look for a common ancestor of all living humans. It has been well said that if you wiped out sub-Saharan Africa you would lose the great majority of human genetic diversity, whereas you could wipe out everywhere except Africa and nothing much would change.

Nevertheless Concestor 0 may well have lived outside Africa. Concestor 0 is the most recent common ancestor that unites the most geographically isolated population — Tasmania for the sake of argument — with the rest of the world. If we assume that populations throughout the rest of the world, including Africa, indulged in at least some interbreeding during a long period when Tasmania was totally isolated, the logic of Chang's calculations could lead us to suspect that Concestor 0 lived outside Africa, near the take-off point for the migrants whose offspring became Tasmanian immigrants.

Yet African groups still retain most of humanity's genetic diversity. This seeming paradox is resolved in the next tale, when we explore family trees of genes rather than of people. Our surprising conclusion is that Concestor 0 probably lived tens of thousands of years ago, and very possibly not even in Africa. Other species too may generally have quite recent common ancestors. But this is not the only part of the Tasmanian's Tale that forces us to examine biological ideas in a new light. To professional Darwinian specialists, it seems a paradox that 80 per cent of a population will become universal ancestors.

Exactly what fitness means is disputed. I have long argued that the only reason an organism behaves as a quasi-purposeful entity at all — an entity capable of maximising anything — is that it is built by genes that have survived through past generations. There is a temptation to personify and impute intention: Such personification can also apply to genes: Scientists who use such language, whether at the level of the individual or the gene, know very well that it is only a figure of speech.

Genes are just DNA molecules. We can always translate back into respectable language: That means good at programming bodies to survive and make children, grandchildren and long-distance descendants.

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