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GALEN EARLY HISTORY

            The birth of the Galen civilization was focused on the temperate, fertile, lowland regions of the Gallan peninsula, in contrast to the birth of human civilization the majority of the Galen were inhabitants of the early towns and settlements, with minor number forming small roving tribes that collected wood and food from the land. This model of habitation was important when about six thousand years ago the Galen began to disperse out of the peninsula. The wave of new settlements really did represent the leading edge of Galen expansion it was very rare that new settlements were built in areas that had already been occupied by nomadic or indigenous tribes. Compared to Earth where urbanization often occurred in areas which were previously occupied by aboriginal people, beyond the leading edges of the Galen settlements there was literally no one.

            Behind the leading edge of settlements, support and infrastructure were being laid down, and all the while families from the settled regions were moving to the front to settle the new lands. Galen civilization swept across the home continent, Aephia, and by about three thousand years ago most of the land had fallen behind the lines of expansion, though it would be wrong to say that all the land had been settled, a web of communities had been formed across the entire continent. By in large this first expansion represented the first golden age of Galen civilization (The First time), though older settled regions began to form autonomous groups, somewhat like countries in their own rights, most of Galen civilization was united and harmonious. Trade routes had been established across the entire continent and although cities and towns had special trading relations with one another the goods and wealth of the settled lands was being shared amongst the Galen people.

            However on the onset of the age of mysticism this harmonious continent began to fragment, firstly small cuts in communication, which did not make a great difference in the greater web of settlements, but before long enough of these minor breaks accumulated to surpass a kind of communications threshold, where a failing and erratic communication system suddenly did not work at all. Without the regular communication with the settlements on Aephia, communities could not orchestrate where to send their goods, as a result trade routes transporting rare goods from one side of the continent to the other began to break down, and communities began to share their resources with each other in small clusters or even become entirely autonomous, which was most harmful of all as autonomous communities often broke the goods routes passing through them (as the settlement would have to maintain and employ its own transportation services, with no benefit for the autonomous community itself).

            The reasons for the fragmentation of the civilization of the first time are still not clear today thought it is thought to be a number of different factors such as years of bad weather, emerging political and religious ideologies, and a growing isolationism amongst the most remote cities. Years of bad weather forced many agrarian communities to disband, and once these communities had dispersed they also broke the lines of communication that used to run through them, though these settlements were nearly always resettled, the short term disruption in communication often propagated throughout much greater regions where its effect in coordinating goods became greatly amplified. Many communities voluntarily cut themselves out of the net due to belief of new religious ideas arising at the time, especially a belief system which cultivated isolation and meditation. By about five thousand years ago this disruption had reached it's peak, some regions had been cut off from the rest of the continent for many centuries, and this isolation has given rise to many of the autonomous regions, which although nowadays are united again with the rest of Galen civilization, were still in effect until relatively modern times. This time also gave rise to much of the diversity of modern society, and generated a kind of cultural richness which had been effectively absent in the time of the first expansion. This was also one of the rare times where expansion had almost stopped, and the unwillingness to further explore, prevented the discovery of the far continent to near recent times.
 

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