Ice Age Life
Eight places to be born. Eight different years.
Every homeland is a real Late Ice Age place, with its own people, its own animals and its own weather. Each one also keeps its own year, and a life lived in one is not a life you can live in another.
Start at the steppeSame Ice Age. Different answers to winter.
Every first life starts on the Mammoth Steppe. Carry a line through a homeland and the next one opens, all the way out to the glacier coast at the edge of the world. Each is anchored to a real site, and each one asks the same question a different way: where does your band spend the hard part of the year?
Where the shelter is
Winter goes to what you built and stored.
Where the water is
When the rains stop, you can only be at the water.
UkraineMezhyrich, in the Dnieper basin
Dnieper Mammoth Steppe
“We go out with the herds and we come back to the same houses.”
Its year is the Long Walk Back
The houses are the point. Everything we carry, we carry back there.
Winter goes to the houses you built and the fat you stored.
ChinaShuidonggou, by the Yellow River
The East Wind Plains
“Other people chase. We dig in and let the year come to us.”
Its year is the Staying Year
A cut you have dug twice is worth more than any new ground.
Winter goes to the shelter you dug and the stores you laid down.
Central AustraliaPuritjarra, in the red desert
The Great South Land
“Wait at the water and the meat walks to you.”
Its year is the Water Year
When the rains come you can go anywhere. When they stop, you can only be where the water is.
In the dry, a camp can only be where a rock-hole holds water.
Siberia and MongoliaMal'ta, near Lake Baikal
The Frozen Heart
“Follow the reindeer, not your feet.”
Its year is the Reindeer Year
But pick your winter ground where there is water you can break, or the cold takes you before the hunger does.
Winter ground needs shelter and water you can break through ice to reach.
NamibiaApollo 11 Cave, in the Huns Mountains
The Painted South
“Everything here is measured out from the water.”
Its year is the Dry Camp Year
You can be a day out from it and no further, and in the dry you camp on it and do not leave.
You are never more than a day from water, and in the dry you stay on it.
Southwest FranceLascaux, in the Vézère valley
The Sheltered Valley
“There is always someone over the next rise here.”
Its year is the Close Year
The good ground goes to whoever got there first, so take the ground with room in it, not the ground you like best.
The good ground goes to whoever got there first, and someone is always close.
KenyaEnkapune ya Muto, in the Rift highlands
The Great Rift
“There is no cold season here, so do not wait for one.”
Its year is the Two Rains
The rains come twice and go twice. When they are on you can be anywhere. When they are off you are at the water with everybody else, and you had better already be friends.
Twice a year the rains stop and every band crowds the same water.
AlaskaThe Bering coast
The World's Edge
“Camp where the sea comes up, not where the ground looks good.”
Its year is the Ice-Edge Year
There is no good ground. The ice takes what it takes and does not discuss it, and the water feeds us anyway.
Winter goes where the sea feeds you, because the ground never will.
Later eras
That is the first era. More are locked, for now.
Eight homelands, one band at a time. Pick one and live a whole life in it.
One life at a time
Live one for yourself.
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Made by Sunlit Game Studio, a small independent studio.