Eon XXXVI – The Age of Open Lands

Time Frame: 23–2.6 million years ago
Common Name: The Neogene
Theme: Open lands spread, mammals take on more modern forms, the first hominids appear, and the world draws nearer to the shape of later history.

Key Events

• 23 million years ago: The Neogene begins, inheriting a cooler world already turned away from the old lush abundance of earlier ages.
• Miocene: Grasslands, savannahs, and steppes spread across broad regions of the earth, opening new lands, new migrations, and new ways of life.
• Miocene: Many older mammalian dynasties decline, while newer and more familiar lines of horses, elephants, giraffes, antelopes, wolves, foxes, bears, and other later beasts rise in their place.
• Miocene: The first hominids appear, marking the opening of the long road that will one day lead to mankind.
• Around 20 million years ago: An early human people founds the land of Theem’hdra. The realm soon dies out, and Teh Atht leaves behind the manuscript later known as Legends of the Olden Runes.
• Around 6 million years ago: A member of a race of insect-philosophers from the fourth moon of Jupiter exchanges minds with one of the Great Race of Yith.
• Around 5 million years ago: The Serpent People city of Yoth flourishes under the guidance of Yig. Their science advances far enough to create servant species such as the gyaa-yothn and the voormis.
• Around 5 million years ago: Yoth is destroyed by Yig when some of the Serpent People turn to the worship of Tsathoggua. Yig-worshipping survivors found a new civilization in Hyperborea, and Tsathoggua follows in the aftermath.
• Around 5 million years ago: The Deep One city of Yatta-uc beneath Lake Titicaca stands in its great age.
• Pliocene: Falling seas and new land bridges drive major migrations between continents, reshaping the paths of beasts and peoples alike.
• Pliocene: The Great American Interchange begins, and long-separated faunas meet in one of the great reorderings of the age.
• Late Neogene: Much of the Mediterranean dries in a great salinity crisis, opening temporary roads between Africa and Europe before the sea returns.
• Around 4.5 million years ago: Early manlike peoples appear, walking upright yet still close to the elder ape-stock from which later mankind would emerge.
• Around 3 million years ago: The voormis gain their freedom and found a kingdom on the surface of Hyperborea under the worship of Tsathoggua.
• Around 3 million years ago: Rhan-Tegoth comes from Yuggoth to dwell in the Arctic, feeding on sacrifice and worship until later peoples forget him.
• Late Neogene: Men become more widespread and begin the use of stone tools, bringing the age to the very edge of recorded mankind.
• 2.6 million years ago: The Neogene closes as the world cools further and the Ice Age begins, opening the way to the age in which humanity will rise to dominance.

Overview

Eon XXXVI was an age in which the land opened. The dense older realms of forest and lingering warmth did not vanish, but they were no longer the whole face of the earth. Cooling climates, stronger seasons, and the widening of open country reshaped the world into something more varied and more familiar to later ages. Grasslands, steppes, and savannahs spread across vast regions, and with them came new rhythms of migration, pursuit, and survival. The age did not merely continue the mammalian rise of the Ashen Dawn. It gave that rise a broader dominion.

Across these opening lands, older mammalian dynasties declined and newer, more familiar lines took their place. Horses grew larger and swifter. Elephant-kind, giraffes, antelopes, wolves, foxes, bears, and many other beasts of later ages took clearer shape. Predators and grazers alike adapted to distance, speed, season, and the great exposed spaces of the new world. The Neogene was therefore an age not only of beasts in abundance, but of the earth itself training life toward the forms that would endure into the later world.

Birds and insects followed the same broad transformation. The skies and grasslands filled with more familiar kinds, while many older strange forms diminished. Yet the age did not become tame. It still knew giant predators, immense herds, and continental ecologies of formidable scale. Open country did not lessen the grandeur of life. It changed its shape. The land no longer belonged chiefly to hidden forests, but to plains, marches, scrub, coasts, and the long roads of migration.

This was also the age in which the line of mankind drew nearer. The first hominids appeared, opening a path that would in time lead toward men. Later came upright manlike peoples, still close to the elder ape-stock, yet already walking the road toward humanity. By the end of the age, men had become more widespread and had begun the use of stone tools, bringing the world to the edge of recorded mankind. The Neogene thus stands at the threshold of human history without yet fully becoming it.

Nor was this age shaped by natural history alone. Around 20 million years ago, an early human people founded the land of Theem’hdra, though that realm did not endure. Teh Atht, a wizard of that vanished age, left behind the manuscript later known as Legends of the Olden Runes. Meanwhile, elder races, underworld peoples, and older civilizations continued their own histories across the changing lands, adjusting to the spread of open country and the tightening of climates. The world was becoming more recognizably mortal, but it had not ceased to be ancient.

The older cosmic powers also remained active. Around 6 million years ago, one of the insect-philosophers from the fourth moon of Jupiter exchanged minds with a member of the Great Race of Yith, showing that the elder traffic of minds and worlds had not ended. Around 5 million years ago, the Serpent People city of Yoth flourished beneath the guidance of Yig, and its science advanced far enough to shape servant species such as the gyaa-yothn and the voormis. But Yoth was destroyed when some of its people turned to Tsathoggua, and Yig cast it down.

Survivors founded a new civilization in Hyperborea, and Tsathoggua followed in the wake of that ruin. In the same broad age, the Deep One city of Yatta-uc beneath Lake Titicaca stood in its great season, and later the voormis gained their freedom and raised a kingdom of their own on the surface of Hyperborea.

As the age advanced, the earth also became one of great journeys. Falling seas and new land bridges joined continents that had long stood apart, and beasts crossed into lands their ancestors had never known. The Great American Interchange brought long-separated faunas together in one of the great reorderings of life. Much of the Mediterranean dried in a vast salinity crisis, opening temporary roads between Africa and Europe before the waters returned. The Neogene was an age of migrations on a continental scale, and these migrations altered not only beasts, but the destinies of whole lands.

In its later phases, the climate cooled further. The first signs of the coming Ice Age gathered strength. Open country widened, seasons sharpened, and the earth moved closer to the form it would bear in the age of men. Yet even here the age did not become small. Great beasts still roamed, strange kingdoms still rose and fell, and powers from older worlds still made claims upon the land. Around 3 million years ago, Rhan-Tegoth came from Yuggoth to dwell in the Arctic, feeding on sacrifice and worship until later peoples forgot him and he fell into his long stillness.

Eon XXXVI was therefore the Age of Open Lands in full truth: an age of widening roads, harder seasons, modernizing beasts, and the nearing of mankind. It stands between the deeper strangeness of earlier ages and the more recognizable history to come. The world had not become ordinary. It had become legible.