Debra Austin's Blog: Thinking Backward

Creating the past

Daughter of Kura is set in southeastern Africa about a half million years ago. Its characters are human in the sense of being ancestors of modern humans, but are another species – either Homo erectus or Homo ergaster, depending on which naming system one uses. Snap’s world is based partly on the work of scientists – paleoanthropologists, evolutionary biologists, and evolutionary psychologists – and partly on speculation. The geologic features, technologies, and social system that form the structure of Snap’s life are constructed from a combination of reasonably secure scientific facts, plausible theories, and wild (but not provably wrong) speculation.

Some of the technology used by the characters of Daughter of Kura is supported by archeological finds, and some is speculative. Stone choppers, axes, hammers, and grinding stones have been dated from this time, but not stone-tipped spears or arrowheads. The remains of ancient hearths, where fires burned repeatedly in the same location over a long period of time, prove that people could control fire, and that they stayed in one place for extended periods of time, but don’t tell us when people learned to start fires. Thus, Snap’s people must keep their fires burning or obtain fire from a lightning strike or another person. Making containers was an extremely important technological advance, because it made the collection and storage of food for later consumption practicable, and because the ability to carry water made more distant travel possible. Unfortunately, wood, leather, and woven containers of that age have left no archeological record, but their existence seems plausible, because the level of skill required to make the known stone tools is so advanced that those artisans must have been capable of making containers as well.

Details of the social structure of Snap’s people have been constructed from those of several species, especially modern hunter-gatherer societies, baboons, and hyenas. Big, dangerous animals have to be either fairly solitary (orangutans) or have a complicated social structure to avoid killing one another regularly. Social structures don’t fossilize, but since there are large animal bones from this time that seem to have been hunted and butchered by groups of people, most likely people were not solitary. Thus, Snap lives in a matriarchal, status-conscious society which is in some ways like modern non-agricultural groups, in other ways like baboons and hyenas, and in yet others distinctive.

Spotted hyenas inspired several aspects of Snap’s society. Hyenas live in clans of about fifty and have a rigid, hereditary ranking system. Offspring acquire their rank from their mothers. Female offspring stay with their birth clan, and males are expelled at puberty. The expelled males must join other clans to find mates and are ranked lowest on joining the new group. Choosing mates is mostly controlled by the female hyenas. The males don’t participate in raising the cubs. The related females in the clan keep their cubs together in a den, all nursing the brood fairly indiscriminately.
Snap’s people are similar to the spotted hyenas in a number of ways. The Kura are more or less related, and very status-conscious, women. Children acquire their rank from their mothers. By puberty, children have acquired the necessary knowledge and skills needed by adults and assume an adult role at that time with no period of adolescence, like most animal and non-agricultural human societies. Young men leave home at manhood to find a mate in another clan. Choosing a mate is mostly determined by the woman, and the man acquires her rank. The related women of each clan live closely together throughout the year, sharing childraising to some extent, while the men stay with the clan only for the winter, and then spend transient summers hunting and trading.

The development of spoken language is difficult to pin down to a particular time. The human voice box is cartilage and doesn’t fossilize, so it is impossible to say for sure whether Snap would have used a spoken language, a signed language, or only simple vocalizations like many other species. Homo erectus could control fire, manufacture complicated tools, and trade goods over great distances, and thus, it is possible that humans have been capable of quite complex ideas for a very long time. Complex ideas probably lead to the development of language. As a result, Snap’s people have a signed language not requiring a modern sort of voice box, so as to fit whatever fossil evidence turns up.

The capabilities, appearance, and lifestyle of human ancestors are largely uncertain, so Daughter of Kura makes assumptions that are consistent with available information and fit the story best. Primeval religion, the earliest hint of art, each trait that makes us human started somewhere, and we can’t help but wonder how. Imagine visiting the past in a floating time bubble. Here, one of your ancestors soothes her baby; she could be your sister. Over there, another captures a lizard and eats it; inconceivable. In the distance, two strangers greet each other and negotiate peace between their families; they could be two packs of wild dogs, or Germany and France. We have always been just the same, and unimaginably different.