Simian 4.
Foreword
Over the course of several thousand years prior to the introduction of humans, climactic and geographic conditions in the east central region of Africa had been changing. The mountains along the western edge of the rift had, for centuries, been fighting a loosing battle against the invading desert sands to the west. Once a green and fertile skirt at the base of the mountains, now its environment was undergoing a radical change.
Inhabitants were being forced to leave as the desert continued it’s relentless invasion toward the East. Most of the wildlife began migrating north and south along the dwindling strip of vegetation. Humans and simians alike were forced to follow, or risk extinction.
Farther to the East, another smaller chain of mountains had risen up when the Somalian tectonic plate sub-ducted under the Nubian plate. Still further to the East just beyond this mountain range, a huge lake over 800 miles long and 400 miles wide covered the lands now known as Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, southern Uganda and much of western Kenya.
None of the lake’s shoreline was yet inhabited. The ‘cradle of civilization,’ the so-called birthplace of mankind, lay just to the west, between two mountain ranges. The space between them formed a lush, subtropical stretch of land roughly 30 miles wide and 200 miles long. A few dozen hunter-gatherer communities (including most of the original male and female simians and their first-generation human offspring) lived within this narrow stretch of land.