DAUGHTER OF KURA

The Kura culture is extrapolated from hunter-gatherer groups living today, and from the social structures of other animals. Big, dangerous animals have to be either fairly solitary, like orangutans, or have a complicated social structure to avoid killing one another regularly. Culture doesn’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.

Hyenas

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.

Technology

Technology used by the characters of Daughter of Kura was also based on fossils, hunter-gatherer societies, and speculation. Snap’s people use stone choppers, axes, and grinding stones like those dated from this time, but not stone-tipped spears or arrowheads, which have not been found from this time. People did use fire; hearths, where fires burned repeatedly in the same location over a long period of time, have been found that are even older than Snap’s time.

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 opened all sorts of other possibilities. Unfortunately, the sorts of containers that might have been made that long ago have left no fossil record, but their existence seems plausible.

Language

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. I am impressed by the ability of homo erectus to control fire and to manufacture quite complicated tools from materials brought from far away, and as a result, I prefer to think that humans have been capable of quite complex ideas for a very long time. Complex ideas and language are generally agreed to be related, so I have given Snap’s people a signed language not requiring a modern sort of voice box, so as to fit whatever fossil evidence turns up.