Origins - How We Became Human (1st Edition)

This is a Euro-style boxed game, with two mounted maps, 110 cards, 120 wooden pieces, and 6 player aids.

Game scale: Each hex: 1000 miles. Each turn: 1000 years All components bilingual (English and German).

Unlike a standard Euro game, this game is a historical simulation, with the ambitious goal of describing, in three eras, the origins of everything human. Players start with a brain map of one of five pre-conscious hominid species, 115 thousand years ago. They also start with a Demography sheet and a single hunter-gatherer unit in the Old World, as it enters the glacial period of the Pleistocene Ice Age.

The maps of the Old and New Worlds depict various plants and animals, from coconuts and maize to mammoths and sheep, that they must try to domesticate to become herdsmen and agriculturists. They must expand their mind, as they learn the arts of language and imitation of competing cultures. Players who do poorly may become enslaved by other cultures, only to get a new chance as advanced civilizations go through cycles of chaos and renaissances. Global Warming may end the Ice Age and flood the coastal settlements, and deserts, jungles, and glaciers advance and retreat as the millenia pass. There are three eras in the development of the mind: The Age of Instinct (pre-lingual), The Bicameral Age (lingual but not yet conscious), and the Age of Faith (conscious with faith-based authorizations). An expansion (to be released in 2008) brings the game into the Age of Reason (today).

The 24 page rulesbook, in English and German, includes maps and 6 pages of historical background, a theory on the origins of consciousness, weather charts and historical maps. The historical backdrop of each and every card, from the Pleistocene to the Medieval Era, is described and illustrated.