Part Two: The Ancient Era: The Age of Records

[Overview of the Era] Modern historians usually regard the recording era as the stage when ancient history truly enters continuous recording. The "continuity" mentioned here does not mean that all civilizations have a complete chronology since then, nor does it mean that later generations can accurately restore what happened in each year, but that a group of worlds began to leave behind chronological records, archives, genealogies, tax books, school records, and city-state documents that can be verified against each other. From this period, history no longer relied mainly on myths, ancestral legends and scattered ruins, but began to be able to unfold based on a clear chronology. The ages used in this chapter are all "before the Stargate Calendar" converted by modern historians based on the Stargate Calendar. It should be noted that those who chronicled the times did not use the Stargate Calendar. The Stargate Calendar begins with the launch of the First Stargate, long before the Stargate Era. Therefore, all "before the Stargate Calendar" in this chapter are just unified conversion methods adopted by later historians to facilitate the comparison of historical materials from different civilizations. Its reliability depends on the preservation of the original calendar, astronomical records, boundary cycles and later Stargate time correction data. It should not be understood to mean that the civilization at that time had a unified time system. As of the completion of the general historiography compilation of the Thirty-ninth Era, the earliest historical boundary that can be reliably and continuously traced at this stage is a set of administrative files in the Baihe Shiku of Tiyang Star starting from before the Stargate Calendar10184. This set of archives preserves the granary, population and court records of the three city-states on the south bank of the Baihe River for 431 consecutive years, and can later be mutually corroborated with the early chapters of the "Yi Negative Stone Record". Because of this, most scholars regard before the Stargate Calendar10184 as the current upper limit of the recorded era. But this date does not represent the true beginning. Just as before the 27th Era, most scholars had believed that continuous history could only be traced back to more than 7,000 years before the Stargate Calendar. Later, the Baihe Shiku, Beiyuan Academy and Cangqiong Book City ruins pushed the boundary forward for thousands of years; in the future, if an earlier library is discovered in an ancient world or lost place, this upper limit may still be rewritten. Compared with the Silent Age, the biggest change in the recorded era is not that the number of countries has increased, nor that great beings are more likely to appear, but that civilizations have begun to actively preserve themselves. Rulers kept taxes and decrees, chambers of commerce kept deeds and account books, sects kept inheritances and lists of disciples, academies kept debates and lectures, and cities kept records of births, migrations, deaths, and labor service. For people at that time, most of these documents were just tools for governance and inheritance; for later generations, they formed the basis for the first time that ancient history could be written continuously.

[The formation of civilizations] In the early recording era, Tiyang Star is still one of the life stars with the most complete data at this stage. Before the Stargate Calendar 10012, "Yi negative stone records" records that the twelve cities in the southern continent began to adopt a unified warehouse book format; before the Stargate Calendar 9931, Yi negative jointly established a permanent archivist to be responsible for transcribing council decisions and city-state covenants. This move was not considered a great initiative at the time, but was simply an attempt to reduce disputes between city-states over tribute grains, road maintenance, and river port taxes. However, it was these documents with a unified format and continuous preservation that enabled later generations to more completely track the transformation process of the Yili Union from a city-state alliance to a mature political system. After Beichen Star experienced a large-scale southward migration during the Silent Era, it gradually entered a pattern of six races coexisting in the early Chronicle Era. The Taer tribe controls Gaocheng in the east, the Weiluo tribe controls the southern harbor, the Baijiao tribe has long occupied the grasslands of the Hokuriku, and the other three tribes are distributed in the central continental valley and the western mountain plains. before the Stargate Calendar Between 8734 and 8290 BC, records of border conflicts, marriage alliances, joint pastoral routes, and salt road negotiations frequently appeared in the documents of various ethnic groups in Beichen. Before the Stargate Calendar 8126, the six Beichen tribes held a meeting in White Plains to confirm the rules for a common trade area, winter pastoral routes, and astrological record sharing. The White Plains Conference did not establish a unified country, but it made the "Beichen Six Nations" a common title that can be recognized by external civilizations for the first time. The rise of Luojia star is related to the ocean. The earliest extant Luojia navigation account book that can be dated was formed before the Stargate Calendar in 9188 and was unearthed at the Donggang site in Baichao Islands. Before the Stargate Calendar 8926, a "tide table" jointly maintained by 27 port cities appeared on the Luojia Islands to record monsoons, ocean currents and reef locations. By 8564 before the Stargate Calendar, the Luojia fleet had been able to establish a trading network covering thousands of islands. It should be emphasized that these voyages were still limited to the interior of the Luojia star and were not equivalent to the later cross-world voyages; however, the Luojia people's experience in supply, voyages, tidal observation, and fleet organization did later become an important source of tradition in the era of distant travel. Weien Star is famous as an academic city-state. Before the Stargate Calendar 8897, the three cities of Weien and Hokuriku jointly established the "Gongchaiyuan", the predecessor of Cangqiong Bookstore; before the Stargate Calendar 8721, the institution expanded into a large library city and continued to absorb the collections of surrounding city-states in the following six hundred years. Weien Star did not have a unified empire for a long time, but the academic city-states established an extremely complex system of copying, borrowing, collation, and debate. Because of this, the Weien people are not prominent in terms of territory, but they have a profound influence on future generations in terms of knowledge preservation. Many incomplete information about ancient times were ultimately preserved indirectly through the Weien Codex. After the Qingqiong Realm was reopened in the middle and late period of the Silent Age, it gradually became an important center for realm studies and road studies in the Chronicle Age. Before the Stargate Calendar 8460, Beiyuan Academy was established. Its initial mission was not to study the grand structure of the universe, but to organize data on abandoned boundary roads, ancient city ruins, and rule-anomalous areas throughout the Qingqiong Realm. With the increase in foreign scholars, Beiyuan Academy has gradually transformed into a gathering place for cross-civilization information. The origins of many general maps of world roads in later generations can be traced back to this period. During the same period, worlds such as Chiling Realm, Wuhe Land, and Thousand-Dream Interspace also began to enter the horizons of historians. Chiling Realm is famous for its extreme red wind environment. Wuhe Land has been drifting between multiple realms for a long time. Thousand-Dream Interspace preserves a large number of conscious images and dream art records. They do not record the most powerful civilization center of the era, but they remind later historians that ancient history is not the history of a few life stars and several big worlds, but the sum of the respective developments of many stars, worlds, places, and spaces.

【Hundred Learning Era and Traceable Figures】 before the Stargate Calendar The period between 9,000 and 7,500 BC is usually called the Hundred Learning Stage in modern history circles. This name is not because there were only a hundred schools of thought at that time, but a summary of the large-scale differentiation and prosperity of academics in later generations. According to the statistics of existing literature, there are more than 3,000 schools whose names can be confirmed, and most of them have died out. However, the terminology, diagrams, debate methods and research traditions they left behind continue to appear in the later travel era and Stargate Era documents. Weien Star scholar Antar was one of the most important figures of this period. According to the cross-checking between "Book City Chronicles" and "Remnants of Old Texts", Anta was born in 8642 years before the Stargate Calendar, entered Cangqiong Bookstore to study in 8619 years ago, began presiding over the compilation of ancient prose samples in 8573 years ago, completed the first edition of the "Ancient Wen Classification Series" in 8501 years ago, and died in the south courtyard of Cangqiong Bookstore in 8466 years ago. Anta's life was not long, even slightly longer according to the average lifespan of the Weien people at that time, but his 72-year project of collating ancient texts changed the way that later generations studied ancient times. Before him, many ancient inscriptions were regarded as decorations or meaningless symbols; after him, for the first time, ancient research had a method that could be passed down. Antar's system of interpretation is not perfect. Modern research has proven that at least 30% of the correspondences in the "Gu Wen Lei Bian" contain errors. Some so-called "religious inscriptions" were later confirmed to be engineering signs, and some symbols interpreted as king's names may just be place names. However, history evaluates Anta not because of how many correct answers he gave, but because he made ancient times a researchable issue again. What he said in his later years, "What we are looking for is not the conclusions of the ancients, but the problems that the ancients faced" was later engraved in front of many academic palaces in Weien and became one of the representative sentences of the spirit of ancient history. The life of Beichen Stargazer Lin Wang is clearer than Anta. Lin Wang was born before the Stargate Calendar in 8247, and was born in Beichen East Continent Shitai City. In 8211 he became the record officer of the East Continent Observatory. His activity lasted less than 150 years, and he actually presided over observations for only 61 years, but the star map sequence he left behind was extremely complete. Lin Wang's most important contribution was not to record the number of stars, but to point out that there were systematic differences in the star positions seen in different worlds by comparing the observation data from Qingqiong Realm and Luojia Star. Lin Wang's conclusion caused great controversy at the time. Opponents believe that this is an instrument error, while some scholars in Qingqiong Realm believe that different regulatory environments will distort the observation results. However, the joint measurement records of the three places before the Stargate Calendar8116 showed that the same star group seen by Beichen, Luojia and Qingqiong did have stable deviations. Later generations of astronomical circles usually referred to this matter as the "three-day difference." It made ancient scholars seriously face the problem for the first time: different worlds do not share exactly the same sky. After that, world science and astronomy began to gradually combine, laying the foundation for later space surveying and mapping. Qingqiong Realm scholar Gu Changhe represents another path. Gu Changhe was born in before the Stargate Calendar in 7936, and his early origins are unknown. Before the Stargate Calendar in 7904, he was found in the road guide records on the west bank of Usa. Before the Stargate Calendar in 7898, he entered Beiyuan Academy. In 7861, he began to preside over the boundary road data collation. In 7794, he completed the first edition of the "Group Boundary General Map". Calendar died in 7788. Unlike some later legends, Gu Changhe was neither a great being nor a famous ruler. What is really important about him is that he transforms a large amount of scattered road experience into maps, numbers and verification rules. Post-worldists commented that he "did not discover the world, but made the world appear on the same picture for the first time." Although this sentence is an exaggeration, it accurately illustrates his historical status.