Part Two: The Ancient Era: The Age of Far Journeys

[Overview of the Era] Modern historians generally refer to the long period from 4000 before the Stargate Calendar until the activation of the First Stargate as the Age of Distant Voyages.

This name did not originate as a term used by the people of the time. Early in the Age of Far Voyages, different civilizations used entirely different terms for travel between worlds. Some documents from Tiyang Star called it “departing the heavens”; Beichen Star, “crossing the stars”; the academies of Qingqiong Realm, “crossing the Realms”; and scholars of Hengguang Realm most often, “journeying through foreign domains.” It was only after the Stargate Era, when later historians organized ancient texts, that these activities of a similar nature came to be collectively known as far voyages.

Civilizations of the Age of Records already knew that distant places existed and had preserved some charts of Realm routes and accounts of foreign lands; in the Age of Voyages, some civilizations began deliberately turning the questions of “how to reach them, how to survive there, and how to return” into enduring human endeavors. Ordinary civilizations still found it extremely difficult to leave their homelands reliably, but voyages no longer depended solely on chance rifts and isolated powerful individuals.