There were honestly way too many kingdoms involved during this non-unified phase of humanity with some of them being pretty much city-states and all of them having their own history books. Unfortunately, some of them had no references that alluded to other countries/states which made linking them together hard, forcing me to search for more details that would allow me to determine if that particular country existed during a period when certain other countries existed as well. I did have to avoid adding up years of countries that existed during the same period after all.
Honestly, what was it with humans and the urge to establish countries? It was as if I was not looking at countries but mushrooms that popped up everywhere overnight. Well, it obviously wasn't like that, but it certainly felt like that to me. I came across thousands of documents/books belonging to populations that established their own countries, many of them belonging to the same time period with some being smaller than even regular modern cities, while others actually deserved that name, and I had to sift through them all to get a somewhat reasonable timeline that I could use for my quest of finding out how old humanity actually was.
Unsurprisingly, the immediate period before the continental unification was the easiest to follow up on, but the further I got from the unification the harder it got to keep things straight. By the end, I had a bunch of scrolls that were kept by glorified village lords who spoke of generations of elders who passed on knowledge through word of freaking mouth, tablets, and treated leaves, so I pretty much decided that those records were the furthest I was going to be able to go without losing the red string of the first civilization history I managed to establish.
Adding everything up from the end of the first unified civilization to the oldest records that fit the timeline I established for it, I managed to get a number that I believed was pretty close to the truth. We had 5693 years for the unified civilization, the one that ended up mucking things up in the end, though honestly from what I read they were not doing such a bad job if we disregarded the last 400 to 500 hundred years of their history.
Then there was the 1744 years for the continental phase as I called it, which started with the unification of the southern continent and ended with the establishment of the unified government. Before that was a 3250-year-long period that I dubbed the kingdom phase where the established powers actually deserved to call their kingdoms as such. None of the kingdoms existed throughout that whole period, but some of them managed to persist for around 2 millennia, with one of those super long-lived kingdoms actually upgrading to an empire since it managed to be one of the continent unifiers.
it was also around halfway through this period that they reached a level of comfort I would call modern with proper housing, amenities, general education, status/class prospects/opportunities, and infrastructure. Now, some would ask how that was possible in a Kingdom, but just because there was a King at the top or a Queen in some cases did not mean that there were no chances to work one's way up. Many of those later Kingdoms allowed their citizens to honestly, at least to a certain extent, work their way up.
Obviously the rich and the aristocrats had an advantage, but everyone had a chance to work their way to the top thanks to the existence of Pokemon, both as partners and an outside threat. Pokemon made it possible for one to reach as high as the very peak since even though the position of King/Queen was set in stone/inherited, the position of King Consort or Queen Consort wasn't. There was also always the option to leave and establish something new after all, so it was understandable why kingdoms were so generous to keep the strong Pokemon tamers, masters, and the many other titles Pokemon Trainers of the times were called from leaving.
Records of revolutions and uprisings were much rarer than records of people simply splitting off and establishing their own kingdoms, which is why there were so many of them, much to my chagrin. The reason for that was that the threat of wild Pokemon made even the worst rulers treat their subjects with a modicum of regard. Granted there were still people that treated others like shit, but the ones at the top at least knew not to do that, or rather most of them; Those that still did that? Well, I did say that records of revolutions and uprisings were much rarer, not that they were nonexistent.
Anyway, before the Kingdom phase was a roughly 2400-year-long city-state period. The reason why I used the word roughly here was because I had a hard time separating the earliest part of this phase from the one that came before it. Nonetheless, this phase was full of sovereignties that were ruling/overseeing an area that either barely surpassed the acreage of a modern Major City, at least after the first half, to powers that barely presided over what I would call large towns, which was where I set the boundary that separated the city-state period from the myriad minor settlements period.
From what I found, this was also the period where humans began to spread out from the southern continent to the other continents, indicating that the humans of this era first lived on the southern continent and spread to the other continents from there. I was not sure if humans originated from the southern continent since I was not sure what the records of the ancient era would reveal on the matter, but at least for the humans of the 1st civilization era this was the case; Just like the 4th civilization began on the northern continent.
Regardless, back to the timeline; The myriad minor settlements period was the last or first period, depending on how one looked at it, in the timeline I established for the first civilization's era. The settlements could range from medium-sized towns to small villages consisting of just a handful of households. This was roughly 1300 years long and the oldest properly traceable records I found talked about 12 generations of village leaders before them so roughly 800 to 1200 years before the myriad minor settlements period I designated.
To sum things up, we had 5693, 1744, and 3250 years that were factual and undisputable; 2400, and 1300 years that were mostly accurate with maybe a 100 to 150 years wiggle room in total. On top of all that was the final 800 to 1200 years which was the most uncertain part of this whole timeline I tried to establish. Anyway, adding all that up set the 1st civilization's period/era to anywhere from 15037 to 15737 years in its entirety.
If we added the 4885 years of the 4th civilization on top of that, we got about 20k years of human history. This was only the sum of the 1st and 4th human eras, and I still had to figure out how long the 2nd and 3rd eras were. Still, that was no doubt a pretty long period, and I would probably have been more impressed if I had not certain that there were Pokemon out there, even on our four continents, that had lived longer than that.
That aside, even this part of my not-so-little research into history had given me enough material for dozens of potential blockbusters, mega-series, and/or bestsellers. The fact that historical documentaries on Terra could be used as fantasy movies back on Earth ensured that the founding story of nearly every kingdom in Terran history would be blockbuster-worthy. Imagine something like The Lord of the Rings or The Game of Thrones as real depictions of history. Now, that would be some history lessons/documentaries I would definitely be interested in watching, though I was sure that there were some people out there who would manage to make even that kind of stuff boring somehow.
If nothing else, all this research/digging would probably let me pass as a historian. Nay, THE historian. Anyway, my thought stream was still working on the 2nd human era, so this was it for now as far as my research into human history was concerned. I decided to finally go to sleep, and I actually ended up dreaming about a mixmash of kingdom-building as well as conquest scenes, though considering what I had been dealing with before I went to sleep that was not all that surprising. It definitely beat dreaming of being chased by numbers after revising for some math exams.
I told my Pokemon about my dream during breakfast and explained to them that I was done looking through the first part of human history. None of them seemed to care all that much when I told them about the result of my research; They were much more interested in questioning me about how strong the strongest Pokemon/Trainers of that era were. All they knew about the 1st civilization was what I shared with them before, namely that it got reset by Mew for mucking things up even after being told to cease and desist multiple times.
Well, I could understand their interest, so I did not sulk and directly told them what I found out in that regard. Well, or as directly as I could be without causing misunderstandings, so I first shared with them the various periods I had designated before telling them what the strongest Pokemon/trainers of those periods were to ensure that they were properly informed even if they had to sit through an impromptu short history lesson to get the answer.
No one complained that I could have just said Late Stage 8 before Mewtwo, who was Stage 9 at birth/creation and rapidly rose to Stage 10/deityhood. They were too preoccupied with feeling incredulous at the idea that in certain periods of history having someone at the silver or gold stage could make one a super big shot depending on the period. I had to remind them that that was only the case for the humans at those times and that there were still numerous (wild) Pokemon in other parts of the continent/world that were much stronger than that.
Even at the present, when we had Legendary class trainers with Stage 7 maybe even Stage 8 Pokemon that they kept secret, there were still (wild) Pokemon out there that surpassed humanity's protectors by far. They simply nodded at my reminder since everyone knew that to be a fact before a discussion broke out after Mothra brought up a matter/doubt. She mentioned that she found the insistence of the top brass on continuing project Mewtwo super stupid. She pointed out that they had managed to push their way to the late phase of Stage 8 at that point, so they could have definitely made it to Stage 9 the regular way and maybe even to the elusive Stage 10.
It might have taken another 1k years or two, but their history had already been multiple times that time at that point, so in her opinion, continuing to train for "a bit" longer should have been fine. She argued that they should have changed methods after the first warning at least, and from a general humanity perspective she was right, but if the top brass was strapped for time, arrogant, egoistical/greedy enough, and/or stupid, then it was possible to do foolish stuff like that.
Either way, it was definitely an interesting breakfast with my Pokemon, and they continued that discussion even after I left Utopia for my breakfast agreement with Kinji and Violet. Honestly, at this point, considering how often those two met up/hung around together, I expected them to officially start going out. As in Boyfriend/Girlfriend and not this get-to-know-each-other that they had going on right now. Still, I kept quiet for now, I would tease them once things had become official. Until then, they were safe.
-----------------------------
***A Big Thank You to CrimsonFlareV for becoming a Patron***
Advertising plug-in:
Currently, the lowest number of advanced chapters available on patre'on is 6, while the highest number of advanced chapters is 10.
Sketches, drawings of the MC, Variants and maps can be found on my Patre'on. A patre'on exclusive Legendary Lore and Pokemon Lore/Info series can be found there as well.
Help me stay motivated.
patreo*n/Azrail93