ORIGINS - How we became human

A game of development, progress, and conflict for 1 - 5 players

By Philip Eklund
Copyright © 2007 Sierra Madre Games Co.
Living Rules: Updated Aug 9, 2010

CONTENTS

[1.0] Background [14.0] Special Rules

[2.0] Components [15.0] Notes on the Infrastructure Tracks
[3.0] Units [16.0] Example Game Turn: Alexander the Great
[4.0] Strategy Guide and Tips [17.0] Ending the Game
[5.0] Setting Up the Game [18.0] Optional Rules
[6.0] Playing the Game [19.0] Expansion Set Rules and Notes
[7.0] Phase 1 - Innovation Actions [20.0] Solitaire Game (new!)
[8.0] Phase 2 - Resolve Catastrophes [21.0] Strategy & Tips
[9.0] Phase 3 - Play Card(s) [22.0] Frequently Asked Questions
[10.0] Phase 4 - Stability Roll [23.0] Era I Example Game Turn
[11.0] Phase 5 - Population Actions [24.0] Designer's Notes
[12.0] Phase 6 - Resolve Sieges [25.0] References
[13.0] Phase 7 - Resolve Starvation Hexes [26.0] Credits
[27.0] Endnotes

1
[1.0] BACKGROUND
The game divides the development of man since the
Eemian Interglacial Age of 120,000 years ago1 into
four stages:
Era I: Multiple species of humans developing toward
complex metaphoric language2
Era II: Competing cultures striving for the development
of consciousness3
Era III: The Age of Faith culminating in the
Enlightenment
Era IV: The Age of Reason, divided by ideology
leading to our present (Expansion Set)
Each player starts in Era I with one hunter-gatherer
unit on the map and a Brain map for his species.4 He
strives to increase his brain size, and to gain Elders (in
the Elder Pool) and metropolises (on the map). As he
progresses through the Eras, going through cycles of
chaos and prosperity, he accumulates information,
culture, and administration cards, which both help him
grow and manage his civilization, and count towards
victory.
Game Scale
Each hex is about 1700 km (1000 miles) across. Each
player turn is a millennium (1000 years). Each
migratory unit is 4 million people (perhaps 1% of which
are warriors), and each metropolis population is equal
to its footprint value times 4 million.
For historical interest, the map shows the shorelines
and ice lines during an ice age, when the continental
shelves are dry, and during a tropical age, when the
ice retreats back to the poles.
[2.0] COMPONENTS
• 2 Mapboards (with Domestication tables and
Infrastructure tracks)
• 5 Demographies (player mats)
• 1 Sequence of Play Sheet
• 120 Units (markers in 5 colors)
• 102 Era cards (divided into Eras I, II and III on the
back)
• 5 Brain map cards (Era Advancement on the
back)
• 3 Climate cards (double-sided)
• One six-sided die
2
[3.0] UNITS5
Units are the 24 individual cubes of a player’s color
used for playing the game. Unused units are kept in
slots on the Innovation and Population tracks of his
Demography.6 Unit terms are underlined in the game
rules and are defined below:
Brain Unit: a unit used to cover Instinct icons in the
five domains of the Brain map card. Covered-up
instincts are inactive; see section 9.4.
Elder:7 units in the Elder Pool of the Demography.
Elders in the top half of the pool are called producers;
those in the bottom half are consumers. The more
producers one has, the better the economy. (See
section 9.3 for Elder Gains, Losses, Expenditures, and
Resets.)
Era Unit: a unit coming into play after Era I and used
on the Advancement track (flip side of the Brain map)
to show the era.
Footprint:8 the maximum number of Map Units that
the current player can occupy in a hex without
starving. See diagram below.
Guest Worker:9 an Elder Unit transferred from the vic-
tim’s pool to the same half of the victor’s pool. The vic-
tim chooses which Elder to transfer. The victor can ex-
pend these units as if they were his own, but returns
them to the owner’s Innovation track if they are later
Lost.
Infrastructure: five units used by each player to track
his technological stage in his Infrastructure tracks
(Footprint, Metallurgy, Maritime, Energy, Immunology).
Loss: the removal of a Map Unit, Brain Unit, or Elder
Unit. Place the Lost unit on the rightmost vacant slot of
the Innovation track. If this is full, place it in the
rightmost vacant slot of the Population track.
Map Units: includes Migratory and Metropolitan units.
Migratory units are placed on map spots, and each
occupies three hexes at the same time (see diagram).
Metropolises are stationary units placed inside a hex.
Neighbor: any other player with Map Units in the
same hex, or in an adjacent hex, to the player's units.

[4.0] STRATEGY GUIDE AND TIPS
A quick orientation to approaching the game.
Expansion. Quickly expand to hem in your opponents.
If you have social instincts, consider using the
Silverback Action for expansion and aggression.
Economy. Within a turn or two, the map is full. Now
you need to perform an Elder Gain to set up your
economy. This has two desirable effects: it reduces
the number of units stored in your Innovation (allowing
you to gain more cards each turn), and it puts an Elder
in your pool, which you can use for gaining Public
cards, domestications, or Population Actions (trades,
acculturations, growth, and conquests).
Innovation. It is vital to get and keep Elders early. You
gain them by card play, so you want a high Innovation
Number to gain as many cards as possible. The
"fecundity decrease" icon, often obtained by right-side
Idea card play, allows you to increase innovation at the
expense of population growth.
Brain Map. You want to grow your brain by removing
Brain Units (a process called "encephalization"),10 or
by rearranging it ("lexicalization"). For the best chance
of Elder Gain, keep the "alpha" (social) instinct clear.
The instincts have the following uses:
• Social Skills: Useful for Elder Gain, Imitation (for
ransacking), Silverbacks (for invading), and
Locutions (for gaining language and advancing to
Era II).
• Natural History Knowledge: Useful for
Domestications (urbanization and Footprint), and
Technological encephalization (infrastructure
advances).
• Technological Knowledge: Useful for language
encephalization (advancing to Era II) and maritime
and metallurgical advancements. Maritime is
3
particularly useful if you want rafting access to
Alaska, Australia, Madagascar, or Spain.11
• Language: Useful for Domestications
(urbanization and Footprint), Storytellers (reusing
Elders), Lexicalizations (moving Brain Units
around), and advancing to Era II.
Ransacking. The most useful Innovation action is
Imitation (ransacking discards). The two most primitive
species (Peking Man and Archaic Homo Sapiens)
cannot imitate until they clear their social domains, a
serious disadvantage. They should consider a
sacrificial attack combined with a Sabine Raid to gain
valuable discards from their neighbors.
Metropolises. You only get one Elder more than the
number of your metropolises, so you will want to build
or invade metropolises quickly. There are three ways
to do this: urbanizations, domestications, and sieges:
• Urbanization: This Population Action, for Era III
and later, requires a population number of at least
three.
• Domestication: It’s best to domesticate a work
animal first, before attempting cavalry animals,
crops, or minerals. You should aim to keep an
Elder unexpended and your acorn and language
instincts clear, and afterwards to occupy and
domesticate a good work animal hex (with multiple
"+" modifiers, like cattle or wombats).
• Siege: Your best chance of success is if your
opponent has a low Footprint and you have a high
Metallurgy. To gain in Metallurgy, domesticate
"cavalry" animals (those with high negative
modifiers, like the horse), or clear your "hand"
instinct, so that you are ready to use Idea cards
with weaponry advances. For the fast growth and
low chaos needed for conquests or urbanization,
use "Silverback".
Energy. Progressing into a golden age requires
advancements in energy. Early in the game, a "work"
animal domestication is the only way to get to Energy
stage 1! (But see optional rule #2, Livestock Raids, for
how to steal energy from your neighbors.) Until you
raise your energy, don’t try to domesticate any cavalry
animals or crops (other than crops with one or more "-"
modifiers, such as the banana). To get to Energy
stage 2, which is necessary to attain the golden age of
Era III, one must play one of the three Era III cards
that contain energy advancement (horse collar, blast
furnace, and levers & pulleys). Alternatively, one may
attempt biofuel resource exploitation. The best sites
are in the Americas, but Spanish olive oil and
Hawaiian whale oil are also possible. Establish a
Metropolis on one of these sites. Unless using optional
rule #2 (Mining), the oil or uranium sites will likely be
useful only in the extended game. These sites allow
Energy stage 3, which is essential for attaining the Era
IV golden age.
Era Progress. Advancing first is an opportunity to get
a lot of Public cards useful for victory. But beware, at
Era II you can no longer accomplish useful Era I
actions such as "Naturalist". Don’t advance to Era II
until you have an Elder and a metropolis, plus a
Footprint of stage 2. Notice that Chaos, usually
something to avoid, is essential for advancement to
Eras III and IV. You should save as many fecundity
decrease cards as your Hand Limit allows to recover
your innovation after Chaos strikes.12 Before
advancing to a new era, make sure you have the
technological requirements for the golden age of that
era. That way, on the next turn, you can immediately
perform an “Enter Golden Age” innovation action, and
recover suppressed Public Cards, without which you
may suffer repeated chaos.
[5.0] SETTING UP THE GAME
1. Lay out the maps with the New World to the left of
the Old World. Lay each of the three Climate
cards alongside the map so that the side with the
red dot in the upper left corner is showing. They
indicate the world starts as "Savanna", "Parkland",
and "Ice Age".
2. Each player receives one Brain map card (at
random) and a Demography with the same
identifier (A, C, H, N, or P).13 Each places the
Brain map card (brain side up) on the rectangle
indicated on his Demography. Note that the lower
part of the Demography has three slots,
collectively called the Repertoire, used for the
storage of Public cards (victory cards). Note: For
the two or three player game, the recommended
Brain maps for player 1 are H or P, for player 2
are N or C, and for player 3 is A. For the four
player game, leave out N or A.
3. Each player receives all of the Units of one color
(24 total).
4. Each player places one of his Units on the leftmost
space of the five Infrastructure tracks on the map.
5. Each player places one of his Units on the map on
the spot with a species name that matches his
Brain map card. The species are Peking Man,14
Archaic Homo Sapiens,15 Hobbits,16 Neanderthal,17
and Cro-Magnon.18
6. Each player places Units to cover the Instinct
icons marked in black on his Brain map card.
7. Each player puts the rest of his Units on each slot
of his Population and Innovation tracks, not
marked with a red star.
4
8. The Era cards are separated into three decks
based on their backs (Eras I, II, and III), shuffled,
and placed next to the map face-down.
9. The player having the Brain map card identifier (A,
C, H, N, or P) that appears earliest in the alphabet
takes the first turn. After his turn, play continues
clockwise.
[6.0] PLAYING THE GAME
For each turn the current player performs the following
seven phases in order before it is the next player's
turn:
1. Innovation Actions – Perform a number of
Innovation Actions equal to your Innovation
Number.
2. Resolve Catastrophes – Volcanoes, climate
changes, and diseases.
3. Play Card(s) – Resolve card effects and auctions.
4. Stability Roll – If failed, enter Chaos: depopulate
your Map Units, move into a dark age, suppress
your Public cards, and end your turn.
5. Population – Perform a number of Population
Actions equal to your Population Number plus
Elder Expenditures.
6. Resolve Sieges – Take over a foreign metropolis
and a Guest Worker if you outnumber the
defenders.
7. Resolve Starvation Hexes – Reduce
overcrowded Units down to your Footprint.
See the "Sequence of Play" player aid, and the
following pages, for details of these phases.
[7.0] PHASE 1 - INNOVATION ACTIONS
A player may perform a number of Innovation Actions
equal to his Innovation Number, which is the number
on the rightmost vacant slot of the Innovation track at
the beginning of this phase. He may perform these
actions in any order and each action may be
performed multiple times. Example: A player has one
unit left in his Innovation track, which covers the "5"
slot. His innovation number is therefore "4", the
number visible to the left of this unit. He can perform
up to four Innovation Actions.
[7.1] Era I Innovation Actions
In Era I, there are seven Innovation Actions to choose
from. Each has requirement(s) which must be met by
having the appropriate Instinct icon uncovered on your
Brain map. Some actions also require an Elder
Expenditure; see section 9.3.
1. Novel Behavior (requires technical knowledge or
natural history knowledge). A player may draw the
top card of the Era I deck, which goes into his
hand.
Note (deck regeneration): If a player wishes to
draw a card, but cannot because the desired era
deck is exhausted, form a new deck using all the
discards of the correct era from all player discard
piles. This deck is shuffled and placed facedown.
2. Imitator (requires social skills). A player may ran-
sack (i.e.; draw one top card from the discard deck
of any opponent, as long as it is from an era he
has already entered), or draw one Era I card if
there are no cards that can be ransacked.
3. Silverback (requires social skills). The player per-
forms two fecundity increases, each of which
slides the leftmost unit in his Population Track to
the rightmost empty slot in his Innovation Track.
Add two when making this turn’s Stability Roll.
4. Locution (requires Elder Expenditure and social
skills). A player may clear the Wernicke's Area do-
main (see section 9.3), but goes into chaos during
Phase 4 (see section 10.0).
5. Lexicalization (requires language). A player may
move one Brain Unit into an adjacent vacant do-
main on the brain map. Example (See diagram in
section 9.4): Player N can move the unit in his
Broca’s area into his Neocortex.
6. Storyteller (requires language). A player may per-
form an Elder Reset; see section 9.3.
7. Naturalist (requires Elder Expenditure, language,
and natural history knowledge). A player may
make an animal or crop Domestication attempt;
see section 9.5.
[7.2] Era II and later Innovation Actions
A player beyond Era I must chose from among these
eight Innovation Actions (none have requirements):
1. Invention (Card Draw). A player may draw into his
hand the top card of any era deck that he has
entered.
2. Education. A player may ransack (see "Imitator").
5
3. Baby Boom (Fecundity Increase). A player may
shift the leftmost unit in his Population track to the
rightmost empty slot in his Innovation Track. This
cannot be performed if the Innovation track is full.
4. Economic Stimulation (Elder Reset). A player
may slide Elders in the Elder Pool up from the
consumer to the producer section. The number
reset is equal to the rank of the best information
card on his Repertoire. Example: Blue’s best
information card is rank two. He has three Elders,
all in the lower (expended) half of his pool. He
uses one Innovation Action to move two Elders up
to the producer half. He uses a second Innovation
Action to reset his last Elder, with one reset
leftover (which he may use to reset the Elder of
another player, see section 9.3).
5. Enter Golden Age. If a player has attained the
Infrastructure stage shown on his Advancement
track (see section 10.0), he advances his Era Unit
from a dark age to a golden age of the same Era.
He chooses one Public card on each of the three
Repertoire slots in his Demography to flip over to
the unsuppressed (face-up) side.
6. Revolution (Era III and later). A player swaps his
Brain Map card for another, either an unused one
(if available), or one belonging to another player
who is in any dark age. In the latter case, the
targeted player may instead cancel the swap by
suffering an Elder Loss. Otherwise, the cards are
swapped and each player puts his Era Unit in the
same age he had it before the swap. The current
player subtracts two from his subsequent Stability
roll. If the identity / ideology of a player changes
(via a revolution), then the player’s new identifier
letter is effective for all purposes (including bidding
tiebreakers).
7. Espionage (Era III and later). A player may steal
a card at random from the hand of another player.
8. Cold War (Era IV and later). A player may
suppress (flip face-down) one Public card of an
opponent.
[8.0] PHASE 2 - RESOLVE
CATASTROPHES
Any Public Cards drawn from the era deck in Phase 1
containing a Catastrophe icon must be revealed and
the catastrophes resolved in any order the drawer
chooses. The rest of the card is ignored until Phase 3.
Catastrophe Resolution
[8.1] Volcanic Catastrophe
This icon causes all Map Units in the specified hex to
be Lost.
[8.2] Climatic Catastrophe
Roll a die and flip over the Climate card that matches
the roll:
• A 1, 2, or 3 will flip the Dansgaard-Oeschger
card.19 One side indicates Savanna climate; the
other Desert climate.
• A 4 or 5 will flip the Greenhouse card.20 One
side indicates Parkland climate, the other Jungle
climate.
• A 6 will flip the Milankovitch Cycle card.21 One
side indicates an ice age, the other a tropical age.
[8.3] Uninhabitable Sites and Spots
• White sites and spots are uninhabitable during an
ice age. White sites and spots are uninhabitable
during a tropical age, unless have hay technology.
• Blue spots are uninhabitable during all ages.
• Half gray/half blue sites and spots are
uninhabitable during a tropical age.
• Yellow sites and spots are uninhabitable during
Desert climate, except for metropolises with wells
technology.
• Green sites and spots are uninhabitable during
Jungle climate, except for metropolises with
pesticide technology.
Note: Migratory units on spots that are no longer
habitable due to climate are Lost. Metropolises on
uninhabitable sites are also Lost, unless the player
has the appropriate Infrastructure technology.
[8.4] Disease.22
This icon indicates the drawing player and one
Neighbor of his choice (if he has any) are stricken by a
6
disease. As indicated by the red Advancement arrow
(section 9.3), a stricken player advances one on the
Immunology track, and suffers one Elder Loss (section
9.3) and two Fecundity Increases (section 7.0). If a
player cannot advance his Immunology because it is at
the Bound limit, then he is immune to the disease and
suffers no effects. Example: A player with an
immunology of 3 is immune to malaria.
[9.0] PHASE 3 - PLAY CARD(S)
A player’s Hand Size (the maximum number of cards
he may hold in his hand at the end of this phase) is
equal to one plus the rank of the best Information card
on his Repertoire; see section 5.0. A player must play
at least enough cards to get down to his Hand Size.
He may play his cards in any order. He must play any
Public cards that he holds (but see recommended
optional rule 18.1). If a player gains or resets an
Information card, his hand size bonus occurs instantly.
[9.1] Discard Pile
One cannot discard a card without playing it. All cards
played go face-up into a personal discard pile on one’s
Demography. One can examine the cards below the
top card of one’s own discards, but not those of an
opponent.
[9.2] Public Cards
Each Public card in a hand is played and auctioned.
The winner of the auction stores the card in the
appropriate Repertoire slot on his Demography. If
nobody bids on it, it is awarded to the current player.
The player receiving the card receives the effects of
any icons listed on it.
Auction. All players that have attained a card’s era
level may participate in an auction for it. Each player
may call out his bid at any time, not exceeding his
number of producer Elders. The minimum bid is one
and bid numbers may match. A player may increase
his bid, but may not decrease it. The auction ends
when no player wishes to bid. The high bidder is
awarded the card, placed immediately into his
Repertoire. He must make Elder Expenditures (section
9.3) equal to his bid. A player who wins a Public card
with an Elder Loss icon must suffer an Elder Loss.
This effect is a one-time event, and does not reoccur if
this card is suppressed and later reset.
Ties: If the bidding is tied, the winner is the player
whose identifier is uppermost (see below).
Example: Player N and Player C each bid one for the
Public card shown. The Neanderthal player wins this
bidding tie and is awarded the card, since "N" is listed
higher than "C". N moves one of his producer Elders
to the consumer side. The Elder Loss icon (see
diagram) indicates he takes an Elder as a Loss, which
can be the one he just expended.
Important (Era IV): If a player's identifier appears on
a black square ("P" on the Pharoah card above), then
he must discard the Public card out of the game as
soon as he buys it (see section 19.1).
Information Card. Shown is an
information icon of rank three, allowing the
reset of 3 Elders as an Innovation Action
(section 7.0), and allowing a Hand Size of
four.
Culture Card. The icon shown indicates a
rank two culture. Culture cards allow
acculturation against a lesser-ranked
culture as a Population Action (section
11.0).
Administration Card. This is a rank one
administration, which adds one to the
Stability Roll (section 10.0).
Facilitated Action. If a Public card displays a
Population or Innovation action (as in the Silverback
action shown on the Pharoah card above), this action
is facilitated. A player with an unsuppressed facilitated
action is allowed to perform it, regardless of what Era
he is in.
7
[9.3] Idea Cards
A player may choose to play either side of these cards,
but not both.23 On the side chosen, the player picks
which icons to use and in what order to apply them,
except that Elder Losses and encephalizations are not
optional.
Requirements. Icons within the lavender field indicate
the minimum instincts or Infrastructure stages
necessary for the left side play of the Idea Card.
Example: Blue has a Metallurgy of 3 and a Maritime
of 1, more than enough for the left side play of the
Astrolabium card. This play gains an increase in
Maritime infrastructure and an Elder.
Advancement Arrow. A player may move the
corresponding Infrastructure Unit one stage to the
right. See diagram.
Bound. The number in the red diamond of each
advancement arrow, called the Bound, indicates the
highest Infrastructure stage limit achievable by that
card or domestication. Example: The Bound on the
advancement arrow shown on the Astrolabium card is
three. The play of this advancement would progress a
player at Maritime 1 to Maritime 2, but would not
progress a player at Maritime 3.
Important: Advancements on Era IV cards require an
Elder Expenditure to perform, for non-slave players.
Elder Expenditure.24 In order to perform this, a player
must move one producer Elder in his Elder Pool down
to the consumer section. Elder Expenditures are
required for domestications and bids.
Elder Reset. A player may move one Elder up (from
consumer to producer). This may be his own unit, or (if
at Era II and later), the Elder of a consenting player.
Alternatively, an Elder Reset may be used to
unsuppress (flip over) one of a player’s face-down
Public cards.
Elder Gain. If the player has a number of Units in his
Elder Pool that is equal to or less than his number of
Metropolises, he may move a unit into the Elder Pool
as a producer. The unit taken is the leftmost available
on the Innovation track, or if this track is empty, the
leftmost available on the Population track. If the player
cannot or does not wish to gain an Elder, he may use
this as an Elder Reset instead. Example: A player
with one metropolis can make two Elder Gains before
he reaches his limit. The loss of a metropolis does not
require a corresponding Elder Loss.
Encephalization (Era I only) The player takes as a
Loss the Brain Unit (if any) covering the specified
instinct. For a language encephalization, the player
chooses which of the two language domains to clear.
Example: The Neanderthal brain map has two Brain
Units left, covering both his speech centers as shown.
He plays a card with a "!" encephalization, and
chooses to remove the unit covering his Broca’s area.
[9.4] Brain Map
A Brain Map has five domains,28 each with an instinct
icon (natural history knowledge, technical skills, social
skills, language). The presence of a Brain Unit in that
domain inactivates the instinct there.

Elder Loss. This icon forces the player to take an

Elder as a Loss, taken from either side of his pool. If
he has no Elders to lose, this icon is ignored.

Cultural Diffusion.25 If a player has a card with this

icon uppermost in his discards, he is unrestricted in
the era level of the cards he can acquire in ransacks or
while bidding in auctions. He also gains a free instant
ransack upon any opponent who attacks or sabine
raids him, which he keeps in his hand until his next
card play phase.
Example: Red, at Era II, wishes to spend an
Innovation action to ransack an Era III card. He may
do this, because a card with the "eyeball-icon" sits on
top of his discard pile. Then it is Green’s turn, and she
plays an Era III Public card, which goes up for auction.
Red is able to participate because he still has the card
with the Cultural diffusion icon showing on top of his
pile.
Example (Sabine Raid): Red starts his population
phase with one unit in (peaceful) siege of a Green
metropolis. Red spends a population action to
perform a Sabine Raid ransack on Green, uncovering
a card with the eyeball icon. Green, who now has
Cultural Diffusion, responds with his free ransack on
Red.
Barbarian Raid.26 The play of a card with the
barbarian icon allows a player to make a barbarian
attack upon one of his Neighbors, causing the victim to
forfeit one Public card or lose one Elder of his choice.
Cards used to make a Barbarian Raid, and the Public
cards lost to a Barbarian Raid, are taken out of the
game completely. Barbarian Raids may also have the
effect of ending enslavement; see section 14.2.
Fecundity Decrease.27 The player may move the
leftmost unit on the Innovation track to the rightmost
vacant slot of the Population track. If the Population
track is full, this effect is ignored.
Advancing to Era II. A player immediately advances
to Era II upon the Loss of his last Brain Unit. This flips
his Brain Map card over to reveal the three Era tracks
(section 10.0). His last Brain Unit now becomes his
Era Unit, which is placed into the Era II Dark Age,
labeled "metaphoric language". He may thereafter
draw from either the Era I or Era II decks.
[9.5] Domestication of Plants, Animals, and
Minerals
If a Plant or Animal hex is free of metropolises and its
site is habitable (see section 8.3, but see optional rule
7), a player occupying it may make a Domestication
attempt,29 either by card play, or (in Era I) as an
Innovation Action. A player occupying a Resource hex
with a habitable site (section 8.3) may make a
domestication attempt, even if the hex already has a
metropolis, and even if the resource has previously
been exploited. A Domestication attempt requires an
Elder Expenditure and the roll of one die, consulting
the on-map Crop Cultivation, Animal Husbandry, or
Resource Extraction Table (as applicable). This die roll
is modified as indicated by the "+" or "-" icons as listed
on the plant, animal, or mineral symbol on the map,

8
and also on any icons on the Idea card used in the The player locates his Chaos threshold, a number
attempt. directly beneath his Population Number on the
Population track. A  indicates that no Stability roll is
necessary. He rolls one die, and adds to it the rank
Animal Husbandry.30 Allows a Domestication attempt
(number of sword icons) of his best Administration
of an animal hex. Example: Red rolls a "2" while
card. If in Era I, he also adds 2 for every time he took
trying to domesticate the mastodon. The icons on the
the Silverback action this turn. If this sum is less than
mastodon (map hex) and stirrups (Idea card used in
his threshold, then Chaos ensues, with the following
the attempt) 31 each contain a minus ("-") modifier, so 2
four effects:
is subtracted from his roll. The "1-" result on the
Animal Husbandry Table reveals a success if Red has
an Energy stage of at least one. He now rides Depopulation. The player takes as a Loss half of his
mastodons into battle! His Footprint and Metallurgy Map Units, rounding fractions down (in the player’s
both go up a stage, and he gains a metropolis in the favor). He may choose which units to lose.
mastodon hex.
Enter Dark Age (Era II and greater). If the player is
Important: In the case of a modified roll of 6 or more currently in a golden age, then he must move his Era
on the Animal Husbandry table, the player (and a Unit to a dark age of his choice, either the one ahead
Neighbor of his choice) are stricken with a disease of (in the next era), or the one behind (in the current era).
Bound 1, per section 8.4. If a modified roll of 2 or 3 is
achieved, the domestication attempt fails because the
animal is too ferocious. When playing with four or Suppress Public Cards. The player flips all the Public
fewer players, place a unit of a color not in play to cards in his Repertoire face-down, indicating they have
cover the icons of ferocious animals. This indicates no effect until unsuppressed (by an Elder Reset, or
that the animal is extinct and no further Domestication Entering a Golden Age).
attempts may be made in this hex.32 A metropolis may
be formed in such a hex only by the urbanization The Player’s Turn ends. Skip Phases 5, 6, and 7.
action.
Note: Beyond Era I, Chaos is the only way to advance
Crop Cultivation. Allows a Domestication attempt of a to the next era!
plant hex. Example: Green makes a crop
Domestication attempt on the coconut palm, which
has a double "+" modifier. She rolls a "1", which is
modified to "3" = "Nuts". Nuts require an Energy stage
of "2" to achieve a caloric benefit during dehusking.
Since Green’s current Energy stage is 1, her attempt
fails, but she still pays the expenditure.

Resource Extraction. Allows a Domestication attempt

of a gold, silver, tin, biofuel,33 oil, or uranium hex.
Example: Blue, with a metropolis in a gold hex, plays
a card with the flame icon, and rolls a modified "6" on
the Resource Extraction table. He gains an Elder but
not a metropolis.

Domestication Effects. The outcomes (benefits) of

Resource Extraction vary according to the Resource
type, as shown on the map tables. If the player meets
the requirements (if any) specified by the
Domestication roll, the attempt is successful. The
player gains the Infrastructure Advances listed, and he
converts one of his units in the hex into a Metropolitan
unit.
[10.0] PHASE 4 - STABILITY ROLL
Example: Player N, with a population number of 2 and
a chaos risk of "<2", makes a Stability roll. She rolls a
"1", which plunges her into chaos! She has three Map
Units (2 Metropolises and 1 Migratory), and she
chooses the Migratory unit to be Lost. She has several
Culture and Administration cards, all of which are
flipped upside-down. She chooses to advance her Era
Unit (at "matrimony") into Era IV ("divorce") rather than
retreat into "racism". If playing the full game, she
enters Era IV and ends her turn.

9

[11.0] PHASE 5 - POPULATION ACTIONS
A player may perform a number of Population Actions
equal to his Population Number, i.e.; the number on
the rightmost vacant slot of the Population track at the
beginning of this phase, plus the number of Elder
Expenditures he wishes to make. He may perform
these actions in any order and may perform one action
multiple times. See the extended example in section
16.0. There are seven Population Actions:
1. Acculturation.34 The player may choose the Elder
of one opponent who has an inferior culture rank,
(that is, an opponent whose best culture card has
a lower number of "star" icons) to steal as a Guest
Worker. He may not steal Guest Workers if the
number of Elders in his pool is greater than the
number of his metropolises.
Note: If a player has no culture card, or his culture
cards are suppressed, his culture is considered to
be zero.
2. Trade.35 (Era III and later) A player may make a
trade with another consenting Neighboring player.
The players agree on a single Infrastructure track
on which to compare advancement. The player
who is superior on that Infrastructure track
performs an Elder Gain and the player who is
inferior advances on that track by one stage.
Players get no benefit from trading on an
Infrastructure track where they are equally
advanced. Example: On his turn, Peking man,
with a Footprint of two, convinces Neanderthal,
with a Footprint of four, to trade with him. By
expending a Population Action, Peking man is
able to increase his Footprint to three, and
Neanderthal moves a unit from innovation to
producer.
Note: Each trade expends one action. Only if the
trade action is actually performed is the action
expended. Instead of an elder gain, an elder reset
or public card unsuppress may be performed.
3. Urbanization (Era III and later). By spending
three Population Actions, a player may convert a
Migratory unit into a Metropolitan unit in a hex it
occupies. This hex must have the metropolitan site
icon, which is of a type that is currently habitable
per section 8.3 (for instance, a jungle site during
Jungle climate is not habitable without pesticides,
etc.). Only one metropolis is allowed per hex.
4. Sabine Raid.36 A player may make one ransack or
(if Era III and later) espionage (see section 7.2)
upon a player who he has just attacked (see
"Migration" below) or besieged (section 12.0)
during this phase. The outcome of a Sabine Raid
10
does not depend upon who won the battle. There
is a limit of one Sabine Raid per attack or siege.
5. Population Increase. A player may take the
leftmost unit of the Population track and place it on
a habitable (see section 8.3) and accessible spot
on the map - either where he has units or slaves
already, or in one of his metropolitan hexes
(occupied or unoccupied by friendly or enemy
units). If the Population track is empty, no further
population placement is possible. After a unit is
placed, it gets a free Migration action (see
"Migration" below).
6. Migration. A player may move a Migratory unit
that has not yet moved this turn. Each unit may be
moved up to five spots, following the white
hexsides. See diagram. It must finish its move in a
habitable spot. It may not end its move on another
unit unless it is attacking it. Metropolitan units may
not move.
Land spots are habitable and enterable.
Sea spots are never habitable and are enterable
only when Maritime stage 2 is attained (section
15.0).
Continental Shelf spots37 are habitable during an
ice age, but sea during a tropical age.
Tundra spots are ice during an ice age, and
tundra during a tropical age. Ice may never be
entered. Tundra may not be entered and is not
habitable without hay38 (Immunology stage 2).
Parkland. The green spots are habitable except
during jungle climate, when they become
uninhabitable jungle which cannot be entered until
Metallurgy stage 2.
Savanna. The yellow spots are habitable except
during desert climate, when they become
uninhabitable desert which cannot be entered until
Footprint stage 2.
Straits. A hexside with a white strait icon may be
traversed only during an ice age or with rafting
(Maritime stage 1). A red strait icon may be
crossed only with rafting. Example: A player has
Maritime stage 1 (rafts) and it is an ice age. Her
map unit starts in the spot shown and moves north
to the spot labeled "1", and then east and south to
her destination at "5", crossing two straits. If she
 has colonial power technology, she can take the
southerly route. The sea spot at "1,2" costs double
to enter with this technology.
Pacific Ocean. The Beringia and Hawaii spots are
shown on both sides of the map. A unit in either of
these spots occupies the west and east locations
simultaneously.
Attacking and leapfrogging foreign units. If a
unit enters a spot occupied by a foreign unit, it
may either attack or request permission to pass. If
permission is denied, an attack automatically
occurs. During an attack, the metallurgical stage of
the attacker is compared with that of the defender.
The unit with the lesser Metallurgy39 is taken as a
Loss. If tied, both are lost. If the attacking unit
wins, it then ends its move. If the spot is
uninhabitable to the attacker, it then is lost.
Important: If the attacking unit had to cross a
strait or sea spot in order to attack, its Metallurgy
is considered one less.
7. Globalization (Era IV and later). A player selects
a victim who has more Elders than metropolises to
suffer an Elder Loss (section 9.3).
[12.0] PHASE 6 - RESOLVE SIEGES
During this phase, a siege occurs if the current player
wishes to occupy a foreign metropolis in a hex where
he has Migratory units. The current player selects the
order in which sieges are resolved.
Resolution. The current player has a strength equal to
the number of his Migratory units in the hex. The
defender has a strength equal to the number of his
Migratory units in the hex plus his Footprint (to
11
represent the metropolis). If either player is superior in
Metallurgy, he adds one to his strength.
Note: If the current player has siege artillery
technology, see section 15.0.
If the current player has the higher strength, then the
defending metropolis is Lost and replaced as a
Metropolis by one of the current player's Migratory
units, and he steals an Elder as a Guest Worker from
the defender (unless his Elder Pool is full, counting the
Metropolis he just seized).
If the current player doesn’t have a higher strength, the
siege fails and nothing happens.
Example: On Green’s turn, she moves 3 units into a
hex containing a Red Metropolis and a Red Migratory
unit. Red’s Footprint is 2, so both players have the
equivalent of 3 units present. But Green is more ad-
vanced metallurgically, so she wins and the Red Met-
ropolitan unit is Lost. One of her units is shifted to form
a new metropolis there, and she takes one of Red’s
Elders, if he has any. However, if her Footprint is 2,
during the next phase (starvation) two of her units
starve, leaving only the Red Migratory unit and the
Green Metropolis in the hex.
[13.0] PHASE 7 - RESOLVE STARVATION
HEXES
A starvation hex is one in which the combined number
of friendly and foreign Map Units exceeds the current
player’s Footprint. The current player selects the order
in which the starvation hexes are resolved.
Resolution. The current player removes his units until
there are none left that violate their Footprint limit.
Only units belonging to the current player can starve.
Example: Refer to the map in section 16.0. The India,
Tibet, and Afghanistan hexes each have three Black
migratory units. If Black has a Footprint of two, then all
three are starvation hexes. During his starvation
phase, he decides to remove the unit in Nicaea, which
makes all three hexes non-starvation.
[14.0] SPECIAL RULES
[14.1] Deal Making
During Era II and later, a player is allowed these two
types of deals with other players:
Foreign Aid. A player is allowed to expend Elders on
behalf of another player (anytime). He may bid Elders
in support of another player’s bid, but only if he is
qualified to bid upon that card.
Embargo. A player may announce the setting or lifting
of oil rights (necessary for air force or vehicle
technology), or leapfrog rights versus particular
players (anytime during his turn). He may perform
these favors as part of a reciprocal deal; however, all
deals are non-binding.
[14.2] Slaver and Enslaved Societies
A player losing his last Map Unit becomes an
enslaved society.40 If this was due to an attack, the
conquering player becomes the slaver society. If this
was due to a catastrophe or starvation, the victim
chooses another player to be the slaver. Both slaver
and enslaved are subject to the following six effects:
Footprint. Upon enslavement, if the Footprint of the
slaver and slave society are unequal, the lesser
Infrastructure Unit is advanced in the Footprint track
until they are equal. Stack the slaver’s Unit on top of
that of the enslaved to indicate enslavement.
Slave Prohibited Actions. A slave society may not
perform the Domestication, Revolution, Trade,
Naturalist, Urbanization, or Sabine Raid actions.
Slave Population Growth. An enslaved society may
place new population only in the metropolitan hexes of
the slaver society. This placement may be on top of a
foreign (non-slaver) unit, in which case an attack
occurs. If the slaver society has no metropolises, then
no slave population placement is possible. The
enslaved player may never move his units after
placement. Important: The loss of a metropolis does
not remove the slaves around it.
Acculturation. Slaver and enslaved societies may
perform acculturation actions upon each other per the
limitations of section 11.0, except that the slaver is
allowed to acculturate the enslaved if both have equal
cultures. The enslaved society is immune to
acculturation except by the slaver.
Note: The enslaved society is not allowed to own
metropolises and thus is limited to one Elder.
Infrastructure Advances. If any infrastructure gains
or losses are achieved by either a slaver or enslaved
society, the advance or loss is applied instantly to the
other player as well (observing Bound limits, see
section 9.3). Example: The slave society catches a
disease of Bound 4, which boosts both his and the
slaver’s Immunology by one. The slaves pick their
12
masters to catch the disease as well, boosting both of
their Immunologies another step.
Slave Revolt/Genocide.41 The Map Units of enslaved
and slaver societies may never attack or besiege each
other. However, if either the slaver or enslaved player
makes a barbarian raid upon the other, or if the slaver
society goes into Chaos or is himself enslaved, then
instantly the enslavement comes to an end, dissolving
all slavery rules and putting all the enslaved units into
siege against the metropolises of the former slaver
society. All Guest Workers of the former slave society
are returned from all players to their home color Elder
Pool. If the slaver society loses any units due to
Chaos, these are replaced by units of the former slave
society’s color, taken from his Population track. If a
slaver society frees more than one slave society when
he lapses into Chaos, the slaver player decides which
slave color each of the lost slaver units are replaced
by.
[15.0] NOTES ON THE INFRASTRUCTURE
TRACKS
A player with siege artillery (Metallurgy stage 4) may
consider the defender’s Footprint to be one when
resolving sieges.
With colonial power (Maritime stage 2), a player's
units may enter sea spots, but at double cost.
With blockade technology (Maritime stage 3), a
player’s units may enter sea spots at a cost of one
each. These units may end their turn on a sea spot,
but if so they are Lost during Phase 7, Resolve
Starvation Hexes. (Blockading units are thus useful as
sacrificial units during sieges.)
With air force technology (Maritime stage 4) plus the
use of a metropolis in an oil hex, a player can move
his units ten instead of five, and all spots may be
entered at a cost of one. In addition, the player can
leapfrog opposing units without permission.
With missile technology (Maritime stage 5), a
player’s units have unlimited movement. In addition,
he is allowed to expend one or more Population
Actions, each of which will lower the maritime
infrastructure of a designated opponent by one stage.
Upon initially attaining railroad technology (Energy
stage 3), a player instantly gains one free
Infrastructure advance of his choice. Example: A
player attains Energy 3 and has Footprint 3. He
announces that, for his free rail increase, he will
advance to Footprint 4.
A player with vehicle technology (Energy stage 4)
plus the use of a metropolis in an oil hex may use
Innovation Actions to advance any chosen
Infrastructure other than energy.
A player with A-bomb technology (Energy stage 5)
may use Population Actions to destroy designated
enemy metropolises. Unless he has Maritime stage 5
(missile), each metropolis attacked must be
Neighboring.
• MAD: If the victim of an A-bomb also has A-bomb
technology, each metropolis he loses may destroy
an opponent’s metropolis simultaneously.
• Nuclear Winter: For every three metropolises
destroyed by A-bombs, during starvation a roll
must be made on the Climatic Catastrophe table
(section 8.2).
With venereal disease germs (Immunology stage 3),
a player inflicts (during Phase 6) any players whom he
successfully besieges with a disease limited by Bound
3.
[16.0] EXAMPLE GAME TURN:
ALEXANDER THE GREAT (ERA III)
Innovation Actions. With five units in his Innovation
track, Alexander has an innovation of two. For one
action he advances to the Era III Golden Age, and the
other he uses to ransack the Hoplite phalanx card. He
is set for world conquest!
Play Cards. Alexander plays his only card, the Hoplite
phalanx. He is at Energy stage 2, meeting the
requirements for left side play. This increases his
Metallurgy one step (to stage 3, the Iron Age).
Stability Roll. Alexander has a Population number of
three and an administration card of rank 3, so no
Chaos is possible.
13
Population Action #1. Alexander chooses to increase
his Population actions from three to six this turn by
expending three Elders. On his first action, he brings in
a Migratory unit at Scythia, and moves it three spaces
into Maracanda, battling the Hindu unit there. The
Metallurgy of the attacker is considered only two, since
it crossed some straits, but this is sufficient to crush
the defense, still at Metallurgy stage 1.
Population Action #2. Since the Hindus are culturally
inferior, Alexander decides to perform an acculturation
to steal one Elder from them.
Population Actions #3, #4, #5, and #6. At Pella,
Alexander starts four more map units, and one by one,
moves them to Memphis, Tyre, Persepolis, and (using
boats) Ust-Urt Island.42
Resolve Sieges. Alexander chooses to resolve the
siege in Babylon first. His opponent, Persia, defends
with a Footprint of three, which matches the number of
Alexander’s units. But Alexander’s superior Metallurgy
gives him another effective unit, and he wins and
replaces the Persian metropolis with his unit in Ust-Urt.
The same thing happens in the next siege, in Arabia,
except that he uses his unit from Memphis to move in.
Resolve Starvation Hexes. Alexander’s Footprint is
three, so Afghanistan (with two Macedonian and two
Hindu units) is a starvation hex. Alexander chooses his
unit at Maracanda to remove. The hex is no longer in
starvation.
On Alexander’s Next Turn. Alexander increases his
Population number, and sinks into Chaos. This is all
part of his plan to advance into the Era IV Dark Age!
He loses three units in depopulation, flips his Public
cards upside down, advances his Era Marker, and
ends his turn.
[17.0] ENDING THE GAME
The game ends on the end of the turn that the first
player enters the Era IV Dark Age (or the Dark Age
that follows Era IV if playing the full game using the ex-
pansion deck).
Determining the Winner. Each player receives victory
points according to his identifier (A, C, H, N, or P) at
the end of the game.43 Each player identity counts the
specified Public card ranks held in his Repertoire (sup-
pressed or unsuppressed), and/or all the units in his
Elder Pool, as noted below. To this total is added the
player’s Innovation and Population numbers at the end
of the game. The highest total wins.

• Authorization A (National Unity): Victory points =
the sum of the ranks of all Administration plus
Information Cards in his Repertoire.
• Authorization C (Universal Humanism): Victory
points = the sum of the ranks of all his Culture plus
Information Cards.
• Authorization H (Social Equity): Victory points =
the sum of the ranks of all his Administration plus
Culture Cards.
• Authorization N (Family Tradition): Victory points
= the number of Elders of any color in his Elder
Pool plus the ranks of all his Culture Cards.
• Authorization P (Individual Freedom): Victory
points = the number of Elders of any color in his
Elder Pool plus the ranks of all his Information
Cards.
Example: Player N has two units in her Elder Pool
and several Public cards, two of which are culture: one
with one star, and the other with three stars. Her Pop-
ulation and Innovation numbers are both two. There-
fore, she has ten victory points.
Note: If playing with the Era IV expansion set,
Producer Elders count for double points (for those
players using Elders for victory conditions). This
applies only for games that enter Era IV (i.e.; the "full"
game and the Age of Faith scenario [section 19.1]).
Normal scoring applies to games ending at the end of
Era III.
[18.0] OPTIONAL RULES
1. Voluntary Public Card Introduction.
(recommended) Remove the rule (4th sentence of
section 9.0) that forces a player to play his Public
cards immediately. Instead, a player may hold Public
cards in his hand in the same fashion as Idea cards. If
the Public card has a catastrophe, it must be
announced and enacted during the Catastrophe phase
during the turn drawn, but the Public card need not be
revealed. If using this rule, replace the sentence in
section 9.2, "If nobody bids on it, it is awarded to the
current player." with the sentence, "If nobody bids on a
Public card, then it is discarded and removed from the
game."
2. New Population Actions. (recommended)
Livestock Raid (Era II and later): If a Neighbor is at
Energy stage 1 or higher, advance to Energy stage 1.
Alternatively, if a Neighbor is at Footprint stage 2 or
higher, advance to Footprint stage 2.
Mining44 (Era III and later): If a player has a
Metropolis on a resource hex, and expends an Elder,
14
he may roll on the Resource Extraction Table adding
one extra to the die roll. Each attempt costs one
population action and one elder expenditure.
3. Counterespionage. (recommended) Allow the
victim of a Cold War or Espionage action to block it by
performing an Elder Expenditure.
4. No Final Chaos. (recommended) Replace the first
sentence of section 17.0 with: "The game ends the
instant the first player enters the Era IV Dark Age (or
the Dark Age that follows Era IV if playing the full
game using the expansion deck.)" [This rule removes
the disadvantage that the player ending the game
suffers due to going into chaos.]
5. Swine Flu. Referring to the "6+" entry of the Animal
Husbandry table, the Bound of the Disease, instead of
being "1", is instead considered to be whatever Era the
current player is in.
6. The Toba Event.45 (This rule makes the cow hex a
bit less attractive as a resource.) If the Yellowstone
volcano card is drawn, instead of a volcano in America
consider it Mount Toba in Sumatra instead which
blows its top. This event removes all units in the Asian
Elephant and Auroch Cow hexes (i.e.; they are lost),
and forces one climate change roll.
7. Domestication in Uninhabitable Hexes. This rule
modifies the Domestication rule (1st sentence of
section 9.5) to allow a Domestication attempt in a hex
that is currently uninhabitable. If successful, the player
gains the effects of domestication, except a Metropolis
is not created. Example: Player A has a migratory unit
in east Alaska during an Ice Age. He plays a card with
the flame icon, allowing him to make a Resource
Extraction roll for uranium. If successful, he advances
his energy one step.
[19.0] EXPANSION SET RULES & NOTES
[19.1] Era IV – The Age of Reason. The Age of
Reason expansion adds 55 new cards to Origins.
These cards allow players to advance their Origins
civilizations into the modern age, the Age of Reason.
Population Actions
Four additional Population actions have been added.
These are:
8. Free Trade (Era V). This action is exactly like the
"Trade" Population action, except that the number of
Elders gained can be up to three (as agreed upon by
the two traders) instead of one. The number of Elders
gained in a Free Trade action is NOT limited by the
number of metropolises.

9. Tourism46 (Era V). This action allows the player to
perform an acculturation on another player who has
fewer total unsuppressed public cards.
10. Elections47 (Era V). This action allows the player
to add two to his strength during sieges. Even if a
player has more than one active "elections", two is the
maximum strength addition.
11. Terrorism (Era V): With an Elder Expenditure,
perform a Barbarian raid.
Note: Free Trade, Tourism, Elections, and
Terrorism are facilitated actions on certain Era IV
cards (see section 9.2).
Additional Rules
The following additional rules are only applicable to
Era IV and later:
Ideological Suppression. If a player obtains by
auction a Public card that indicates his identity letter
within a black square, this card is removed from the
game (i.e.; not placed in the discard pile) without its
effects being applied.
Utopia. This activity, indicated by a circular icon found
on certain Era IV Idea cards, allows the player to
subtract from the Stability Roll on the turn played.
[This destabilization may be useful for the player to
end the game by failing the final Stability Roll and
entering Era V.]
Discoveries.48 This activity, indicated by a diamond
icon found on certain Era IV idea cards, allows the
player to draw new cards into one’s hand off of any
Era Deck he has entered. These cards may be played
immediately.
Era IV Scoring. Producer Elders count for double
points (for those players using Elders for victory
conditions). This applies only for games that enter Era
IV (i.e.; the "full" game and the Age of Faith scenario
[section 19.13]). Normal scoring applies to games
ending at the end of Era III.
Short Game: Age of Faith
This shorter game starts in 1200 BC, and includes Era
III and IV only. All players start with Infrastructure units
on Footprint stage 3, and stage 2 in the other four
infrastructures. Each player starts with an Era unit in
the Era III Dark Age. Each player starts with their
Innovation and Population tracks full, except for those
marked with a red star. Each player starts with three or
four Map Units, placed as follows:
15
• A (Olmec/Aspero): Metropolises on Sunflower and
Peanut, Migrant unit in Guadalajara.
• C (Egypt): Metropolis on Finger Millet, Migrant unit
on "Cro-Magnon", one producer Elder.
• H (Lapita): Metropolis on Kangaroo, Migrant units
on "Hobbit" and Hawaii, one producer Elder.
• N (Sumeria): Metropolis on Wheat, Migrant unit on
"Neanderthal", one producer Elder.
• P (Harappan/Xia): Metropolis on Rice, Migrant
units on "Peking Man" and India, one producer
Elder.
Note: Guadalajara is the land spot directly below
Maize, Beans; India is the land spot directly below
Auroch Cow.
Before the game begins, roll for one climate change.
Then start game per section 5.0, step 9.
Note: For a two player game, the recommended
Demographies are C vs. P; for a three player game, C
vs. N vs. P; and for a four player game, C vs. P vs. A
vs. H.
[20.0] SOLITAIRE GAME
A brutal solo variant of Origins, courtesy John “Dr.
Erosion” Douglass, revised by Robert Lawrence.
1) "Public Cards", which includes information,
culture, and administration, are removed from each
deck and placed in separate piles
2) "Public Cards", which includes information,
culture, and administration, are only "awarded"
when a player gains any level on the technology
track (i.e., increasing in footprint, maritime... etc.).
To win a "public card", you must exhaust as many
elders as the Era that you are in, or based on the
position of your letter on the public card (from the
top down), whichever requires the fewest elder
expenditures. Any climate change, volcanic
eruptions, or diseases associated the "public cards"
are played as usual.
3) Administration and information cards work the
same as they do in the normal game. Culture cards
allow the player to make a one time "acculturation"
population action that allows the player to gain as
many elders their civilization can support up to the
level of the Public Card (i.e. an Era II card allows
your civilization to gain a maximum of two elders).
Use cubes of a different color to represent these
elders. When they are lost, they are removed from
the game.
4) Anytime a player tries to move to another
continent, the player must a roll a die to see if the
move is successful. After you move your unit and roll
a die, you compare your die roll to your level on the
metallurgy track. If the die roll is higher than your
level on the metallurgy track, your movement failed
and the unit is placed on the "Innovation Track". If
the die roll is equal or less than your position on the
metallurgy track, your movement was successful. If
an "Eye" is exposed on the last card you played
(meaning "cultural diffusion"), you don't have to
follow this rule and can move to a continent with no
penalty.
5) Every time a "barbarian raid" symbols appear on
a card you draw, you are attacked immediately. You
roll a die and compare it to your level on the
metallurgy track. If the die roll is higher than your
level on the metallurgy track, you lose a migratory
unit, metropolis unit, or suppress a "Public Card",
your choice. If the die roll is equal or less than your
position on the metallurgy track, the attackers were
defeated. If you happen to draw two or more cards
with the "barbarian raid" symbol, it’s World War. If
you lose the roll, you lose "three" Map or Elder units
(player's choice). If you win, you gain one level on
the Metallurgy track and one level on the
Immunization track (Cool!!).
6) For an innovation action where cards are drawn,
one card is removed from the deck unplayed. (i.e.,
for each card drawn, one is lost.) For every turn
where a player has no cards to play (no cards left in
any deck available based on your current Era) and
no other innovation actions possible, the player loses
migratory and metropolis units (player’s choice)
equal to your current Era.
Optional: You must lose a number of idea cards per
turn during Era IV depending upon one's score at the
end of Era III:
Score less than 12 upon (prechaos) entry into Era
IV: lose three idea cards every turn.
Score 12 to 16 upon (prechaos) entry into Era IV:
lose two idea cards every turn.
Score above 16 upon (prechaos) entry into Era IV:
lose one idea card every turn.
The rationale for this is that lesser performers are
eclipsed by other civilizations that get into Era IV
first. The final score should be taken just before the
final chaos, using the optional rule published in the
expansion.
7) If you make it to the new world, you gain one on
the Maritime track.
8) If you empty the population track, you gain one
on the Footprint track.
9) If you are able to establish a unit on every
continent, you gain one on the Footprint track. If you
can establish a metropolis on every continent, you
gain one on the Metallurgy track.
10) Losing Conditions: When all your map units
have been removed from either Barbarian Raids or
16
going into Chaos. If you have one unit left and you
go into Chaos, the game ends, different than the
multiplayer game.
Here is a sample Solitaire Game, courtesy Robert Lawrence:
30,000 BC Starting in Egypt as Homo Heidelbergensis. Matriarchal society,
with “alpha” females and some ritualistic behavior.
29,000 BC Males start using trophies to attract females. I used exogamy (the
practice of forming pair bonds outside one’s band) to expand into Asia.
28,000 BC First specialists (fire-bearers).
27,000 BC Butchers using Clactonian scrapers to bring animal parts home.
26,000 BC Cattle domestication in India, and then Toba explosion depopulates
India and ends the Ice Age. Human’s first use of verbs, and twine.
25,000 BC Human’s first use of nouns. Concepts are now primarily stored in
human memory in verbal form, and Era II (the Bicameral Age) is entered.
Also first use of woven sandals, the first piece of technology envisioned in
one’s mind before being created.
24,000 BC Pair bonding. Failed attempt to domesticate rice in china.
23,000 BC First burials (an interesting indication of pre-conscious
bicameralism)
22,000 BC Stone points are now hafted onto spears. Body adornment,
including necklaces and ochre body paint. The brief Interglacial ends, a new
Ice Age is entered.
21,000 BC A setback as human sacrifice is used to try to invoke failing god-
voices. Down to one Elder.
20,000 BC Archery invented, using Acheulian points. Acrophony (primitive
alphabet) adopted, and the first attempts at writing. Era II Golden Age
entered.
19,000 BC Following the invention of the ard plough, rice is finally cultivated,
but it turns out to be low protein. Gold mining is attempted, but fails. [I
forgot to position myself for gold right away, and thus missed a golden
opportunity (so to speak) last turn, and the lack of gold hurts me all the way
until Era IV].
18,000 BC Barbarian raids overrun Egypt. (Perhaps the Sea Peoples, who were
among the first subjectively conscious tribes in the world). Pack zebras
domesticated. I am badly suffering for the lack of any maritime skills, not
even rafts, & wonder if I should be drawing from Era I.
17,000 BC Sumerian irrigation adopted, but also the first soil salinization, which
loses me another specialist. However, rafts appear on the Harrappan river!
Finally! Also status clothing adopted.
16,000 BC Natufian style villages.
15,000 BC Unetice smiths fail to refine gold. (sigh)
14,000 BC The adoption of Elamite-style Federalism causes a population boom.
The Syrian city-states use temple administrators. And grooming of each other
is used as a status activity.
13,000 BC Wood carving and dugouts. First hieroglyphics and pharaohs. Wheat
is grown in the fertile crescent. The first “guest workers”. Smallpox
pandemic.
12,000 BC The world lapses into Chaos, as the bicameral mind breaks down. I
lose 5 map units.
11,000 BC Era III (The Age of Faith) is entered, and the Pharaohs are re-
established. Use of oracle bones and ritual burials are used to try to retain
vestiges of the bicameral mind.
10,000 BC Barbarians overrun South Africa. Guest workers die off.
Hieroglyphics re-discovered.
9000 BC Stagnation during Era III Dark Ages. Only one Elder; wish I had
gold!! Cities in Fertile Crescent, Harappan Valley, China, and South Africa.
8000 BC Primitive skills only during the Dark Ages: fishing weirs, trapping.
7000 BC The Pharaoh’s royal roads established, a boon to specialists such as
stonemasons and couriers.
6000 BC A world war, which I lose of course. On top of this, measles [It is
especially aggravating to lose Elders one is saving to buy Victory cards if the
Victory card when revealed has a disease on it, so you get hurt and you can’t
buy it!]. I fortunately avoid chaos, but lose elders and African and Harrapan
cities. My navy expands to the first galleys, then the first ships. The first
general polytheistic religions adopted, incorporating the best of the
(bicameral) personal-god system, with the new universal god system.
5000 BC I use economic stimulation, and am fortunate again to avoid chaos.
4000 BC Stagnant dark ages, but no chaos (whew!)
3000 BC Roman influences: divorce, paterfamilias. The worldly influence of the
coliseum emboldens Celtic sea-explorers to enter America.
2000 BC Hallstadt Celts in America create the first biofuel (jojoba bean oil).
Alcoholism takes its toll on elders. The first troubadours. A population boom.
1000 BC The concept of nationhood established. Era III Golden Age entered.
1 AD The rise of reason undermines faith. The world lapses into civil war and
chaos. Era IV (the age of reason) entered.
1000 AD The pharaoh rule re-established. The first pharmaceuticals,
glassblowing. Also, unfortunately, a reversion to bicameral behavior with
necropolises.
1100 AD Cities re-established in the Middle East. Iron Age entered.
1200 AD Dark Ages continue, but alphabet re-discovered. First birth control
and feminism. Barbarian raids wipe out the Aztecs.
1300 AD More barbarian raids take out Persia. Gunpowder discovered. The
first salesmen. The first Sports Cartels. Attempt to discover oil in the Middle
East fails. Life spans long enough to support grandparent nannies for child
care. Smog.
1400 AD & 1500 AD Dark ages, economic stimulation only.
1600 AD Goodyear and DuPont factories develop the first rubber, chemical
vulcanization, aluminum, plastics, polymers. Germ Theory adopted.
Westinghouse generators produce widespread electricity. McDonalds
establishes fast food industry. But both influenza and HIV strike.
 1700 AD Era IV golden age. Cities in America and Europe promote nationalistic
patriotism.
1800 AD The Fugger family introduces banking. Carrier invents Refrigeration.
The first Supreme Courts. The first lawyers.
1900 AD Revolution, the nationalistic government is overthrown in favor of one
supporting the family values and the family as the basal societal unit. Farm
machines create the Green revolution. Disney studios, Mattel introduces the
Barbee Doll.
2000 AD My score, ending as Neanderthal, was 16 pts Elders (8 Elders double
pts), 24 pts Culture, 5 pts Innovation, 3 pts Population.
Ending score (total): 48. This is the highest score as of May 20th 2008.
[21.0] STRATEGY & TIPS
The trick to playing Origins is to maintain a healthy demo-
graphy, with low birth rates and more young adults than chil-
dren. As I say in the player's guide in the rules, one should
avoid the demographies of modern African nations like
Chad, where the median age is just 14, fecundity is very high
but so is infant mortality, and stability is sub-marginal.
Often in Origins, one has a choice between "masculine" val-
ues (territorial expansion, aggression, technology, infrastruc-
ture) vs."feminine" values (pair bonding and marriage, stabil-
ity, education, child care). The latter actions (represented by
fecundity decreases) must be played periodically. Resist the
temptation to increase one's maritime skills, etc. and instead
play the right side of the card, if one is at less than 2 innova-
tion actions. During our playtests, players following this
guideline never suffered from turns in which he could do
nothing.
The percentage of idea cards in Era I with fecundity de-
creases is 69%; in Era II it is 82%. In Eras III and IV it is
even higher, with doubles and triples possible. Whether by
imitation or novel behavior, it is not difficult to maintain a
healthy and stable demography through the use of fecundity
decreases.
Except during pandemics, one can always avoid risking
chaos by migrating rather than expanding population. There
are times in the game one wants to fall into chaos, because
often only through chaos can progress be made. In these in-
stances, one should save cards with fecundity decreases on
it, to keep the chaos from going into "deep chaos". An ex-
ample of this is in the extended example of play in the rules.
Infrastructure Notes
• Energy. As mentioned in the Origins rulebook, the domestic-
ation of animals is the only method available to advance to
Energy stage one. Therefore, all players should make animal
domestication their highest priority. However, if you are us-
ing the optional "Livestock Raid" rule and your neighbor(s)
have achieved Energy stage one, another method is to ad-
vance to Era II and steal it from them.
After reaching Era III, a player must get Energy stage two to
advance to Era IV (and end the game). One method of ad-
vancing to Energy stage two is possible through the
extraction of biofuels. Biofuel is only available in one location
in the Old World (the Straits of Gibraltar) but this is a "-" re-
source and requires a roll of 6 for success. The New World
contains three biofuel locations, Mexico, Chile, and Hawaii).
These locations cause no modification and thus successful
extraction occurs on a roll of 5+. The catch, of course, is that
you have to migrate there. If you have Maritime stage two
17
then any of these locations shouldn't present a problem. Oth-
erwise, you may want to trust to climate changes, though
that's a less dependable method. Oil and Uranium extraction
will almost never occur in Era III, so carefully weigh using an
action to extract these. Energy stage three or greater and
Metallurgy stage four and greater are generally best left for
Era IV. Once you reach Energy stage three, you can
think about ending the game rather than pushing on to En-
ergy stage four or five. Then again, nuclear weapons can
add an interesting twist to diplomatic relations…
• Footprint. Domestication of animals and plants is the only
method to achieve Footprint stage two. Without Energy
stage one, you cannot get to Footprint stage three, domest-
icate resources, or use the certain Era II cards.
After obtaining Energy stage one and Footprint stage two,
players should make a plant domestication attempt; a roll of
5+ leads to Footprint stage three.
• Metallurgy. To obtain Metallurgy Stage one or two, attempt
an animal domestication (this requires a roll of 1 or less). De-
pending on the climate, zebras and horses give the best
chance due to their -2 modifier. Metallurgy stage one can
also be obtained from Era I cards. If the players stay away
from war, Metallurgy is not essential. It should be possible to
advance to Era II even if you do not have Metallurgy stage
one.
An important "Great Wall" in Era IV is Metallurgy stage four,
with which one can get Oil or Uranium easily. Metallurgy is
not essential for ending the game, but Energy stage three is
essential.
• Maritime. Early advances in Maritime infrastructure allow
your civilization to move to map areas that are otherwise un-
reachable, such as moving via straits and open ocean. Mari-
time stage three and higher provide added movement and in
some cases, combat capability. Maritime stage three, for ex-
ample, allows Map Units to end their turn at sea – this is
useful for conducting sieges. Maritime stage five allows a
player to conduct direct attacks against another player's
Maritime Infrastructure. Considering the time scale of this
game, this gives new meaning to being "bombed back to the
Stone Age."
Note that all Maritime advances are obtained via the play of
Idea cards, so don't forget the Ransack/Education Innovation
actions.
• Immunology. As opposed to the Maritime Infrastructure,
which allows players to move to unreachable parts of the
map, higher Immunology stages allow players to move Map
Units into formerly uninhabitableareas. Tundra spots, for ex-
ample, become habitable at Immunology stage two. Immun-
ology stage five makes jungle sites habitable; note the differ-
ence between this and Metallurgy stage two, which allows
Map Units to enter jungle spots.
Advances in the Immunology Infrastructure depend upon
card play, being "infected" (chosen) by neighboring players
who are themselves affected, and animal domestication at-
tempts that pass diseases along to humans (rolls of 6+ dur-
ing animal domestication attempts). Until you are immune to
a disease your civilization will suffer, but the long term bene-
fits generally more than outweigh these effects.
Era Progress. If a player has Energy stage one, he should
advance to Era II and even Era III as soon as possible, as
the Era III deck contains many advantageous cards. Always
advance to the Golden Age of Era II rapidly, so as to get into
Era III if Chaos should strike. Don’t advance to Era III until
you have a couple of Elders, metropolises, and Public cards,
plus Metallurgy stage two (Bronze Age).
War and Slavery. In general, and especially early in the
game, war is counterproductive and is not a good method to
use to advance your civilization. War requires diverting your
civilization's energies into attacking or defending instead of
advancing. Also, increasing the number of Migrant Units in
play (which are required to fight the war) can leave your so-
ciety vulnerable to chaos. Meanwhile, the non-warring play-
ers can continue to advance since they do not have to divert
resources into prosecuting a war.
Enslaving other players also has little merit. It does little to
help you, and may help the enslaved player more than you.
It can be useful if you need a Footprint boost.
Stability. Watch your population growth, as advancement re-
quires a stable society. Unless you are gearing up for war,
you should need only one or two Migratory unit(s) on the
board. Of course, if you are intentionally trying to destabilize
your society in order to advance to the next era, then feel
free to expand your population.
Victory. After a player achieves Energy stage two (short
game) or three (full game), the goal (and that player's vic-
tory) will be in sight. That player should advance to the cur-
rent Era's Golden Age, draw as many Era III cards as pos-
sible, and expand his population in order to receive maxim-
um Victory Points (VPs).
The other players are not, of course, sitting idly by while this
happens. Once a player crosses the Energy stage two /
three boundary, there are several options. These include at-
tacking the Energy stage two/three player (not always re-
commended), drawing as many cards as possible, and/or
building more metropolises to allow for more Elders (and
thus more VPs).
[22.0] FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Q: Do you need to clear both language areas of your
brain to satisfy a language prerequisite?
A: No, one area is enough.
Q: What prevents an Archaic Homo Sapiens from
enslaving the Cro-Magnon on his first turn?
A: Nothing prevents Archaic Homo Sapiens from
enslaving either Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal on the
first turn. It seems best, however, for him to instead
move east to India and the cow resource. Since the
early strategy is to domesticate animals, enslaving
others is not very productive, and it may help the
player who has been enslaved. If and when as a
18
slaver you domesticate an animal, your slaves gain
this advantage as well. The enslaved player can
concentrate on improving his demography and
innovation, and leave the hard work of domestication
to his masters. Another disadvantage to enslaving
immediately is that the migrant loss hurts your
innovation.
Q: Are Stability rolls required in Era I? You are not yet
on to the flipped brain card so you don't have dark
ages and golden ages.
A: Stability Rolls do apply in all Eras, including Era I.
Q: How soon should you move to Era II? I believe we
moved too quickly and didn't have the resources to
fare well there. We had a lot of "nothing" turns while
we waited to cycle through some cards that finally
gave us something we could do. (This was also
somewhat true in Era I but was even more agonizing
in Era II.)
A: According to the strategy guide (section 4.0): "Don't
advance to Era II until you have an Elder and a
metropolis, plus a Footprint of stage 2." Era II (the
bicameral age) was mankind's least stable period, and
Era II is the toughest era to play in the game.
Also, if one wants to keep a played card as a "state
secret", one should play a second card (often a
fecundity decrease card) on top of the first card
played, to "bury" it so that it will not be easily imitated.
Q: I found myself pretty immobile at the beginning of
the game because I was C, the desert climate came in
before my first turn, and never left. Is that to be
expected, or were we doing something wrong?
A: This is to be expected. According to Jared
Diamond, this is the reason Africa is in the state it is in
today, despite being the cradle of mankind. The
Hobbit sometimes also has a harsh time of it. It is
irritating, but not fatal. You can cross deserts via
caravan upon the first animal domestication. However,
getting out of Africa by boat while deserts are active is
almost impossible, other than to Madagascar or
Coconut Palm Island.
Q: If a Metallurgy stage zero Map Unit attacks a
Metallurgy stage zero enemy across a strait what
happens?
A: The attacker loses.
Q: Can Slave units Migrate?
A: No. The relevant rule is "The enslaved player may
never move his units after placement."
Q: In a game where a player successfully enslaves
three other players, can Slave units attack others
Slave units?
A: Yes. A slave player may place his unit over the
units of another slave player, or indeed any other
player other than the enslaving player. This constitutes
an attack. The relevant rule is: "This placement may
be on top of a foreign (non-slaver) unit, in which case
an attack occurs." (See section 14.2.)
Q: When the player who is wiped out becomes
enslaved, what happens to his last destroyed unit if the
unit that destroyed it also perishes in the attack?
A: Map units that are wiped out are returned to the
owning player's demography as a Loss (see the
definition of Loss in section 3.0).
Q: What happens to the unit that is under the
enslaving unit when the slaver goes into Chaos? If it is
under a metropolis I assume it moves to one of the
hex points as part of a besieging force, but what if the
slaver has no cities, and the unit is under a migratory
unit? And what if the migratory unit itself is lost due to
Chaos and replaced with a unit of the same color as
the slave?
A: Existing slave units remain in position if the slaver
goes into Chaos. They may move on their turn.
Existing slave units even remain in position if the
metropolis they occupy is lost for some reason. Map
units should not be stacked upon top of each other;
this is disallowed except if they are in combat,
whereupon one or the other or both are immediately
removed.
Players who are enslaved may work upon improving
their demographies, and plotting for their eventual
outbreak. Since slavers must go into Chaos sooner or
later to get to the next era, this outbreak is inevitable.
My opponents have generally concluded that
enslaving does not advance one towards victory, and
using units to suppress slaves are better used on
other opponents (if any). The slave player can make
things irritating for his masters, occupying space
around his cities, and gaining his infrastructure
advantages. My opponents prefer the strategy of
containment, leaving the player disadvantaged in
metallurgy or footprint with one last map unit so that
he is not quite enslaved.
The historical model for the game's slave rules were
taken from the plight of the Israelites (although the rule
that the enslaved can acculturate their masters in
some instances was inspired by the Mamluks and the
Haiti revolt). The Zionist culture, although frequently
enslaved under civilizations such as the Egyptians and
Babylonians, and later in pogroms and inquisitions in
various European and Muslim lands, still maintained
19
enough identity and culture to outlive all their
oppressors and contribute massively to the theological
and economic ideas that run civilization today. They
never gave up to assimilation! During one game that I
recall, a player was repeatedly enslaved during the
second and third eras, but came forth as a strong
contender in the fourth era (we were playing the
extended game with expansion). She came in a close
second out of five. My point is that slavery is an
undesirable position, but one that does not normally
help the oppressor and is not necessarily fatal to the
victims.
Q: The rules contain the following strategy
recommendation: "Expansion. Quickly expand to hem
in your opponents. If you have social instincts,
consider using the Silverback Action for expansion and
aggression." How exactly does this work?
A: It can be vital to expand rapidly and attack some of
your opponents units. For this you need to be able to
put more than one new unit on the board. Homo
Sapiens, for instance, has a good chance of being
isolated in southern Africa; the Silverback action may
be worth the price.
As a specific example, the Silverback action can be
used early on to gain access to a valuable resource
hex such as the cow in India. This action (Silverback is
a term for an aggressive leader of a gorilla troop)
typically gives a player two or three population actions
during a turn, with no chance of going into chaos. If an
opponent occupies the cattle spot, one can create one
hunter-gatherer unit to attack the opponent, killing off
both units, and then with the second population action
create and send a second migrant to occupy the hex.
Q: If you are in the dark ages can you still suffer the
effects of missing the stability roll? You can easily get
into a cycle where you have only one action (one
innovation) a turn usually with nothing you can do to
improve your situation and eventually you miss your
stability roll again which sets you back by loss of units
on the board and cards suppressed.
A: The effects of chaos do not differ if one is in the
golden age or dark age. To avoid going into "deep
chaos" (declines that last 2 or 3 turns), one should
keep cards in reserve.
Q: Can you gain face-up cards while in a dark age or
does everything stay flipped over until you are in a
golden age?
A: While in dark ages, one is vulnerable to revolution,
but other than that there are no special rules for the
dark ages. Thus one can gain face-up Public cards
while in the dark ages. Also, it should be noted that
going into chaos during a golden age can advance a
player into the next era, whereas going into chaos
during a dark age merely stagnates the player.
Q: Why would one want to bid for a card (or play the
left side of an Idea card) that has an Elder Loss and no
other effect?
A: There is no reason to play the left side of a card
that has only an Elder Loss. But sometimes one has
no choice. These cards are in the deck to represent
the bad side of unrestricted growth, or low technology
expansion such as pollution and soil salinization.
Q: If someone is in a golden age in Era II and fails a
stability roll, why would he not want to advance to Era
III?
A: One should always advance to Era III if one can,
because it seems better than Era II. However, the
requirements for left side play are higher in Era III than
II, so there is a small downside to this advancement, if
one has low infrastructure.
Q: Any tips on keeping innovation up and fecundity
down? The single action to ransack a Fecundity
Decrease and then play it during Phase 3 seems slow.
A: There are many players who complain how hard it
is to keep innovation high and fecundity low. This is
the tempo of the game: how to make fewer (but
bigger-brained) babies. I have only a few tips. Try to
ignore tempting infrastructure increases in favor of
fecundity decreases. Keep fecundity decrease cards
in reserve, for recovery from chaos. See the tips in
section 4.0 for gaining Elders, which helps keep
innovation high. Go to higher eras: The higher the era,
the more fecundity decreases there are. This is
particularly true for the Era IV deck, which has birth
control, the pill, abortion, etc.
Q: Are Population Actions compulsory?
A: Actions are never compulsory. (The rules say "may
perform"). Icons on cards are also optionally applied,
except as specified on section 9.3 (Elder Losses or
encephalizations).
Q: Is there a limit to the number of map units
belonging to the same player that can be on a single
spot?
A: There is a limit of one unit per spot. The migration
rules in section 11.0 state: "[A unit] may not end [its
move] on another unit unless it is attacking it."
Q. What is an attack?
A. An attack occurswhena migratory map unit entersthe same
spot as a foreign migratory unit (and is not allowedor doesnot
want to leapfrog).
20
Q. What is a siege?
A. A siegeoccurswhena migratory unit occupiesa spot with a
foreign metropolisin the samehex, whether the migratory unit
movedor not, and whether thereare enoughunits to defeatthe
metropolisor not.
Q. Is it possible to chain movement? That is, can you
populate and then move five hexes with the free mi-
grate action, then populate again at the place you've
just moved to and then migrate the second unit anoth-
er five hexes, and then populate again and move this
third unit another five hexes?
A. Yes.
Q. What does "use of a metropolis in an oil hex"
mean?
A. In order to usethe vehicletechnology or air forcetechnology
abilitiesdescribedin the rulesand on the map, you must havea
metropolisin an oil hex, OR you can haveoil rights grantedto
you by an ally with a metropolis in an oil hex (per the "Em-
bargo" rules). A player with oil can setor lift oil rights to others
during his turn.
[23.0] ERA I EXAMPLE GAME TURN
This example of play will show the actions taken by
one player (Player A) during the first turn of the game.
The actions shown are not necessarily optimal play;
the idea is to describe the flow of the game and how
the actions are handled. Players are encouraged to set
up the game and follow along with the examples
shown.
Player A, Turn 1, Phase 1 – Innovation Actions
Player A's Innovation Number is one, since the right-
most vacant slot at the beginning of this phase on
Player A's Innovation Track is "1". Only two areas of
the Archaic Homo Sapiens brain are uncovered, the
Limbic System and the Hindbrain. This means that the
only allowable actions are those that require one or
both of these symbols; actions that require, say the
neocortex can not be chosen. The only action that
meets this requirement is "Novel Behavior," which al-
lows the player to draw the top card from the Era I
deck. The card drawn is "Raft."

Player A, Turn 1, Phase 2 – Resolve Catastrophes
The "Raft" card does not contain a Catastrophe icon,
so this Phase is skipped.
Player A, Turn 1, Phase 3 – Play Cards
The left side of the Raft card contains two prerequisite
conditions: Neocortex and Limbic System. Since the
neocortex area is covered by a Brain Unit, the left side
of this card may not be played.
Player A decides to play the right side of the card.
There are two icons: Encephalization and a Fecundity
decrease. The Encephalization is not optional but the
Fecundity decrease is. In this case, Player A decides
to perform both actions in the order Encephalization
first and Fecundity second. The Encephalization action
removes the Brain Unit from the Neocortex of the
Brain map; this block is placed on the rightmost vacant
slot on the Innovation track (covering the "1*" slot).
The Fecundity decrease moves that same block (thus
uncovering the 1* slot on the Innovation track) to the
rightmost vacant slot on the Population track (covering
the 1* slot on the Population track). The last step is to
place the Raft card face-up on Player A's discard pile.
Player A, Turn 1, Phase 4 – Stability Roll
The symbol directly beneath Player A's rightmost un-
covered Population number is a happy face. This
means that no Stability Roll is required, so play moves
on to the next Phase.
Player A, Turn 1, Phase 5 – Population Actions
The number of Population Actions Player A can take is
one, since that is the number in the rightmost vacant
Population Track slot. Player A does not have any Eld-
ers, so he may not expend Elders to increase this
number. Player A decides to perform a Population In-
crease action. To do so, he takes the leftmost unit on
the Population Track (which, you'll remember, went
from the Brain map to the Innovation track to the Pop-
ulation track) and places it on the same spot as the
unit already on the board. Since only one unit can oc-
21
cupy each spot and since the Population Increase ac-
tion allows a free Migration Action, the unit is now
moved up to five spaces. One thing to remember is
that each player's Footprint Infrastructure is one (this
becomes important in Phase 7). To prevent starvation,
the new unit must be moved far enough away so it is
not in the same hex as the already existing unit. In this
example, this Map Unit is moved five spaces to the
east and is placed in the land spot beneath the Bactri-
an Camel.
Player A, Turn 1, Phase 6 – Resolve Sieges
There are no foreign metropolises on the map, so this
Phase does not apply.
Player A, Turn 1, Phase 7 – Resolve Starvation Hexes
Player A only has one unit in each of two hexes. There
are no foreign units in either of these hexes, so they
do not count against Player A's units. Therefore, Play-
er A's Map Units do not exceed their footprint are and
not removed from the map. Player A's first turn is now
complete.
[24.0] Designer's Notes
The Role of Government: Origins reflects my Objectivist
philosophy. (Objectivism is the father of the Libertarian party,
among other things.) This leads to huge differences
compared to other Civilization-style games, all of which
place players into the role of the government. The players
act as paternalistic bureaucrats. They keep the masses
happy, by building coliseums, public artworks, welfare, and
the like. They keep the masses smart, by funding public
libraries, Manhattan projects, and the like. They gain
notoriety for themselves, by building wonders, sending men
to the moon, and the like. In Origins, players take the roles
of the populace. Their job is to keep the governments under
control. The only role of such governments is to keep the
people free: free to become smart, or happy, or whatever
they wish. Freedom is the basic human value: freedom of
speech, religion, business, travel, and trade. This is why
most of the Era IV cards are businesses, and other icons of
individualism.
The Liberation of Women: Origins is unique in including
women’s values: demography, love, pair bonding, fidelity,
monogamy, child raising. The ability of women to control
their “barefoot but pregnant” status, bearing fewer but higher
quality babies, is indicated by fecundity decrease icons. Era
IV introduces new ways for women to regulate their own
fecundity, such as birth control and abortion, and new
mechanisms for providing more child care, such as longer
lived grandparent nannies, and alimony laws. Societies with
advanced maternal self-regulation, as mentioned in the
Origins background material, have far less delinquency
rates and crime. The introduction of women into professional
careers increases the number of Elder-specialists, at a cost
of amount of time available for child care. For this reason,
women’s liberation (on the Auto Manufacturers card) marries
fecundity increases with Elder gains.
Monument-building: I include monuments, often called
wonders in other games, only during Era II. According to
Jaynesian theory, monument-building had a critical purpose
during the Bicameral Era, to act as a channel for bicameral
humans to remember the admonishments of dead authority
figures. The building of monuments by governments has no
legitimate purpose in the modern era.
Globalization and Cold War. Globalization describes
periods where persons are free to transact with each other
with little interference from outside authorities (such as
pirates or governments). Governments place few limits on
imports, exports, immigration and exchanges of information.
This is the default state of game play; departures from free
markets, most notably tariffs, government regulations, fiat
money, and other so-called Keynesian economics, are
represented as Elder Losses. Globalization started during
the age of exploration, and was interrupted with the Cold
War era, a nationalist and ideological struggle between
capitalist nations who saw freedom as the core value, and
communist and national socialist nations who saw equality or
racial purity as the core values. After the fall of the Berlin
Wall in 1989, and the collapse of communist Russia,
globalization has returned and nations advocating central
planning are generally sinking into poverty, while those
nations that have embraced capitalism have increasing
standards of living for all their citizens. Reference: Yergin,
Daniel and Stanislaw, Joseph. 1999; The Commanding
Heights: the Battle Between Government & the Marketplace
That Is Remaking the Modern World. Touchstone Books.)
The Ills of Society. These include the big four addictions:
sugar, alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine, plus the associated
rather modern ailments of obesity and depression. Crime
and pollution also are of lesser, but locally significant,
importance. These ills sap the will and lifespans of society’s
most productive specialists, and thus are represented in the
game as Elder Losses. The players most susceptible to
these losses are those who rush into a new era in advance
of the technology gains to support this lifestyle.
Note that these modern problems are problems of plenty
rather than scarcity, and indicate the stagnation of an
underpopulated world rather than the starvation of an
overpopulated world. The dictums of Malthus are appropriate
only for creatures that live off of what nature provides, not for
creatures like humans who create their own resources. It is
for this reason that the Malthusian models that I used for my
game American Megafauna (a game of Darwinism during
the Paleozoic) were not used in Origins.
22
Stock Market. During Era IV, the Elder Pool can be best
thought of as the stock market. Gains and losses therein can
be thought of as market fluctuations, and a market with more
Elders than metropolises is one ripe for a crash, perhaps
from an opponent’s globalization actions. The productive
efforts of a society’s skilled specialists is the ultimate source
of its values, the source of its GNP. This source of value has
not changed since the very origins of division of labor back in
Era I.
Modern Brains. During Era I, the neocortex of human brains
had localized areas of function, including lateralization
(different roles for the two hemispheres). By Era III, what is
physically almost the same brain is now a homogenous
distributed neural network, with great cross-functionality and
no localized functional areas (with the notorious exception of
Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas). The hardware is unchanged,
but the software is greatly upgraded. I theorize that that
upgrade, the upgrade of storing memories in conceptual and
verbal terms, occurred in two grand cascading events, both
associated with the development of language. The first (first
concepts) ended Era I, and the second (first consciousness)
ended Era II. This phylogeny is recapitulated today. Each
human is born with an Era I brain, and must go through
these two events at a young age while learning language
from their parents.
[25.0] REFERENCES AND NOTES
Note: I have used out-of-mainstream references for this game!
Allan, J.A. (Editor). 1981; The Sahara, Ecological Change and Early
Economic History. Boulder: Westview Press. Today, the
Sahara is the greatest desert in the world, but many times in
the past 100 thousand years it was green and full of
megafauna.
Dennett, Daniel. 1998; "Julian Jaynes's Software Archeology,"
reprinted in Brainchildren.
Diamond, Jared. 1997; Guns, Germs, and Steel. New York:
W.W.Norton & Co. His thesis is that geography and
environment, rather than race or culture, set the stage for the
advent of the plant and animal domestications that kick-started
civilization.
Diamond, Jared. 1997; Collapse. New York: Penguin Group.
Dunbar, Robin. 1996; Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of
Language. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Did our
ancestors evolve language so as to use gossip as a more
efficient substitute for the grooming behavior that other
primates use to establish and maintain social relationships?
Dyson, Freeman. 1988; Infinite in All Directions. New York: Harper
and Row
Gonick, Larry. 1990; The Cartoon History of the Universe, Volume 1.
New York: Doubleday.
Humphrey, Nicholas. 1999; "Cave Art, Autism, and the Human
Mind," in Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 6, pp. 116-
143.
Jaynes, Julian. 1976; The Origin of Consciousness in the
Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Co. This Princeton psychologist-iconoclast wrote but one book.
A book with that rarest of all commodities, a truly novel idea.
There are lots of theories on the origins of life, but this work is
the first and only explaining the origins of consciousness.
Kuijsten, Marcel (Editor). 2007; Reflections on the Dawn of
Consciousness. Henderson, NV: Julian Jaynes Society. One of
the authors, Brian McVeigh, gave advice for this game.
Lunine, Jonathan. 1999; Earth, Evolution of a Habitable World.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dr. Lunine was kind
enough to review the game's climate background and provide
the latest 2007 ice core data.
Mann, Charles. 2005; 1491. New York: Vintage Books. Revelations
of the Pre-Columbian Americas, including evidence that the
forests there were "anthropogenic" (human-caused).
Mithin, Steven. 1996; The Prehistory of the Mind. New York:
Thames & Hudson. The promoter of "cognitive archeology",
whose ideas about the breakdown of the modular non-lingual
mind form the basis of the Brain Maps and Era I actions.
Peikoff, Leonard. 1991; Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.
New York: Meridian. An impressive sweep of the objective
basis of all knowledge, covering almost everything about Era III
and IV humanity.
Rand, Ayn. 1979; An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. New
York: Meridian. The basis of reason and truth, from the
greatest philosopher of the 20th century.
Rand, Ayn. 1982; Philosophy, Who Needs It. New York: Bobbs-
Merrill.
Sagan, Carl. 1977; The Dragons of Eden. New York: Ballantine
Books. Good cortical maps.
Wright, Robert. 1994; The Moral Animal, Why We Are the Way We
Are. New York: Vintage Books. Evolutionary Psychology
preaches that free will is an illusion and man's actions are
solely a product of his DNA. Keep in mind when reading this
book, that this is true only for Eras I and II.
[26.0] CREDITS
ORIGINS Design and Layout: Phil Eklund
(phileklund@aol.com), (520) 324-0523
2525 E. Prince #72, Tucson, AZ 85716
(www.sierramadregames.com)
Translation: German translation by Ina Steigüber
(ina.steigueber@hotmail.de), also Dr. Isabel Braun, Nicole
Morper, Philipp Klarmann, and Ferdi Köther. Japanese
translation by Kondo Hirotsugu. Chinese translation by
Zheng He. Contact phileklund@aol.com for copies of these
translations.
Rules Editing/Development: Michael and Audrey Debije,
Brian Leet, Rick Heli, Neal Sofge
23
Era IV Editing: John Menichelli, Hirotsugu Kondo
Solitaire Game: Dr. John Douglass, Robert Lawrence.
Historical Background: Pablo Klinkisch, Brian McVeigh of
the Julian Jaynes Society
Distribution: Henning Poehl of Sphinxspiele Verlag,
www.sphinxspiele.de
Art: Phil Eklund, Tobias Naesborg (Era card reverse)
Clip Art: IMSI's Masterclips Premium Image Collection, 1895
Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA 94901-5506
Playtesting: Jared Wilson, Lucas Wan, Franco Momoli,
James Sterrett, Steve Hammond, Phil Rennert, Tuomas
Riekkinen, Darrell Hayhurst, Eric Gerber, John Hart, Steve
Turney, Jim Gutt, Art Fitzsimmons, Keith Dalzell, Dave
Sisken, Chris Carlson, Daryl McCallum, Peter Boddy, Jason
Schmidt, Matt Eklund, Dick Sauer, Lajos Brons, José Nicolas
Ramirez, Maggie Siegmund, and especially Dr. Nicole
Morper.
Return feedback to: phileklund@aol.com or OriginsGame@yahoogroups.-
com
Website: www.sierramadregames.com
Origins online discussion:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/OriginsGame/
[27.0] Endnotes
1
DATING ANCIENT EVENTS is specified by how many kilo-years
ago it occurred, abbreviated "kya". Since each turn is a millennium,
120 kya is 120 game turns ago. Events more recent than 15 kya are
calibrated years, calculated by comparing carbon 14 dates to tree
ring research. (The science of dendrochronology got started in A.E.
Douglass' lab, located in a primitive bunker underneath the
University of Arizona football stadium - just down the street from
where I am writing this - and still the world's finest tree-ring
laboratory.)
2
LANGUAGE, a "code of visual-auditory symbols that serves the …
function of converting concepts into the mental equivalents of con-
cretes. … The ability to regard entities as units is man’s distinctive
method of cognition, which other living species are unable to follow."
[Rand, 1979; p. 10.] In the development of a language, "each new
stage of words literally created new perceptions and attentions, and
such new perceptions and attentions resulted in important cultural
changes which are reflected in the archeological record." [Jaynes,
1976; p.132.] "Language is primarily a tool of cognition, not of com-
munication… A Robinson Crusoe marooned on a desert island has
no need for communication, but still needs urgently to conceptualize,
name, and act upon the elements of his environment. Without lan-
guage, he would not survive." [Peikoff, 1991; p.79.]
3
CONSCIOUSNESS, as defined by Dr. Julian Jaynes, refers to the
culturally-acquired ability to mentally store concepts about oneself in
word format, and to reconstruct images from words. The fact that
consciousness requires language, a cultural rather than evolutionary
advance, means that infants, schizophrenia patients, and
Neanderthals are not conscious in the sense used in this game.
With consciousness, one can narraticize, in other words, able to
visualize oneself as a causal agent, and run through one’s mind
alternatives to actions. "A whole kingdom where each of us reigns
reclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding what we
can. A hidden hermitage where we may study out the troubled book
of what we have done and may yet do...This consciousness that is
myself of selves, that is everything, and yet nothing..." [Jaynes,
1976; p.1.] Consciousness is necessary for the uniquely human
activities of introspection, volition, fantasies, suicides, treachery,
nostalgia, or cruelty, and yet is not necessary for thinking, problem
solving, signal learning, listening, writing books, building cities, or
ruling empires.
4
PLAYER IDENTITY shifts from era to era. Players start the game
as a distinct species or subspecies, but by Era II all species are
assumed to become one species through interbreeding. (This model
of the roots of racial differences, called the Multi-regional Evolution
Hypothesis, assumes a human evolutionary origin in more than one
region. It predicts that Europeans still have some Neanderthal blood,
and Indonesians still have traces of Hobbit blood.) By Era II, the
unified human species are now divided along largely linguistic
grounds, with five major language families. By Era III, humans are
distinguished mainly by religion, and by Era IV are divided along
ideological grounds.
5 worldwide distribution of footprint technology as of 2000 BC (Era II).
UNIT, an "existent regarded as a separate member of a group of
two or more similar members." [Rand, 1979; p.7.] In the game,
"Units" refer to the little colored 8 mm cubes. More generally,
organizing objects into units is vital for human cognition - for
cataloging things in the brain for retrieval ("psycho-epistemology"),
for concept-formation, and for mathematics. "An animal cannot
organize its perceptual field. It observes and reacts to objects in
whatever order they happen to strikes its perception. But a man can
classify concretes according to their resemblances." [Peikoff, 1991;
p. 75.] The "software upgrade" that allows the human brain to think
in terms of units is the word, the mental entity by which concepts are
stored in the brain.
6
DEMOGRAPHICS, the science that deals with human populations,
especially the statistical analysis of births, deaths, and age
distributions. The empty slots in the Population and Innovation
tracks indicate how many children and young adults the society has,
respectively. Suppose a player has a Population number of 4 and an
Innovation number of 1.This is the lamentable demographics of
today's Chad: a high fertility rate of 7 births per woman (often unwed
teenaged girls), but also a high infant mortality, half the population
under 15 years old, and a low MPI (male parental investment).
Another player having equal numbers of infants, youths, and elders
has a demography similar to today's Japan and Western Europe: a
fertility rate less than 2 per woman (stagnant), but a high MPI, life
expectancy, and adult literacy rate. Female choice is an
underappreciated factor in the building of great societies. For
instance, beginning two decades after the 1973 Roe v. Wade court
decision, there was a massive drop in the crime rate, recorded in
virtually every community in America. The reason? Legalizing
abortion (an Era IV fecundity decrease icon) allows young women to
decide when and where children can be raised with reasonably high
MPI.
7 separation of social and technical intelligences. Until the Linguistic
ELDERS, my term for specialists, are essential for the production
of wealth - material goods - under a system of division of labor. A
specialist lives by producing just one thing, and is supplied by the
labor of others for the greater part of his needs. The specialist is a
rarity in the history of mankind; men up to medieval times have been
mainly generalists who spent their lives producing or growing
everything they need. Having a division of labor society allows each
person to concentrate upon the type of work for which they are best
suited. In particular, it frees geniuses to study science and invention,
rather than filling their lives working on the farm. The Elder Pool with
its two halves represents the economy, which is booming if
production is greater than consumption and busting if not.
24
"Consumption is the final, not the efficient, cause of production. The
efficient cause is savings, which can be said to represent the
opposite of consumption: they represent unconsumed goods.
Consumption is the end of production, and a dead end, as far as the
productive process is concerned. The worker who produces so little
that he consumes everything he earns, carries his own weight
economically, but contributes nothing to future production. The
worker who has a modest savings account, and the millionaire who
invests a fortune (and all the men in between), are those who
finance the future. The man who consumes without producing is a
parasite, whether he is a welfare recipient or a rich playboy." [Rand,
1982; p.132.]
8
FOOTPRINT, the land area each person needs to survive, is
heavily dependant upon the technology of food production or
gathering. Contrary to the claims of some environmentalists,
footprint shrinks with increasing technology. It requires 2800
hectares (Ha) to support each person of hunter-gatherer technology,
but only 56 Ha to support each wandering herdsman. Slash-burn
agriculture requires only 11 Ha per person, and short-fallow
agriculture is down to 2 Ha. The Industrial Revolution reduced this to
1 Ha per person, and each person supported by crops from the
Green Revolution needs only 0.22 Ha. It was the advent of
agriculture (Footprint stage 3) that makes possible sedentary life,
with permanent walls, cities, sewers, art - all the accoutrements of
civilization. See the end of this rulebook for a map showing the
9
GUEST WORKERS Guest workers acquired by acculturation
represent specialists who voluntarily migrate to areas of opportunity
or freedom. Guest workers acquired as POWs are less
euphemistically referred to as slaves.
10
ENCEPHALIZATION, the physical evolutionary growth of the
brain. By the dawn of Era I, encephalization had brought the
neocortex of Homo Sapiens to modern size, and yet mysteriously
his behavior and tool kits seemed no greater than his predecessors
with half the brain size. Leda Cosmides and John Tooby have
described four isolated "instincts" that encompass the intelligence of
early man. I have mapped these modules as technical (large areas
of the neocortex set aside for the manual manipulation of stone and
wooden objects), natural history (knowledge of the natural world of
the hunter gatherer, including foraging locations and hunting
behavior), social (interactions, hierarchy, alliances, and empathy
with fellow humans), and language (cognition and communication).
[Mithen, 1999.] Cortical domains associated with these instincts
were somewhat plastic (if one area of the brain were damaged,
another could fill its function), but isolated (percepts used by one
domain could not be shared by another).The evidence for the
cognitive isolation of these early brain specializations is
archeological. For instance, for millions of years, all known artifacts
are made of wood and stone. Why not out of bone? A modular non-
lingual mind, upon encountering a bone, treats it as an object of food
to be processed according to algorithms from the natural history
module, not the technological one. Skill acquired in the knapping of
stone could not be applied to bone because of the software
incompatibility preventing exchanges between the domains of these
two instincts. Other evidence of domain isolation is the lack of art,
jewelry, or other status symbols throughout Era I, interpreted as a
Revolution that heralds Era II, there are only two hints of the use of
technology to send social messages about status and mating
fitness: sticks of red ochre (body paint?), and non-functional hand
axes.
11
MARITIME TECHNOLOGY is an early example of a technology -
a product conceptually visualized in the mind before it is made. It
allowed the discovery of new lands, beginning with the aborigine
landfall in Greater Australia about 55 kya, as indicated by the time of
megafaunal extinctions there. Pre-Clovis Indians perhaps used
animal skin boats to get around the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, the barrier
between Beringia and the rest of the New World during the Ice Age.
The greatest maritime culture of all time, the Polynesians, used bird
watching and seaworthy outriggers to discover Hawaii by 500 AD
and New Zealand by 1000 AD. Vikings hopped from Greenland to
Vinland in 1000 AD. The Polynesian and Viking feats can be
duplicated in the game using stage 2 boats (galleys); duplicating the
Columbus voyage from the Canaries requires stage 3 ships.
12
DARK AGES AND CHAOS overtook the Mediterranean ancient
world in the division between Eras II and III, at about 1200 BC, as
the bicameral mind collapsed. In Greece, the Mycenaean abruptly
abandoned their cities, losing 75% of their population as they revert
to nomadism. Their unique writing (Linear B) was lost forever. (The
idea they were invaded by Dorian barbarians has been discredited.)
On Crete, the Minoan civilization was extinguished, abetted by the
Thera eruption. Their unique architecture and technologies (such as
indoor plumbing) were forgotten, and their trade networks
disbanded. Levantine city-states were destroyed within a fifty-year
period, apparently from internal dissention. The Assyrians also
lapsed into a two century chaotic period (from which they would
revive as an empire of unprecedented ferocity). The Hittites of
Anatolia, the Egyptian New Kingdom, the city states of coastal Syria
and the Levant, the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni, and the Kassite
kingdom of Babylon all faded to black. These dark ages traveled
east, with the fall of the Harappan and Shang dynasties in 1300 and
1046 BC respectively. American bicameral theocracies periodically
fell, particularly the Mayan, Anasazi, and Mound Builders. Often
there were signs of iconoclasm, as with the destruction of the famed
busts of Easter Island (anger at the now silent gods?) But when
Pizarro arrived in Cuzco on the early evening of November 16, 1532
AD, he found a thriving bicameral empire. "Not subjectively
conscious, unable to deceive or to narratize out the deception of
others, the Inca and his lords were captured like helpless
automatons. And as its people mechanically watched, this shipload
of subjective men stripped the gold sheathing from the holy city,
melted down its golden images and all the treasures of the Golden
Enclosure, ... murdered its living god and his princes, raped its
unprotesting women, and, narratizing their Spanish futures, sailed
away with the yellow metal into the subjective conscious value
system from which they had come." [Jaynes, 1976, p. 160.]
13
COLLECTIVE IDENTITY Each living thing exists as a member of
many collectives: as a species, as a representative with a particular
mutant gene, as a member of a given herd, etc. Each collective can
be visualized as being in fierce Darwinian competition for the
behavior mode of the individual being. For example, sometimes a
male will forsake the herd, in order to find a mate in another herd.
One collective (his herd) suffers, for the sake of another collective
(his selfish genes). Sometimes an isolated herd will, given time,
speciate. The species qua species suffers, for the sake of the herd.
In this game, I distinguish five collectives, each competing for
attention: "A" (alpha), a hierarchal pack, with a clear leader who has
priority in breeding opportunities. Like a colony of bees or ants, the
members act to preserve the alpha and his genes; "C" (curiosity), an
entire species of inquisitive critters, each collectively acting to
preserve their species through the acquisition of new clever traits;
"H" (herding), a pack more egalitarian than the alpha pack, whose
members altruistically act to preserve the herd, including risking their
life to aid a crippled herd member; "N" (nurturing) a mated pair, each
of whom is willing to forfeit their lives for the sake of their next
generation and immediate kin; and "P" (possessive) non-social
creatures, each acting to preserve his territory from his own kind.
14
PEKING MAN, Homo erectus, is the first species of humans
known to have emigrated out of Africa, and the first known hunter-
gatherer. The finds near Peking have been dated from roughly 400
kya. H. erectus was fully bipedal, but had a brain about 75 percent
smaller than modern humans (950 to 1100 cc). These early
hominids stood about 1.79 m with males being about 20-30% larger
than females. Although H. erectus introduced the Acheulian tradition
of sophisticated stone tools in Africa, those wanderers that made it
25
to China did not bring hand axe technology with them (see the
Movius Line on the map at the end of this rulebook for the northern
limit of hand axes). Peking Man died out in the Linguistic Revolution
at the end of Era I.
15
ARCHAIC HOMO SAPIENS, the awkward name for Homo
heidelbergensis, an ill-defined species ranging throughout Africa and
Eurasia. Their large, prognathic faces had massive, chinless jaws
with huge teeth, large brow ridges, low, flat foreheads, and thick
skulls encasing a large brain of over 1200 cc. They left Africa 600
kya (the second human species to do so) and spread to Europe
(where they evolved into Neanderthals) and east as far as India (see
the "Movius Line" on the map at the end of this rulebook). Their
anatomy and geographic distribution make them a plausible
common ancestor for Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon. In Germany,
they are known to have hunted horses and other game using
wooden projectile spears. There are indications for sexual
dimorphism, and on these meager grounds I have represented this
hominid as pack hunters under a dominant alpha male.
16
THE HOBBIT, the nickname given by the dig workers who in 2003
unearthed Homo floresiensis, a dwarf form of H. erectus that lived
until quite recently on the Indonesian island of Flores. These
hominids stood only about 1 meter in height with a very small brain
size of 417cc.The skull has human-like teeth with a receding
forehead and no chin. Archeological evidence suggests that the
Flores hominids used stone tools and fire to hunt the pygmy
elephants (mostly juveniles), Komodo dragons, and giant rats found
on Flores, and had arrived there at least 95 kya. The "hobbits" seem
to have survived 15,000 years of coexistence with Cro-Magnon,
after the latter's arrival during the Linguistic Revolution, but
eventually became extinct 13 kya.
17
NEANDERTHAL MAN, an adaptable hominid who exploited a
great variety of climates and biomes in Europe and Asia, beginning
around 115 kya and going extinct suddenly during the great Era II
Linguistic Revolution. The last fossils in Spain and the Balkans are
dated at 24 kya. They employed crude stone tools, hide making,
woodworking, and rudimentary shelters. Like the Maori of New
Zealand, Neanderthals did not use projectiles and relied on short-
range ambush with thrusting spears. They used the Levallois
technique for their spear points. They used no bone or antler tools,
dwellings, or fitted clothes, and, other than burying their dead, there
is no evidence for art or culture. Neanderthals were physiologically
adapted to a cold climate, with a large braincase, short but robust
builds, large noses, and presumably light skins. Their brain sizes
have been estimated to be larger than modern humans, although
this was rather compensated by their more robust builds. On
average, Neanderthal males stood at 1.65 m tall and females at 1.55
m tall.
18
CRO-MAGNON MAN, the nickname for biologically modern
human beings (species Homo sapiens) that first appeared in Africa
at about 115 kya, the starting date for this game. They are identical
to us physically, with a prominent chin, a sharply rising forehead,
and a gracile skeleton. During the Linguistic Revolution, Cro-
Magnon invaded Europe and Asia (as the third out-of-Africa
humans) as skilled hunters, toolmakers and artists. Their upper
Paleolithic culture produced a markedly more sophisticated tool kit,
using a wider variety of raw materials such as bone and antler, and
containing new implements for making clothing, engraving, and
sculpting. They produced fine artwork, in the form of decorated
tools, beads, ivory carvings of humans and animals, shell jewelry,
clay figurines, musical instruments, grave goods, and polychrome
cave paintings of exceptional vitality. The coexistence of
Neanderthal with Cro-Magnon in Europe was about 6000 years (six
turns), however, mitochondrial DNA and other evidence suggests
little, if any, interbreeding between the two groups.
19
DANSGAARD-OESCHGER EVENTS, rapid climate fluctuations
during an ice age, caused by solar output variations that trigger the
formation of oceanic thermocline upwellings, such as the North At-
lantic Deep Water (NADW). Examples are shown by the dots on the
Climate and Environment diagram at the end of this rulebook. Dur-
ing a typical event, averaged annual temperatures skyrocket 5° C
over 30-40 years, followed by gradual cooling. Post-event conditions
are extremely dry and cold, encouraging desertification. The regions
at the horse latitudes following the last event became 50% sand
dunes (the yellow regions of the game map), compared to 10%
today. The increased seasonal upwelling of the Canary and
Benguela Currents, and the much cooler (8° C) oceans off the
southern shores of West Africa, causes a 90% reduction in summer
rainfall in places such as South Australia and the Sahel. The Climate
and Environment diagram at the end of this rulebook indicates the
periods that the Sahara was barren; during other times it is a fertile
savanna. Dansgaard-Oeschger events thus drive planetary deserti-
fication, rather than "overgrazing" or other biological factors.
20
GREENHOUSE GASES warm the planet by trapping solar heat.
Despite the notoriety of carbon dioxide, the majority of the global
greenhouse effect is due to water vapor, and thus during an ice age
the world becomes both cold and dry. During the last glacial period,
rainforest cover declined sharply, replaced by savanna in Amazonia,
grasslands in West Africa, and by deciduous forests in the interior of
Southeast Asia and the Sundaland shelf. Only in Central America
and the Chocó region of Columbia did the jungles survive largely
intact. Jungles flourish during periods of increase of the greenhouse
gas carbon dioxide (see the Climate and Environment diagram at
the end of this rulebook). Today, in the face of rising levels of carbon
dioxide (due to volcanoes and fossil fuel burning), the rainforests of
Brazil are expanding rapidly, overtaking the surrounding grass and
scrub savanna. Rainforests breed mosquitoes and tsetse flies,
vectors to malaria, yellow fever, and rinderpest (animal
trypanosomiasis), which make the equatorial zones largely
unsuitable for colonization even today.
21
MILANKOVITCH CYCLES, periodic wobbles in the orbit of the
Earth around the Sun, and in the tilt of the Earth on its axis. These
wobbles, with cycles of tens to hundreds of thousands of years, alter
the planetary heat flux, which in turn affects how much carbon
stored in the oceans or biomass is released into the atmosphere as
carbon dioxide. Normally, the Earth is warm and stable, but the last
2.6 million years have been the coldest since before the time of the
dinosaurs. Ice sheets up to 3 kilometers thick covered the northern
continents, and so much water was sequestered in the ice that one
could walk from France to England. Ice Age conditions such as
those today have unstable climates, and the congruence of two or
more Milankovitch orbital variations occasionally kick the world out
of deep freeze, into relatively mild (but still frigid) periods called
interglacials. We live in one such "Tropical Age" today, called the
Holocene, and the previous one, called the Eemian, ended 120,000
bitter years ago (see the Climate and Environment diagram at the
end of this rulebook).
22
EPIDEMIC DISEASES are largely transmitted to humans from the
animals they domesticate, and include measles, tuberculosis, and
smallpox (from cattle), flu and pertussis (from pigs, dogs, or ducks),
and falciparum malaria (from chickens). [Diamond, 1997; p.207.]
23
INITIATIVE vs. FATALISM corresponds to the right and left side
play of an Idea card, roughly corresponding to the functions of the
right and left cerebral hemispheres of the brain. During Era II, after
memories began to be stored in the form of words, the mind was
organized in a bicameral fashion, with a dominant left side that
implemented decisions, and a right side (the "god-side") that made
decisions in novel situations. [Jaynes, 1976.] After the breakdown of
the bicameral mind in Era III, man's struggle to find an authority for
his actions has led some to rely on reason, and others to abdicate
26
one's volition to fate, chance, the gods, or other authority figures.
High initiative means acceptance of the responsibility of forming
one's own judgments and of living by the work of one's own mind.
Fatalism means accepting outside authorities or chance to run one's
own life. [Rand, 1979.]
24
PRODUCTIVITY LOSS, indicated by the "Elder Loss" glyph, is
caused by factors such as pollution (mainly soil saltification from
irrigation), addictions (the big four today: sugar, alcohol, caffeine,
and nicotine), and mysticism. It is a game premise that factors that
once served a useful survival purpose in Era II, become
counterproductive after the origins of consciousness, morality, and
volition.
25
CULTURAL DIFFUSION, represented by the "Eye" glyph,
catalogs the institutions that spread ideas independent of population
movement, such as intermarriage, trade, warfare, enslavement, and
special cross-cultural rituals (such as the Olympic games). Many
anthropologists prefer cultural diffusion as an explanation for the
spread of ideas and culture, as opposed to theories based on the
migration of peoples. During Era I, the principle dynamic for cultural
diffusion was the wandering male. Young human males are under
Darwinian pressure to avoid in-breeding by abandoning their clan
and marrying into another’s clan, carrying bits of their culture with
them.
26
MOUNTED BARBARIANS throughout history have emerged like
locusts from the grassy Asian steppes, home of the domestication of
the horse. The first horse nomads are the Indo-European tribes of 4
kya. Since early horses were rather too small to be ridden, the de-
velopment of wheeled vehicles, using lightweight spoked wheels,
was crucial. For a thousand years, Indo-European charioteers
threatened the early civilizations of the Middle East and the Indus
plains. Some, such as the Hittites, Hyksos, and early Greeks, estab-
lished their own centers of civilization. The archetypical steppe war-
riors are the Huns (Hsiung-nu), who in 375 AD invaded China and
Europe using the technologies of horsemanship, the composite bow,
and a sophisticated taxation system. The pastoral way of life favored
martial values. Livestock was a less secure resource than agricultur-
al crops, being capable of being raided by rival rustlers. Wandering
herdsmen needed a system of military readiness both to protect
their animals and to raid their neighbors. This way of life instilled a
willingness to resort to violence, a limited empathy outside the im-
mediate family, restrained affections in personal relationships, and
great concern for equestrianism, personal courage, and status. But
herds need a large ecological footprint, and conflict with farmers
over land usage was inevitable. From biblical times, when Cain (the
farmer) slew Abel (the herdsman), to the cowboy of the American
West, it was usually the farmer, with his fences, cities, sheriffs, and
sheer numbers, who prevailed.
27
BIGGER BRAINED BABIES, the product of having fewer but
better cared for infants. Infant humans are born altricial, that is,
helpless and requiring constant care. This is a consequence of the
limited size of a woman’s birth canal (any bigger and it would affect
her ability to run), which in turn limits the prenatal brain development
of the newborn. Today’s babies require three quarters of their caloric
intake just to fuel their over-sized but not yet operational brains.
(Adults require one quarter of resting metabolism for the brain, still
impressive compared to other apes, which need just 8%). The chief
female strategy to produce and raise bigger-brained babies is to
promote MPI (male parental investment, a zoological term). Humans
have very high MPI; fathers who love, guide, and help raise their
offspring are the norm in every recorded human culture. (Compared
to chimpanzee fathers, who are clueless as to who their offspring
are). The "fecundity decrease" icons in the game in general list
female strategies to promote "quality over quantity" improvements in
child raising through pair-bonding and MPI. [Wright, 1994; p.57.]
28
THE FIVE CORTICAL DOMAINS include the hindbrain, the limbic
system, the neocortex, and two specialized language centers in the
neocortex called the Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas. The hindbrain
(cerebellum plus brain stem) contains the most basic (and ancient)
neural network for reproduction, self-preservation, aggression,
territoriality, and social hierarchy. Nearly as ancient is the limbic
system (thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdale, pituitary, and
hippocampus) which generates vivid emotions, stores non-verbal
sensations, and is the site of action of many hallucinogenic drugs.
Most of the rest of the brain is the familiar wrinkled gray matter
called the neocortex, the major component of bird and mammal
brains. Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area are left-hemisphere
sections of the neocortex involved in language processing, speech
production and comprehension. According to the bicameral theory of
pre-conscious authorization, information processed on the right or
"god" side of the brain was communicated to the left side in the form
of audio hallucinations, or "voices". These "voices" came from the
right brain counterparts to Wernicke's area and Broca's area, and
were communicated via the anterior commissure. These regions are
somewhat dormant in the right brains of most modern humans, but
some studies show that auditory hallucinations cause increased
activity in these areas of the brain. [Jaynes, 1976.]
29
DOMESTICATION, the process of selectively breeding a plant or
animal in captivity, making them dependant on humans for
reproductive success. All the known centers for the origin of food
production are shown on the game map, including: the Fertile
Crescent (10.5 kya), China (9.5 kya), New Guinea (9 kya), Sahel (7
kya), Mesoamerica (5.5 kya), Andes (5.5 kya), Ethiopia and West
Africa (5 kya), and the eastern U.S. (4.5 kya). Earliest dates for
animal domestications are: the sheep and goat 10.5 kya (Fertile
Crescent), the pig and silkworm 9.5 kya (China), the Auroch cattle 9
kya (Indus Valley), donkey and cat 8 kya (Egypt), the llama and
guinea pig 5.5 kya (Andes), guinea fowl 7 kya (Sahel), and turkey
5.5 kya (Mexico). "The linearbandkeramic culture that arose slightly
before 5000 BC, was initially confined to soils light enough to be
tilled by means of hand-held digging sticks. Only over a thousand
years later - with the introduction of the ox-drawn plow - were those
farmers able to extend cultivation to a much wider range of heavy
soils and tough sods." [Diamond, 1997; p. 89.]
30
ANIMAL PASTORALISM, the cultural dependence on the
exploitation of dairy, pack, or draft animals. The earliest known
megafaunal domestication was made by the reindeer-herders of the
tundras of Lapland. Animal-drawn sleds have been discovered
dating back to 12 kya. Cattle herding started in India by 9 kya, and
became a staple of civilization that continues today (the biomass of
cattle seem to be the greatest represented by a single species on
planet Earth today). Draft horses were first domesticated in the
Asian hinterland in 6 kya. Records that refer to Arabian camels
traversing the Arabian and Saharan deserts as pack animals date to
1700 BC. In America and Australia, the megafauna were killed off
too rapidly for animal pastoralism to get started, until post-
Columbian introductions. The only exceptions are the small camels
of the Andes - llamas and alpacas – which were domesticated 5.5
kya.
31
STIRRUPS, the third revolutionary step in the use of warhorse
technology, after chariots and saddles. A knight braced in stirrups
could deliver a blow with a lance that employed the full weight and
momentum of horse and rider together. He could also use a longer
(and vastly more powerful) bow by standing up on the stirrups. The
first full stirrups are depicted in Chinese terracottas dating from the
surprisingly late date of 300 AD.
32
PLEISTOCENE MASS EXTINCTIONS in Australia and America
have been variously attributed to climate change [e.g., Guilday,
1967] or due to human predation [e.g., Martin, 1967]. Dr. Martin
(now retired in a small Arizona town not far from where I live)
27
emphasizes that animals that have survived dozens, even hundreds,
of glacial and interglacial cycles don't just happen to die out the
moment that humans arrive (40 kya Americas, 55 kya Australia).The
megafauna on these isolated continents would have been quite
naive and unfamiliar with bipedal hunters as a source of danger.
Perhaps it was not the spear, but fire, and firestick farming
(terraforming by fire, a common aboriginal practice in Australia and
America), that extinguished these creatures.
33
BIOFUEL, any of the biomass-derived oils used for lighting,
heating, or (later) engines. The most popular biofuel of the ancient
world - olive oil, with an energy content of 40 MJ/kg - was widely
used in lamps. The biofuel sources depicted in the game are
rapeseed / olive oil (Mediterranean), peanut oil (Andes),
jatropha/jojoba oil (Sonoran desert), and whale oil (Hawaii). With an
energy content of 39 MJ/kg and oil yields in the 900 to 1600 kg/ha
range, rapeseed oils are of interest today as possible renewable
substitutes for diesel fuel.
34
ACCULTURATION, the ability to attract and absorb peoples of
alien cultures. The greatest acculturation event in history was the
invention of monotheism as recorded in the Old Testament. In the
Bicameral Era, everyone was governed by personal gods; their
numbers were legion. Beginning in Era III, when the personal gods
fell silent, societies tumbled into dark ages as mankind struggled
with the concept of a universal supernatural authority figure. The
idols and graven images that handled the old gods had to be
smashed, in order to bring men to accept this new and fundamental
shift in authority structure.
35
TRADE, the exchange of valuables. "Let us consider a meeting
between two individuals from two different bicameral cultures. Let us
assume they do not understand each other’s language and are
owned by different gods…if the bicameral theocracies of both indi-
viduals meeting have been unthreatened for a generation, both their
directive gods would be composed of friendly voices. The result may
have been a tentative exchange of gestural greetings, … or even an
exchange of gifts. The relative rarity of each other’s possessions
(coming from different cultures) would make such an exchange mu-
tually wished for. This is probably how trade began… Such trade
was not, however, a true market. There were no prices under the
pressures of supply and demand, no buying and selling, and no
money. It was trade in the sense of equivalencies established by di-
vine decree. There is a complete lack of reference to business
profits or loss in any of the cuneiform tablets that have been so far
translated." [Jaynes, 1976; pp. 205-210.]
36
SABINE RAID, the means by which, according to legend, the
Romans acquired wives (and culture) shortly after Rome was
founded by Romulus in about 753 BC. The predominantly bachelor
Romans invited the neighboring Sabine peoples to a party (toga
party?), and then abducted their women.
37
ATLANTIS, fabled civilization(s) lost to the worldwide flooding of
the continental shelves when the ice-sheets melted. Enough water
was sequestered by the Pleistocene glaciers for sea levels to be 120
meters lower than today. One of the largest regions now inundated
is Sundaland, twice the size of India, today submerged in the Java
Sea. Another is the Black Sea, which during the Pleistocene was a
much smaller freshwater lake. C14 dating of fresh- and saltwater
shells of the Black Sea strata has revealed that the waters swelled
and rapidly grew salty around 5500 BC, when presumably rising
Mediterranean waters breached a dam in the Bosporus. Whatever
cities thriving on the shorelines of the lake were lost in the deluge,
which possibly inspired the stories of Gilgamesh, Noah, and Plato's
Atlantis.
38
HAY, the technology that allowed the colonization of Europe by
wandering herdsmen, by permitting their herds to overwinter in the
vast treeless tundras south of the icecaps. "Nobody knows who
invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in
large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the
winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the
Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval
Europe .... So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and
civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay
moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to
Berlin and Moscow and New York." [Dyson, 1988; p.135.]
39
METALLURGY was initially driven by social rather than economic
or technical need; the earliest copper and gold objects were
personal ornaments. Stone continued to be the material of choice for
tools for the next 4000 years. Systematic metalworking began with
the Bronze Age, when pottery glaziers accidentally discovered
techniques for smelting copper and tin from naturally-occurring
outcroppings of ore, and then alloying those metals to form bronze
castings. The dates for the early Bronze Age vary with location:
3500 BC for the Near East (Uruk), 3300 BC for India (Harappans),
2100 BC for China (Xia), 1800 BC for Europe (Únetice), and 900 BC
for the Andes (Chavín). The critical ingredient of bronze is tin, as
ancient sources of tin were confined to the British and Canary
islands. This made bronze implements quite expensive until the
introduction of cheap iron tools around 1200 BC. The superiority of
iron over bronze in battle or in agriculture is not so much due to the
properties or hardness of iron, as it is the abundance of iron ore.
The era of cheap aluminum was ushered in by the Hall-Héroult
process of 1886 AD, which uses electricity and the catalyst cryolite
to smelt aluminum ore. The era of synthetics was ushered in by the
development of thermoplastics (cellophane and bakelite) early in the
20th century.
40
SLAVE SOCIETIES in this game are patterned after the plight of
the Hebrews in Egypt and Babylon - captive peoples with sufficient
culture to maintain their identity in the face of bondage and even to
outlast their captors. Enslaved players who win a cultural advantage
over their masters become a slave-soldier caste with the potential to
seize power for themselves, as did the Mamluks in Egypt from 1250-
1517.
41
GENOCIDE, a governmental policy to slaughter a segment of its
own population on racial or religious grounds. This atrocity is
committed, in game terms, whenever a slaveholder enables attacks
upon his slaves by performing a barbarian raid upon them.
42
PLEISTOCENE LAKES, far larger than any found today, formed
when the ice sheets of America and Europe dammed northern-
flowing rivers. Shown on the map are Lake Agassiz in America and
the Aral-Caspian Sea in Turkistan. Today's Ust-Urt plateau was
formerly an island of the Aral-Caspian Sea. The much smaller ice
sheets of Asia and South America formed only modest lakes.
43
THE AUTHORITY OF COLLECTIVES "We have seen that, in the
history of political society… the rights of government, - the magistra-
cies and subordinations of kinship, - antedate what we now call the
rights of the individual. A man was at first nobody in himself; he was
only the kinsman of somebody else. The father himself, or the chief,
commanded only because of priority in kinship: to that all rights of all
men were relative. Society was the unit; the individual the fraction.
Man existed for society. He was all his life long in tutelage; only soci-
ety was old enough to take charge of itself. The State was the only
Individual." (Woodrow Wilson). It is a rule of nature that rights gran-
ted to any group can only come at the expense of other, overlapping
groups. For instance, an all-volunteer army pays homage to indi-
vidual rights, at the expense of those who favor national rights and
the draft. Sometimes, a person must choose between family and ca-
28
reer, between the rights of the state and the rights of the disadvant-
aged, etc. Each conscious individual comes to sanction in his life
one basic collective, which has the fundamental priorities and rights
in his decision-making. I call this collective the basal societal unit
(abbreviated BSU). I recognize five BSU’s in this game, each based
upon ideology. Those of the National Unity BSU (Authorization A)
believe that each person is defined first and foremost by their nation-
al identity. In the name of unity, they rally around strong leaders or
dictators, sponsor state religions or languages, are suspicious of im-
migrants, and favor national defense. They clash with those of the
Social Equity BSU (Authorization H), who tend to classify peoples in
terms of economic classes rather than nationalities, and who might
be found living in communes or Communist nations. The most prim-
al BSU (Authorization N) are traditionalists who act for the sake of
their children and kin. This DNA-based BSU subsumes both family
values and racism, and is strongest in nomadic peoples with a pa-
ternal head of household, often with their women veiled and kept in
seclusion. The broadest BSU is Authorization C, humanists both
secular and religious who speak and act for the good of the entire
human species. The narrowest BSU, and the most selfish (and the
one I favor) is the Individual Freedom BSU (Authorization P). The
enjoyment of individual rights never compromises the rights of any
other individual, but always compromises the rights of all groups
which claim that individual as one of their own.
44
UNDERGROUND MINING dates to Era II. A shaft dated at 40
kya was used to extract ochre for body paint in the Ngwenya
Mountains of Swaziland.
45
THE TOBA EXPLOSION, by far the most powerful in the last
100,000 years, caused a volcanic winter worldwide about 72 kya, in
which much of the life on Earth perished. Humanity itself dwindled to
perhaps just a few tens of thousands of persons, and this event
isolated Cro-Magnon and Peking Man in Indochina from the rest of
humanity (at the time spread thinly along the southern coasts from
Africa to China). Because of the wind direction (the eruption
occurred during the summer monsoons), six meters of ashfall buried
every living thing in India.
46
TOURISTS are often interested in antiquities, so it is the number
of cards rather than rank that is counted to make tourist dollars
possible.
47
ELECTIONS During Era IV, the age of ideologies, expansion by
conquest is ephemeral (given the timespan of 1000 year turns) if the
populace remains ideologically unconvinced. Sieges nowadays are
not so much battles as they are a "coup by public opinion".
48
DISCOVERIES This icon represents a fundamental science or
math discovery, which generates new ideas.