The Forbidden Ground of Light

Ever since Fuxi created the Eight Trigrams, humanity has never stopped exploring the world. Over the long course of human evolution, people learned to make tools and use their surroundings to hunt. They learned to use fire and the compass. It all stemmed from the ceaseless curiosity and imagination in the human heart. This powerful curiosity drove people to take the first steps toward understanding and changing the world. They began to imitate the laws of nature, inventing medicine, gunpowder, fishing, hunting, and animal taming, and establishing their own tribes. To better adapt to their surroundings, tribes developed strict hierarchies and gradually refined systems. They learned about nature and adapted to their environment through migration, while different tribes created trade by exchanging goods. Because of regional differences and disparities in the strength of tribes, powerful tribes seized vast resources and labor by plundering smaller ones, growing stronger in the process. Small tribes, lacking resources and strength, were either wiped out by wild beasts or natural forces, or absorbed by larger tribes. The technologies on which the various tribes had once depended for survival were either passed down by word of mouth or lost in the long river of human evolution. Humanity has never stopped trying to understand and transform nature. Perhaps vast civilizations lie in lands we have never set foot in. Civilization is like a beam of light: only the places it reaches reveal the world’s true appearance.