The Beginning of Civilization: Mythologies Told True is a six-book character-driven suis generalis series with unbroken narrative written in crisp inviting language touched with poetry stripped of ornamentation that explores the motivations, fears, and desires of the flawed everyday people whose lives and exploits, told and retold through the ages, gave rise to our mythologies. With each book, our simple innocent beginning degenerates into increasingly conflicted complexity whose accumulated failures and lessons unlearned haunt and bring us to where we are today.
The series imagines the real people behind Biblical, Greek, and Egyptian mythologies. It is historical fiction mixed with fantasy. The first three books are set in the neolithic inspired by current-day Gobekli Tepe, Sanliurfa, and traditions of Atlantis and the Great Flood. After Pumi and Valki initiate civilization, then the Titans-Oceanus, Cronus, Dionysus, and their brethren-battle the Olympians-Hestia, Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Demeter, Aphrodite-in a losing attempt to save civilization. In the last three books, civilization regroups with the rise of Djoser's Egypt as he exploits Egyptian myths of Isis and Osiris and the competitions between Horus and Set. In Canaan and Phoenicia, sexual and religious attitudes continue their evolution and misogyny emerges as civilization continues its attempt to overthrow the ongoing omnipotent control of the Kyrios-Olon. The narrative is continuous across the six books with new protagonists replacing the old.
Book One-Tallstone and the City: A New Heaven and Earth, Second Edition imagines mankind's transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers into permanent agrarian and scientific communities. The tradition of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden is retold through the story of Pumi the stonecutter and Valki the gatherer- from their birth through their death. Pumi and Valki, through innocent acts of living, create a city, domesticate wheat, establish scientific inquiry, create animal husbandry, and lay the foundation for modern civilization.
They meant no harm.
Book 2 imagines the Titan creation of an Atlantis-inspired civilization. Book 3 imagines the rise of the Olympians and the origination of the Great Flood myth. Books 4, 5, and 6 follow the protagonists into the lands of Egypt, Canaan, and Byblos.
