Archaic Era

The Archaic Era is the period of human history lasting from newborn mankind's first emergence from Ulshanru until the Schism Wars roughly five thousand years before the present day. 
During this period, early humans spread out from Ulshanru (wherever it lay), colonized the lands around the Sarpic Seas, and migrated further out into other parts of Orithea as well. Some of these early, unrecorded migrations must have covered great distances, for in this time it is speculated that the forebears of the Thelbirs reached the northern continent, and the ancestors of the Daare Karsha settled in the arid Kesh Karkhan. Both groups eventually forgot Utara-Vaati and the Tuvai tongue, and lapsed into what the civilized Oritheans today call barbarism. Who can guess how long it took for this regression to unfold, or what strange influences were worked upon these most far-ranging wanderers as they left familiar lands behind?
Scholars know very little about the events of the Archaic Era; even the period's duration is unknown, since no one can say when exactly the first humans came forth from Ulshanru. Conjecture ranges from just over a thousand years before the Schism Wars, up to nearly ten thousand years before them. Unknown centuries, or millennia, passed between that emergence and the earliest written records that are known today. 
It is at least known that during this period, humans learned the arts of masonry and metal-working, for by the time of the Schism Wars, bronze implements were in wide use, and great cities of stone construction stood all around the region of the Sarpic Seas. Some say such arts were revealed by Tulkhur, others that they were taught by (or copied from) the dwarves. 
This ignorance is due not just to the remoteness of the age, but also to the widespread destruction of records which occurred during the Schism Wars. Many great temples and libraries were lost as cities burned, especially in the devastating upheavals of the wars’ final phase. Perhaps before that destruction, the ancient libraries preserved manuscripts going all the way back to the time of Ulshanru itself, or just afterwards; perhaps the scholars of that lost time knew much more about what is now called the Archaic Age. But if so, their knowledge is lost forever.