The Burudia

We will now talk about the events that took place in the Levant during the Age of Foundations (12,000-5,000 PE) of the First Middle Age, analyzing the period in which the cities of Burudia emerged as hegemonic forces.

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### The Burudu, heart of the Levant

The history of the Levant cannot be understood without knowing the different aspects of its geographical configuration, above all because the nature of the place determined the activities and the way of life of the men and women who lived there, exerting various kinds of influences on them.

The fulcrum of the Levant was the Burudia, that is the region formed by the extensive valley of the great Burudu river. The river experienced a profound strengthening at the end of the Last Great Cold, with the increase in rainfall in the region, which brought new life to an area that until then had been largely desert, or semi-desert. The alluvial plain of Burudu thus became a lush and favorable place for human settlement. However, the river was subject to frequent and frightening floods, especially in spring and autumn, a destructive power that could only be partially tamed artificially by building dams, banks and canals. This system was subject to constant deterioration and could only be maintained in efficiency by a well-organized state structure: in times of political turmoil it was in ruins and the whole region was in danger of turning into an unhealthy swamp. Furthermore, with the passing of the millennia, the large quantity of alluvial material carried by the river moved its mouth further and further into the Sebic Gulf. Over the millennia there were also certain changes in the direction of the river - sometimes intentionally caused - which not infrequently made for long periods of time barren and depopulated cities that until then had flourished in the center of a luxuriant area of ​​fertile fields.

The northern Burudia, called High Burudia, was a hilly region, with a less subtropical climate, which extended to the foot of the Tauric Mountains, the great natural barrier that, extending in an arc from north to east, separated the Levant from Essosia and from Erminia. To the west and south, the Burudia had open and unprotected borders to highlands, deserts and intricate jungles. In particular, the Red Desert separated it from Sibia and Khania, with their ports built along the coast of the Inner Sea, while a thick tropical jungle formed, further south, the northern strip of the Sebic Peninsula. The fertility of Burudia constituted for the inhabitants of the mountains and the heights, as well as for the psychopathic tribes of the desert and the jungle, a constant incitement to raids and looting, more rarely to some attempted conquest. Only a strong state could defend itself against these attacks by creating a preventive safety belt around the fertile river region. Under the reign of warlike rulers, these areas easily turned into bases for military control and for expeditions to conquer neighboring territories, richer in mineral and forest resources. A high and steep mountain range marked the border of Burudia to the east: the Nimma Mountains. Only in the extreme south-east corner, along the Nuraku river basin, in front of the steep edge of the Nimmic Plateau, did a fertile hilly region extend which, together with the adjacent mountainous valleys, constituted the Lower Nimma region. We will often have to talk about this region, due to its very close, and often hostile, relations with Burudia and the rest of the Levant. Reliefs reached 4000 meters in the Tauric Mountains and in the Nimma Mountains, and exceeded 5000 meters in Erminia.

Sibia, which extended southwest of the Tauric Mountains, between the Inner Sea, the Red Desert and Burudia, included geographically very different regions. The southernmost zone, which accounted for about a third of its territory, formed an independent cultural region: the Khania. Khania in turn represented the border region between the Levant in Meropia and the Kemet in Sahelia. To the west of the Khanian Mountains, separated by a longitudinal trench in a north-south direction once covered with woods, stretched the narrow coastal strip of Batufia, with some excellent ports, oriented more towards the sea than towards the hinterland. To the east of these two ranges we find the fertile hilly region of Edora to the north, and to the south the great oasis of Nibiria, with its palm gardens: the middle area was occupied by sparsely populated territories. A political union of these regions, often contested between Burudia and Kemet, occurred rarely, and almost always under foreign dominion; otherwise they remained mostly divided into a number of small independent states.

### Population of the Levant

The end of the Last Great Cold (12,000 BD) put an end to the dry and arid period that had characterized the lands of the Levant. The rivers of the region swelled with water, bringing new life - animal and plant - where it had previously been essentially missing for thousands of years. Some groups of Humans, who until then had survived in small tribal communities in the numerous caverns of the Taurian Mountains, soon began to descend into the valleys and spread throughout the region. These were the last descendants of those populations who, tens of thousands of years earlier, had emigrated outside the Sahelia, in order to colonize the rest of the world. The main direction followed by the descendants of these first colonizers turned towards the south-east, along the serpentine course of the great Burudu river and its tributaries; others instead moved south-west towards the lands of Sibia and Khania, bathed by the waters of the Inner Sea. The repopulation of the region was accompanied by a slow but progressive reintroduction of agriculture (largely disappeared during the Great Cold), which was soon followed by the domestication of various animals: the hunting and gathering economy however continued to be practiced. for a long time, as well as intensive but seasonal, non-sedentary agriculture.

The variety of landscapes that characterized the Levant resulted in a rather discontinuous human population. The population was normally concentrated in the alluvial plain of Burudu and in the other privileged intermontane niches, occupying substantial hilly and lowland areas, fleeing the wooded mountains and arid steppes which mostly experienced a seasonal, mobile, numerically small attendance. The Burudu alluvial plain itself was populated to the extent that certain areas were reclaimed and cultivated, repeating the same spatial discontinuity here on a smaller scale, with drained and irrigated "islands" (and therefore settled and even urbanized) interspersed with uncultivated areas swampy, unhealthy and wild. An equally conspicuous discontinuity in demographic development was added to the spatial discontinuity. This was due to the crises produced by natural events against which there was little to do: earthquakes, droughts, floods, epidemics; but also from strictly human factors, such as the exhaustion of resources (or the inability to exploit them), the rare community sedentary lifestyle or even geographical isolation.

The primitive cultures of the Levant remained homogeneous for a long time, with no particular differences between one territory and another. Between 12,000 and 9,000 BD an agro-pastoral culture spread, based on the irrigated cultivation of the fields and the grazing of goats. This model, rather renouncing development projects, however tended to keep its reserve of resources (land, livestock) intact. The overall demographic development therefore followed a rather slow pace. These rhythms were modest because they were conditioned by two elements: a high infant mortality rate, which practically canceled out the high birth rate, and an average life span so low that it seriously affected the fertile phase. In a community where people lived on average 25-30 years, the problem was whether a couple had time to generate such a number of children so that, once the premature deaths were deducted, at least two would reach reproductive age; otherwise the community was going towards extinction. The social response was to lower the marital age of women as much as possible - in order to make the most of their fertile period - and to then dose endogamy and exogamy, monogamy and polygamy, in order to ensure maximum demographic development. However, the social and cultural responses could not contrast much the physical situation, which was determined by health and food factors. Infant and childbirth mortality, as well as recurrent epidemics, were insurmountable obstacles.

To this is accumulated the data of a short life span, and furthermore that of an unlucky life, marked by malnutrition, endemic diseases (especially gastrointestinal) and frequent fatal accidents since, then as in every single moment of space, of time and of all the Multiverse, there were those who died on the job.