Elephants.  These creatures have the largest brain of any land animal and a lot of it is devoted to emotion, communication and manual dexterity of sorts.  With the trunk as a superb organ for manipulation, they are ready made for the jump from savagery to culture.  It is possible to imagine a long history of commerce between African humans that would be among the many mysteries of those regions when first penetrated by Europeans.  Think of the effects civilized elephants would have on colonialism in Africa?  Just how much would change?

        Even the earliest humans had legends and myths about the peculiar markings they would occasionally find scratched into the earth.  Eventually, it would become clear to them that it was the work of elephants.  The sigils were used by the great beasts to show others of their tribes where they have been, where they were going and how they were honoring their ancestors.
        As humanity grew toward maturity, so did the herds of elephants.  They didn't develop spoken language, but the sigils came to indicate richer and more detailed concepts.  The humans, however filled the air with incessant chatter.  It took millennia, but the two divergent types of beings to discover the other's true nature.  They cultivated a great deal of superstition about one another, but eventually, tribes of the two species started having contact and even trading.  The humans could make fine flint tools, the elephants could move huge boulders and tear down trees to clear land.
        Before too long some the tribes had developed something of a symbiosis, but others had not had such an easy time.  Some herds had enslaved humans to to act as scouts, tool makers.  Some humans hunted and ate elephants.  The tribes that cooperated had a distinct advantage.  They were perfecting communication.  The elephants discovered that they could mimic human speech by trumpeting into their mouths and forming words with their lips and oral cavity. The humans were discovering the mystery of drawings that represent ideas. This period is about 100,000 bc.
        The world that evolves from this beginning is going to be unrecognizable from ours by the time it advances into our historic times.

Onward to Part II.

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