How many times has man risen out of barbarism and tried to forge a civilization? The gap between the rise of the modern human and the rise of the first known culture, that of ancient Sumer, is tens of thousands of years at the most conservative guess. Was it merely a case of inertia to overcome before the slow march forward could become the torrential changes we have grown accustomed to, or is there truth to the various stories that say before the nations familiar to us, there were others known not today?