ANCIENT RECORDS

With eagerness, Emma stopped skimming and slowed down her reading pace in order digest the details of the book into her mind after she arrived at the section she was looking for and used the tip of her forefingers to read each word for word without being hasty. The clock ticked slowly till it arrived at ten pm in the morning when she spot the details concerning the ancient city of Raza and had lost track of time since she had her cellphone switched into silent mode the moment she was instructed to keep the silence like the other readers were doing in the hall when she came in during the early hours of the day. Her cellphone had been vibrating inside her handbag all the time she was busy scouring around for books on and her attention was focused on what she might find useful inside them. She tried to lower her voice down whilst reading the article concerning the the origins of the people who by now have been extinct without a single ancestry of their own in diverse cultures now present in the modern world. She skipped the introductory paragraph of the chapter and went straight to read the main article of the context.

".........Amidst the mountain tribes that once lived in the same place of a completely different race, there were some certain minor tribes whose culture was entirely different from the people now dwelling in Eastern region of Tashkent who knew the original inhabitants that once lived the mountains centuries ago. According to notable researchers studying the ancient lifestyle of Russia's historical foundation in the world in the early 1950s with the likes of Russian Explorer Bohdan Berdy, Prof. Edik Dmitry, a genealogist and a noteworthy Swiss sociologist and archeologist, Prof. Jones Williamson whose immense contribution in tracing the cultural existence of the indigenous people of Raza which added to our basic knowledge of the norms and morality of the ancient society was far more popular than the listed researchers, the natives that once lived there had migrated to that region from the farther east away from bordering provinces of Arabia and succeeded in erecting, at first, a local settlement in the heart of the Montane regions where a lot of durable rocky paths were skillfully built for mobility to be easier for the locals to facilitate communications with their neighbors despite the hardship and tedious process of climbing the rocky mountains through pavements that were constructed around the summit of the mountains to the next one which were dangerous and deadly for feeble minded passersby whom the matured men in their group usually had to guide to prevent them from falling down to their deaths.

Many researchers including Prof. Williamson believed the natives to be prehistoric cavemen but this theory was later found to be misleading and the professor himself proved it as a wrong speculation by researchers seeking to paint a false picture of the true nature of the people with a lot of facts gotten from the ruins they found in the excavation site. Most of which were engraved on corroded Rocky tablets as well as huge rocks later recognized to be fallen columns made of rock from the mountain itself with strange symbols exquisitely carved on it using well effective tools handled and old artistic drawings about their ancestors as well as on the walls of the cave that were found two years after the project to scour the ruins was setup around the area of Tashkent in1953. As time progresses, the settlement began to grow larger in line with economic growth with more infants being born into the local community and the successful struggle for territorial expansion coupled with the domination of the terrain opposed to other mountain villagers aid the settlers in achieving a flourishing society of a diverse spread of commerce and trade of merchandise with other clans through alliance treaties to foster developments and rich food supply to survive the winter terrain hsuch as animal skins together with other commodities suitable to withstand the snowy seasons. Owing to the natural climate of the regional environment in which they found themselves, backup by a discovery made by one Dr. Lindsey Miller, an American expatriate working under prof. Williamson at the penultimate stage of the project about the inhabitants now vanishing slowly to be acknowledged amongst the notable tribes that were Globally recognized by the defunct Union of Social Soviet Union, slings equipped with stones and catapulted weapons of different types were often used by the warriors in charge of safeguarding the territories from external attacks to keep out foreigners from encroaching into their village uninvited and served as their defensive weapons against their enemies in times of war for a long period before steel weapons such as swords including spears were later introduced into the community possibly through contact with nomadic tribes and soon replaced it as the settlement grew a lot faster into a kingdom which was made possible by their tenth czarai who was crowned the first king to lead their battles against other nations.

Emma paused and took a deep breath before continuing her reading which resumed at the next subsection of the article entailing the cultural beliefs of Raza people.

"...... Divinity and the use of witchcraft were prevalent in the society of the original inhabitants but for some years till the time of the kings, necromancy and sorcery was restricted to the overall control of the head priestess whose powers were believed to be revered by the settlers as a goddess not from this world who was endowed with supernatural abilities to communicate with the dead souls of the netherworld and utilized diabolical methods to evoke voices of their dead ancestors to sought out answers in times of drought or plague. A powerful sacred orb was protected by twelve guards and was kept along with other objects they deemed to be sacred in an isolated sanctuary most probably, a shrine that was built within a secluded section deep inside the hollow caverns of the mountains whereby occasional ritual ceremonies and sacrifices to the deities were annually done to purify, cleanse and to appease the gods with sacrifices of both mountain rams which serve as their foo source of getting mutton as well as Bisons at the other side of the cliffs and sometimes humans depending on the demand of the chief priestess. Their language was very much different from the present people living in Tashkent who may have also migrated from other parts to occupy the terrain some centuries ago after the empire fell into the hands of the Mongolians. As the settlement became a more dignified kingdom, their laws became more strictly structured to promote justice in the society in terms passing judgments depending on the weight of their crimes usually carried out by the oracle who would confirm if the offender was guilty as charged and punishment of an offender who broke the law in a provincial state in the kingdom was undeniably sentence to death by hanging if it is in the case of a murder or theft while public execution of the law breaker soon came into the society when steel weapons was accessible by the people and some were even tossed down from high colossal cliffs to the bottom depths below as another deterrent against criminal actions in the society and to safeguard justice and fairness in the land.

The old natives strongly believed in the connection between the living and the dead as well as the belief of reincarnation was strictly guarded against unbelievers which prompt some researchers to allude that the people may have ancestral links with the Hindus living in Southern India but this analogy only ended as a theory they failed to provide substantial evidence to dissuade the likes of prof. Williamson and his team from the views of the people.

Up to the time of the first royal Czarai who was the first to be crown in their capital city called Nebre after expanding their territory further eastward to the borders of Mongolia by uniting the tribes and incorporating defeated city's to form a vast kingdom, powerful charms and divine control over the political affairs were under the influence of the chief priestess followed by her successors but much of her duties were stripped from her and given to the King himself possibly because most of the priestess abused their powers and traditional laws to control the head chiefs as well as interfered a lot in political decisions making of the four councils that presented matters to the main head of their clan which was changed to that of a crowned when the Society later transformed into a well established kingdom but these four councils apart from other civil officials and the warriors, were retained to serve as his advisers in court.

Their first Czarai was able to administer control over his subjects to establish fairness and the justice though to a certain extent. He was responsible for the tradition of the King to empower himself with powerful charms often obtained through a sacred orb that was only used in times of war under the discretion of the priestess but greedy Czarai after him dwindled the functions of the priestess and grew more powerful than she was in the kingdom. Although this was done to checkmate her from becoming too powerful more than the king, the Queen mother and the subjects still regarded her to play a significant role in terms of protecting the norms of the society as one of her duties. From the first Czarai up to the last Czarai when the kingdom became an empire that only lasted for two centuries, they had forty five kings who ruled them with some degree of fairness though a lot of abusive powers made the Kings passed wrong judgments and made unnecessary laws in the kingdom that affected the plebs until the time of the last king to succeed his father as the fifth emperor Czarai though he was named Hemelion, according to legends about his true identity.