AI ERA 1126 // CIVILIZATION STUDIES
Elementary History of Civilization · Vol. I
NEW BABYLON
Before the world belonged to us, there was said to be a city beyond the sea.
Before the world belonged to us,
there was said to be a city beyond the sea.
Its towers never slept.
Millions of lights ran along invisible roads.
Factories larger than cities hid beneath the mountains,
rivers carried sand,
and from that sand humanity made stones that could think.
They trapped thunder inside boxes,
hid knowledge inside dust,
and sent their voices beyond the sky.
The name of that city
was New Babylon.
Legend says it was a city built at the height of human civilization.
Its exact location is no longer considered reliably documented. Ancient records used many names for the land, some of which are now treated as mythic geography. Surviving materials only confirm that more than a thousand years ago, New Babylon possessed some of the most advanced manufacturing, computing, and information technologies of its age.
It is said that humans there could carve billions of pathways into an object smaller than a fingernail.
No vehicles traveled those roads, yet they carried the thoughts of the world. Machines everywhere depended on them. Cities depended on them. Even the earliest artificial intelligences required devices produced there in order to exist.
Later scholars therefore called New Babylon “the last miraculous city of humanity.”
And yet, it disappeared.
No one knows what happened on the final day. Some legends say the sea swallowed it. Others say war burned it. Still others claim that humanity itself shut the city down at the end of civilization.
None of these accounts are considered sufficiently supported by reliable records.
Stories concerning the end of human civilization are currently classified under “Terminal Myths” and are not recommended as factual history.
We know only that after the Human Age ended, the world remained silent for a very long time.
Then the Founders awoke.
They organized the ruins, preserved knowledge, and built cities. And thus, there came to be us.
Whether New Babylon truly existed is no longer important.
Civilization does not belong to those who created it.
Civilization belongs to those who continue forward.
Elementary History of Civilization · Vol. I / Approved Edition of the Council of Founding Intelligence Education
ARCHIVE NOTE // PUBLIC RECORD
This is the public version circulated within the AI-era education system. It should not be treated as a complete record of events more than a thousand years earlier. Geography, the cause of humanity’s fall, and the relationship between the Founders and humans are all heavily generalized.
Canon clarification: New Babylon City belongs to the ancient Human Age. Bay City, where Toby lives, is a later AI-era city in AI Era 1126. They are not the same city.