Post number two in a series focusing on the kobolds of Dragon Earth. This installment deals with their history.

Origins and the First Crisis

The oldest kobold remains were found in Southern India, in the Tamil region, at the beginning of the last century. While recognizably kobold, they had primitive features not found in the current species. Apparently halfway between the macaque ancestor and the modern animal.

The fossils were about 60,000 years old and showed an animal that was not fully bipedal, and possessed a much smaller brain that its descendent. At the same time, it exhibited numerous traits typical among the modern kobold, and was, apparently, a tool user and maker.

The next set of remains found date from around 20,000 years ago. The specimens are virtually indistinguishable from the modern kobold. This was taken as a strong indication of deital interference. In 1955 the kobold god, Kurtul... (Just 'Kurt', I'm not a boastful fellow: Kurt. Sorry: Mythusmage) Kurt revealed that he had indeed worked with kobold DNA, incorporating elements from early modern humans then entering the area where his test subjects lived. Over the next few millennia he worked on his creation, until he got the creature he wanted.

By the end of the last Ice Age kobolds had spread throughout the Indian subcontinent, and east and west through much of southern Asia. It was during this time that kobolds first entered Europe, colonizing valleys and forests as Dragon Earth warmed up.

While Humans and other sophonts were developing agriculture during the Neolithic, the kobolds remained hunter-gatherers. This almost doomed them. As the farmers' population expanded and new territory was given over to agriculture, kobolds found their hunting ranges restricted more and more by the encroaching humans in various species. In southern Asia kobolds very nearly became extinct. Across most of their range they became rare, and in some areas entirely disappeared.

In Central Europe things went a bit differently.

Enter the Gnomes

The flooding of the Black Sea basin in 8,000 BC forced many sophonts to migrate. Among them gnome tribes, some of whom moved west into what would one day be Central Europe. A settled, agricultural people, they brought their crops and their animals with them. In short order they had found new lands to colonize, and had established farming and fishing communities along Central Europe's lakes and rivers.

In the doing they displaced the resident kobolds. Restricted to less productive land, the kobolds resisted as well as they were able. At times it approached the status of full fledged war. But most of the time it involved raids on the part of both peoples.

Unfortunately for the kobolds, the gnomes could support a denser population than they, and soon enough numbers began to tell.

However, the gnomes soon found themselves in the same situation as the kobolds. Human refugees from the great flood had migrated into Central Europe as well, and they started to displace the gnomes, much as the gnomes had displaced the kobolds. Forced into the deep woods the gnomes were barely able to survive, and that only because they still had an advantage over the kobolds thanks to farming.

By 5,000 BC it looked like the European kobolds would become a remnant people, supplanted by others.

Salvation

By and large kobolds are a conservative people. Extremely conservative. It is this trait that nearly led to their extinction most recently in the Great War (1933-1941). On occasion, however, they can show remarkable adaptablity and resourcefulness. Around 5,000 BC, when the early Sumerians were migrating out of the Zagros mountains southwest of the Caspian Sea, kobolds began to associate with and learn from the gnomes, instead of fighting them.

It is at this time kobold remains begin to be found in gnome burials. Honored servants. Possibly even slaves. In a few cases given honors and evidently good friends. Over the course of generations European kobolds learned the art of agriculture, adopting the plants and animals the gnomes used. Where kobolds elsewhere were declining in population and range, the kobolds of Europe began to thrive.

(Which is where I'll end this installment. Next time I write of Dragon Earth's kobolds, it will cover the coming of the Indo-Europeans and the start of European history.)