Ice Age Life

Psychology books kept telling me what people do. I wanted to know why, and every answer seemed to point back at a stretch of time nobody alive remembers — twenty thousand years of small bands, no money, no institutions, no writing.

So I built one. You live a single life in it, start to finish: you hunt, you fall for someone, you raise kids who turn out nothing like you, you make an enemy over something small.

Then winter takes you, and your soul starts over as someone new.

What surprised me is how little I had to design. I put in scarcity and other people, and jealousy showed up on its own. So did status. So did grief.

I keep thinking that's the actual finding.