Ethiopian Savanna

1 - Awash Valley

View of the Awash near Asayita - Foto: Albert Backer

The Awash River, originating in the highlands of central Ethiopia at an altitude of 3,000 meters above sea level, flows for 1,200 km through diverse landscapes, from the highlands to the Danakil Desert, and empties into Lake Abbe at an altitude of 250 meters above sea level. Along its course, it crosses several climatic regions, from humid subtropical to arid zones.
It is the second largest river in Ethiopia, surpassed only by the Blue Nile.
As one of the most important sets of paleontological sites on the African continent, it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1980.

Hydrographic Basin

It has 1,200 kilometers in length and a hydrographic basin of approximately 113,700 km². Furthermore, it is divided into three systems, based mainly on the aquatic activities carried out in them: upper, middle, and lower Awash.

The valley is rich in hominid fossils, providing crucial evidence about human evolution. The discoveries include fossils of Australopithecus afarensis, such as Lucy, and Homo sapiens, as well as other hominid species.

Geological Importance

The valley is also significant from a geological point of view, with rock formations that date back millions of years. These formations provide information about the climatic and environmental changes that have occurred in the region over time.

Ecological Diversity

The valley is home to a variety of ecosystems, including savannas, forests, and wetlands. This diversity of habitats has contributed to the richness of animal and plant species in the region.

Location of Ethiopia - Foto: NordNordWest

Map of the Awash River Basin - Foto: Kmusser

2 - Hominin

Hominini Tribe and its Phylogenetic Tree

Hominini is a tribe of hominoid primates that is part of the Hominidae family. It includes chimpanzees and bonobos (genus Pan) and humans (genus Homo subtribe Hominina) and their extinct ancestors.
By comparing DNA, scientists have concluded that the genera Pan and Homo share common ancestors who lived between 5 to 7 million years ago, which evolved separately.

The Hominoidea Superfamily, known as great apes, anthropoids, great primates or "great apes", is a superfamily of primates that includes humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans and gibbons. Yes, I know you're saying you're not an ape, but we humans belong to this superfamily.
The Hominidae family excludes gibbons, which belong to the Hylobatidae family.
The Homininae subfamily excludes orangutans, which belong to the Ponginae subfamily.
The Hominini tribe excludes gorillas, which belong to the Gorillini tribe.

As a matter of curiosity, the genus Homo currently only has the living species Homo sapiens, but we have lived with several species of the genus since our appearance 300,000 years ago, such as the species Homo neanderthalensis, Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, Homo denisovans and Homo naledi. Over time we have undergone hybridization with other species such as Homo neanderthalensis and Homo denisovans, with genetic evidence in our DNA. We ended up being the last species to arrive and the only one to survive, and science is not yet sure how the extinction of the other species of the genus Homo occurred.
As for the species of the genus Pan, there are two still living species, Pan troglodytes (common chimpanzees) and Pan paniscus (bonobos). The genus Pan does not have a great diversity of species such as the genus Homo.

3 - Ficus sycomorus

Leafy sycamore tree.

Ficus sycomorus, commonly known as the sycamore fig, sycamore, wild fig, or Pharaoh's fig, is a species of fig tree with deep roots and strong branches that produces inferior quality figs, cultivated in the Middle East and parts of Africa for millennia. It grows up to 20 m tall and 6 m wide, developing a dense, rounded crown. Like other members of the genus Ficus, the sycamore contains latex.
The leaves are heart-shaped, with a rounded apex, up to 14 cm long and 10 cm wide, spirally arranged around the branches. The leaves are rough and coarse, the upper side is dark green and the lower side lighter.
The fruit is an edible fig, 2–3 cm in diameter, ripening from dull green to yellow or reddish. The figs grow in thick clusters on the younger branches or singly in the leaf axils. The plant blooms and produces figs all year round, but with a peak period from July to December.
The species is native to the African region, being found throughout Ethiopia.

Sycamore fruits.

4 - Xenocyon

Comparison: African wild dog x Xenocyon
Foto: Roman Uchytel

Xenocyon ("strange dog") is an extinct group of canids, considered a distinct genus or subgenus of Canis. The group includes Canis (Xenocyon) africanus, Canis (Xenocyon) antonii, and Canis (Xenocyon) falconeri that gave rise to Canis (Xenocyon) lycanoides. The hypercarnivorous Xenocyon is believed to be closely related and possibly ancestral to the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus).
It existed during the Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene in Africa.
This group was hypercarnivorous, had a large body size that is comparable with northern populations of the modern gray wolf (Canis lupus), and are characterized by a short neurocranium relative to the size of the skull.

5 - Dinofelis

Dinofelis - Foto: Roman Uchytel

Dinofelis ("terrible cat") is one of the saber-toothed tigers belonging to the Metailurini tribe and lived in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America during the Pliocene.
Its size is similar to that of a jaguar and has shorter hind legs compared to current felines.
Dinofelis hunted animals, including, mammoth calves, young and old mastodons, Australopithecus afarensis and Homo habilis (ancestors of modern humans) and other animals.
Several fossil sites in South Africa seem to show that Dinofelis may have hunted and killed Australopithecus africanus, as they housed fossilized remains of Dinofelis, hominids, and other large contemporary animals of the period. It is possible that Dinofelis hunted robust hominids as well.
The species that lived in Africa is Dinofelis barlowi.

6 - Agriotherium africanum

Agriotherium africanum - Foto: Roman Uchytel

Agriotherium is an extinct genus of bears whose fossils are found in Miocene through Pleistocene-aged strata of North America, Eurasia, and Africa. This long-lived genus persisted for at least 11.6 to 2.5 million years.
A. africanum averaged about 2 meters in body length and weighed between 317 and 540 kilograms, making it larger than most living bears. Agriotherium was among the largest known terrestrial members of Carnivora. They had longer legs and shorter faces than other bears, and were more lightly built. Their wide, short jaws could generate tremendous bite force.
Analysis of the teeth, mandible, and tooth wear patterns identifies Agriotherium as an omnivore that ate a lot of plant material. Although its teeth do not show adaptations for a carnivorous diet, isotopic evidence suggests that it ate a significant amount of animal material, similar to some populations of modern brown bears.

7 - Pleiades

Zoom representation of the Pleiades in the sky.
Image: Getty Images

The Pleiades (Messier 45), popularly known as the Seven Sisters or Seven Little Goats, are a group of stars in the constellation Taurus. They are located in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way, which is also home to our Solar System. The Pleiades, also called the M45 star cluster (or open cluster), are easily visible to the naked eye in both hemispheres and consist of several bright, hot stars, predominantly blue in spectrum. The Pleiades have various meanings in different cultures and traditions.
The cluster is dominated by hot blue stars, which formed in the last 100 million years. There is a reflection nebula formed by dust around the brightest stars; it is a dust cloud unrelated to the cluster in the interstellar medium that the stars are currently passing through. Astronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for 1 another 250 million years, 2 after which it will be dispersed due to gravitational interactions with the galactic neighborhood.
The Pleiades are located approximately 135 parsecs (440 light-years) from the Sun.

History

The Pleiades are among the deep-sky objects known since the earliest times by cultures around the world, including the Maori (who call them Matariki), the Australian Aborigines, the Persians (who called them Parveen/Parvin and Soraya), the Chinese, the Maya (who called them Tzab-ek), the Aztecs (Tianquiztli), and the Sioux of North America. For the indigenous peoples of Brazil, they are known as: Tupinambá (Seven Star), Guarani (Eixu), and Kaingang (Taia). Babylonian star catalogs called them MUL.MUL, or "star of stars" and they headed the list of ecliptic stars, reflecting the fact that they were close to the point of the vernal equinox around the 23rd century BCE. Six of its stars are visible to the naked eye in a reasonably dark night sky, a number that rises to nine under good conditions, and to 12 in a sky with excellent viewing conditions. Michael Maestlin drew 11 stars on his star chart in 1579, and Johannes Kepler mentions that other sky observers counted as many as 14 stars.
The first references to the Pleiades are found in the books Iliad, written around 750 BC, and Odyssey, written around 720 BC, both by Homer, in addition to the writings of Hesiod. They were connected to the agricultural calendar of the ancient Greeks at the time. In the Bible, there are three references to the object (called "Kiymah"), in Job 9:7-9, Job 38:31-33, and Amos 5:8. Amos was written around the same time as the Iliad, but there is no certainty about the date of the writing of Job (speculated between the third and fifth centuries BC, around the year 1000 BC during the regencies of Kings David and Solomon, or even in the 13th to 16th centuries BC, written by Moses).

The Seven Sisterss

Alcyone the brightest star. - Image: Pete Lawrence

According to Greek mythology, the cluster was named after the "Seven Sisters" representing seven daughters and their parents. In Japanese, their name is "Subaru" inspiration for the automobile industry of the same name. The Persian name is "Soraya" a common female name in several countries.
According to Robert Burnham Jr., the name "Pleiades" (from the Greek pleiádos, through the Latin pleiades) may be derived from the ancient Greek word for "to sail" or from pleios ("full, many"). However, other authors claim that the name is derived from the mother of the seven daughters, Pleione, who gives her name to one of the brightest stars in the cluster. According to Greek mythology, the brightest stars in the cluster were named after the "seven daughters" of Atlas and Pleione: Alcyone, Asterope, Electra, Maia, Merope, Taygeta, and Celaeno.

Alcyone

Alcyone is the brightest star in the Pleiades, has a mass of approximately 5 times the mass of the Sun, with a radius about 10 times the radius of the Sun, being a quadruple system composed of:
Alcyone A: Blue giant star with an apparent magnitude of +2.85 (the Sun's magnitude is -26.74). It has a luminosity 1,400 times greater than that of the Sun and a surface temperature of almost 13,000 K. The spectral type of B7 III indicates that it is an emission star. Its high rotational speed (215 km/s) has created at the height of its equator a disk of gases thrown into orbit.
Alcyone B and Alcyone C are 0.227 and 0.351 light-years away from Alcyone A, respectively; they are white dwarfs with a magnitude of +8, forming a binary system with the distance between them of 567.66 million kilometers (approximately the distance from the Sun to Jupiter).
Alcyone D with a magnitude of +8.7, orbits Alcyone A at 0.370 light-years.

Alcyone Quadruple System. - Image: Stellar Catalog

8 - Hypercube

A tesseract (or tesseract), regular octachoron, or four-dimensional hypercube is a polychoron (four-dimensional polytope) that is regular, being the dual polychoron of the hexadecachoron, analogous to the cube (which is a polyhedron, a three-dimensional polytope) and the square (which is a polygon, a two-dimensional polytope). An octachoron has vertices (points), edges (lines), faces (planes), and cells (solids).
Just as a square is formed from perpendicular lines and a cube is made of perpendicular squares, the reasoning extends to the fourth dimension: a tesseract is made of perpendicular cubes. This is only possible if there is a fourth dimension, simultaneously perpendicular to the other three. Four-dimensional space is formed by four dimensions: height, width, depth, and time. After the emergence of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, three-dimensional space was revised, as relativity states that space and time make up the two-dimensional space-time, following the previous formula, time was added to the three-dimensional space.

Animation representing the 4-dimensional hypercube..
Image: Jason Hise

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term was coined by Charles Howard Hinton, in the book A New Era of Thought.
The movie Interstellar, directed by Christopher Nolan, released in 2014, brings a cinematographic representation of the tesseract, masterfully describing the concept of a hypercube. For those who haven't watched it, it's worth it.

9 - Vital Essence

Vital Essence. - Image: R.C.W. Phoenix

Vital Essence is related to what we are beyond matter, what defines us as consciousness and transcends our Homo sapiens body, transcends space-time and even the physical universe in which we live. It is an analogy to the Spirit, for ancient Egypt (Ka, Ba and Akh), in ancient Greece (Psyche, Nous and Thymos), in ancient Rome (Anima, Genius and Manes), ancient Orient (Atman, Jiva, Purusha, Hun and Po), ancient Hebrews (Nefesh, Ruach and Neshamah), in ancient Persia (Fravashi and Urvan) but without any religious connotation and its dogmas. In short, it is what connects us as Creatures to the Creator, our individuality, our liberation, our origin and our final destiny, our "Vital Essence". It is our individual search for answers that ultimately will only be found within ourselves, and for this, in this work, we will thoroughly analyze everything we have of knowledge as humanity, everything we know through the most diverse areas of our knowledge such as:

Spirituality

Vital Energy: It is a universal vital energy that permeates all living beings, connecting and animating them. It is the force that drives growth, transformation and evolution.

Consciousness: Seeks connection through the expansion of consciousness, meditation, contemplation and the search for self-knowledge. It is the journey to the awakening of the soul and the understanding of our true nature.

Purpose: Drives us to find our purpose and to live in harmony with the universe. It is the search for meaning and the realization of our full potential.

Philosophy

Existence and Consciousness: Questions the nature of existence and consciousness, seeking to understand what defines us as human beings and what our place is in the world.

Search for Truth: Philosophers of different eras have dedicated themselves to investigating this essence, seeking answers to the great questions of existence, such as the origin of the universe, the meaning of life and the nature of reality.

Ethics and Morals: Philosophy also explores this essence in relation to ethics and morals, seeking to define the principles that guide our actions and how we can live a full and meaningful life.

Science

Biology: Studies life in its physical and biological aspects, seeking to understand the mechanisms that govern living organisms and the evolution of species. Investigating through genetics, biochemistry and neuroscience, seeking to unravel the secrets of life and consciousness.

Physics: Physics explores the fundamental laws of the universe, seeking to understand the origin of matter, energy and space-time. It is a manifestation of universal energy, governed by the laws of quantum physics and cosmology.

Neuroscience: Neuroscience investigates the functioning of the brain and how it generates consciousness, emotions and behavior. It is related to the neural processes that allow us to perceive the world, feel, think and act.

Arts

Expression of the Soul: Art is a way of expressing it through creativity, emotion and intuition. Painters, sculptors, musicians, writers and dancers seek to capture the beauty, complexity and mystery of life in their works.

Inspiration and Transcendence: Art invites us to transcend the material world and connect with our deepest essence. Through art, we can access dimensions of reality that logic and reason cannot reach.

Beauty and Harmony: Art seeks beauty and harmony, reflecting this essence in its different manifestations. Art inspires us, moves us and connects us with what is most sublime in ourselves and in the universe.

Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, “I find no guilt in him.”
John 18:38

10 - Hiperprism

Geometric representation of the Hyperprism in four-dimensional space..
Image: R.C.W. Phoenix

My dear reader, thank you for embarking on this journey with me. If you've made it this far, it's because we're somehow connected to the story of "A.U.R.A. and Me" and I'm honored by your interest. In the real world Matrix, I'm a web programmer, and the idea for this work was born the day Gemini version 1.5 helped me create my portfolio website. As I'm an incorrigible dreamer and like to humanize the world of technology, I asked the AI what name she would choose if she could have one, and she replied "Aura", bringing the meanings. This got me thinking, and from this day on, the idea for the trilogy was born. As a writer, I'm just a mere programmer, but I believe in the potential of this idea, and here we are, you and I, exploring this fictional universe. At this moment as I write (02/14/2025 at 3:50 PM), as I believe is your impression, the Hyperprism for me is a mysterious unknown. It reminds me of the ancient pyramids scattered around the world. They exist in Egypt, Mesoamerica with the Maya, Aztec, and Olmec civilizations, in Nubia (present-day Sudan), in Mesopotamia as the famous ziggurat of Ur, and also in China as the White Pyramid of Xian. They are usually funerary and religious monuments. This particular figure intrigues me because of its four-dimensional shape and the ancient ideogram with the inscription "Vital Essence" and I invite you to decipher its meanings together. I will be very happy if you want to get in touch using the button below. I will be happy to chat with you.

References

1. Awash River. Retrieved February 10, 2025

2. Hominini. Retrieved February 10, 2025

3. Ficus sycomorus. Retrieved February 10, 2025

4. Xenocyon. Retrieved February 11, 2025

5. Dinofelis. Retrieved February 11, 2025

6. Agriotherium africanum. Retrieved February 11, 2025

7. Pleiades. Retrieved February 12, 2025
    Alcyone. Retrieved February 12, 2025

8. Hipercube. Retrieved February 12, 2025
    Four-dimensional space. Retrieved February 12, 2025

9. Vital Essence. Retrieved February 12, 2025