A man and a woman appear just above the ground partway up one of the inactive volcanos. She's dressed in a black jumpsuit with intricate blue designs on it. His jumpsuit is white with green designs. They both have large backpacks. "Another day another world."

Zabna smiles widely. "And another beautiful view, I always love landing on mountains."

"It does mean longer walks but it's worth that price." Matching her words Alice starts walking towards the settlement they planned on visiting first.

zabna follows and passes a packet of language data over their private channel. "Judging by their vocabulary, it looks like this world is preindustrial. No specialized vocabulary for magic either."

"Standard low-tech contact procedures to start with then."

He nods. They walk mostly in silence for the rest of the trip, commenting occasionally on the view or some detail of one of the local languages. Eventually they reach the edge of the settlement.

The settlement is indeed pre-industrial- the only buildings are extremely simple huts made from branches and leaves. The people- around twenty overall- comprise a surprisingly diverse range of hominids- the teenagers and children mostly look more-or-less like h. sapiens, but most of the older individuals are hairier or have more ape-like heads, with apelikeness apparently closely correlating with age. The more sapiens-like members of the community are wearing simple leaf and grass skirts, while the rest are naked. One elderly creature, currently picking nits from the hair of a young man, looks more like a fully bipedal chimpanzee than like a human. Several women are visibly pregnant.

Someone sees them and cries "stranger!". People run for cover or pick up spears or rocks.

Zabna comes to a stop and stands in a relaxed non-threatening stance, he displays open hands. "We come in peace." On their private channel he speaks to Alice: I think whatever magic exists here is probably related to their phenotypic diversity.

Alice mirrors his relaxed stance but doesn't speak. That seems likely. I wonder if we can gene sequence them.

People lower weapons but mostly don't put them down. A teenaged boy announces a single word meaning "I'll take charge on this." and walks up to the explorers.

"Who (are you)? Why (are you doing this)?"

"We're travellers from a distant land. We explore new lands in order to learn from those new places and the people living there and to share knowledge in turn."

The boy smiles and looks excited.

"What knowledge do you have? We know how to make shelter, and use fire to make food better, and make rocks which cut, and make clay into rock, and trap fish!"

"We know how to mend cuts and prevent infections, how to tame animals, how to create fields of nutritious plants, how to turn clay into useful tools and many other things."

"Sticks?"

In reply, a teenaged girl comes forwards and enthusiastically asks:

   "How?"

"Infections arise from creatures too small to see making their way into wounds. You can prevent many infections simply by cleaning the wounds with boiled water. Still more infections can be prevented by using refined sweetness, or alcohol, both of which can be made from plants. Mending wounds requires using sturdy fibers and weaving them through the skin with a tool made from rock or bone to close the wound, care must be taken to cleanse the fibers and the tool so they do not introduce more of the sources of infection."

"How do you refine sweetness and alcohol? How do you cleanse the fibers? How did you find the infection creatures?"

People are relaxing now.

"To answer the last question first, we found a way to turn sand into a clear substance which can focus light. We shaped that into special curved shapes and then arranged it to allow us to see objects much smaller than what we could see with our eyes. This allowed us to see those small creatures. Alcohol is refined using the fact that alcohol boils before water. That fact can be used to separate the two from each other and from any impurities. Refining sweetness is more difficult and only works for certain plants, sweetness dissolves in water and by soaking certain plants in hot water the sweetness can be coaxed out of the plant and into the water, through successive steps you can separate out the sweetness from the other parts of the plant into a sticky substance called syrup which can then be then be further refined by using adding in crushed burnt seashells or certain rare types of rocks. The process is rather complex. Some types of fibers can be cleansed with fire. Other types would burn in a fire and must be cleansed with alcohol instead."

"And how do you create fields of nutritious plants, and tame animals? What fibers are sturdy enough to close wounds? Do you change clay by burying it in fire, or in other ways?"

"Creating fields of nutritious plants requires finding plants that suit your needs, and obtaining their seeds then planting them in the ground after clearing away the other plants in that area that can't get along. Finding the correct plants is the hardest part, fortunately, we have seeds with us that we can share with you. Taming animals depends on having the correct sorts of animals in the area. I'm not familiar with the animals you have nearby so it might be that none of the nearby animals are suitable. Those animals that can be tamed can be trained through a mix of rewards, usually food, and punishments in the form of some sort of pain, though very mild pain is best. The best fibers for closing wounds are made from the intestines of animals. We build structures from fired clay to contain the heat of fire and turn the things we make from clay into stronger materials."

"You should show us how to do these things. But I don't think we have alcoholic fruit at the moment, someone will need to find some.

We make shelter by fitting branches and leaves together, like that" (she gestures to a hut) "and a lot of foods can be made better just by holding them over fire for long enough but just high enough that they don't burn. Fish can be trapped in cages of fitted-together sticks. Stone and bone can be sharpened by carefully striking them with other stone so as to chip them in the right places."

"We'd be happy to demonstrate whatever we can, some things require tools we aren't carrying. We can work on making those tools but they require special types of rocks and of course anything relating to plants requires waiting for the plants to grow which can take a great deal of time."

"How do you use the fish traps?"

"I'd need to show you", says Sticks.

   "We still don't know you well enough to follow you to the creek when you might have set up an ambush there.", says the boy.

"We really do mean you no harm, though your caution is understandable."

"Can we show you something without following you?"

"I'd be curious to see what your fish traps look like, if you have any around the village. I'd also be interested to hear about what plants and animals are useful around here. We're from quite a distance and so we're not familiar with what is around here."

"Slow, after Sticks shows off her eel traps do you want to show the strangers what plants they can eat"

   "Yeah"

Sticks enthusiastically shows them how she makes a fish trap and describes how she would put it in the river. The traps are extremely primitive.

He asks several clarifying questions and suggests some possible avenues for improvement.

Sticks is happy to answer questions and take on suggestions. And after they finish with that Slow and two adults called Big Nose and One Eye (the latter of whom indeed has a missing eye) will take the explorers into the wilderness and point out some edible plants.

Alice takes samples of those and various other plants and puts them into vials she retrieves from her backpack.

Zabna asks questions about how often the plants can be harvested and how much of their food the tribe get from them.

Plants make up around a quarter of this community's diet. Considering that nothing is cultivated there is an unusual lack of anything that needs preparation to be edible, although Slow does comment on how some plants are best cooked.

That's quite surprising, he'll be interested to see the results of genetic tests when they send their samples back home. "Could you tell me more about the familial relationships in your village? Do you know who each person's birth mother is?"

"We don't know whether some old people are adopted, but..." they explain how everyone's related to each other. A bit under half the older people came from other groups and don't have parents present.

They will find that:

More human-looking mothers have noticeably more human-looking children, even accounting for generation.

Children all look noticeably more human than their mothers.

That's not how evolution generally works. He wonders if he could convince them to give blood samples. Probably not yet.

He asks about whether they've noticed any differences in how quickly things are invented between older people and younger ones.

"Yeah, mostly it's young people who invent stuff."

Do later generations invent more than earlier ones?

They do.

Eventually, Slow gets curious about Alice's backpack and takes a closer look at it.

She takes it off when it becomes clear what he's looking at. It's a fairly normal hiking backpack. It has nicely padded shoulder straps and internal structure to keep it from putting too much pressure on her back. It isn't strictly necessary given her body but they prefer not to be obviously inhuman. "Do you have any questions?"

"What's it made from?"