Rough hands tear thick animal hides using sharp flints on the western border of the garden long before the first millennium b.c. The climate holds a biting chill. The jagged terrain shreds unprotected skin. A constant dread of predators in the shadows breeds profound physical exhaustion. Every muscle aches from the sheer weight of basic movement. The Creator speaks into the hostile dirt to offer ultimate consolation.
The first humans shelter within the Cave of Treasures. They drag heavy stones across the dirt to form a crude stone altar. They need this structure to appeal to their Maker. Survival outside the garden requires brutal labor. They cut hardened frankincense weighing roughly two pounds. They gather desert figs to stave off starvation. The Ethiopic manuscript tradition grounds this early isolation in a grueling caloric deficit rather than abstract spiritual sorrow. They navigate primitive subsistence living day by day.
The crude stone altar operates as a basic mechanism for coping with catastrophic loss. Stacking heavy rocks gives idle hands a specific task. Humans construct physical monuments to manage sudden environmental shifts. The act of gathering unrefined gold rods serves to anchor a frightened mind in physical reality.
A starving man must ignore memories to work the heavy stone directly in front of his feet.
The sharp flints and stacked rocks eventually dissolved into the sediment of the surrounding hills. This early labor established a rigid template for physical survival that unrecorded workers followed until their final breaths.