the Mediterranean; the gliksin ancestor eagerly sets off to explore the new, strange place, while the barast ancestor notes its existence and goes home. This is consistent with their hunter-gatherer lifestyle which favors high levels of knowledge concerning the land and low migration, including a general avoidance of danger. Also, it is mentioned that barast are naturally of higher intelligence than gliksin, with average IQ being 10% higher before a several-generation eugenic campaign, during which the least intelligent 10% were voluntarily sterilized to increase the species intelligence (no data is given on the post-campaign IQ comparison). It is theorized that this difference is an additional reason for the lower occurrence of extinction events: because of their higher intelligence, the barast were able to recognize far earlier in their civilization that over-hunting would deplete a species. The climate in the barast world is also somewhat cooler, because of the lack of greenhouse gases compared to the gliksins' Earth. Barasts are not as heat-tolerant as gliksins, probably because they evolved on a cooler Earth and also due to their greater muscle mass. As a result, tropical regions of their Earth are just as underpopulated as the polar regions on the gliksins' Earth. A significant story feature is the state of the Earth's magnetic field. In the barast world a reversal of polarity happened shortly before the story starts and caused no noticeable harm to the barasts. As to why the pole reversals are off by several years, it is ascribed to random small differences over the intervening 40,000 years. In the gliksin world it is happening as the stories take place; this has an effect on the minds of gliksins, whose brain structures are different from the barasts' (see Religion). Language With the use of computer-aided communication devices, readers get to see only a glimpse of barast language. A dooslarm basadlarm refers to something like a judicial preliminary hearing with a literal translation of "asking small before asking large." The phrase Dusble korbul to kalbtadu is translated as "In a quantum-computing facility." Barast language is rendered as English when the action takes place in the barast world. One aspect of the language which can be discerned through the use of words like "gristle!" and "marrowless bone" for curses is that this register of speech is derived directly from real-world items. The customary barast greeting is "Healthy day." Barast swear words do not