It must be pointed out at the very beginning of this particular history that it differs from many ‘histories’ currently popular. It differs in kind, a fact that the judicious reader must always take into consideration. For far too long Yilanè history has been the province of the fabulist and the dreamer. Whereas the intelligent Yilanè would be offended at any guesswork or wild speculation in a physics or a biological text, the same reader will allow any sort of imaginary excess in a work of history. A perfect example of fiction purporting to be fact is the currently popular history of this world that describes how a giant meteor struck the Earth 75* million years ago and wiped out 85% of the species then alive. It goes on to explain in great detail the manner in which warm-blooded creatures developed and became the dominant life forms on this planet. This sort of thing is what the present authors deplore; wild speculation instead of accurate historical research. No meteor of that size ever struck the Earth. The world as we see it is the world as it always has been, always will be, world without end. It is necessary, therefore, in the light of other works of this nature, that we define the term history before we can proceed.

History, as it is known today, is far too often a very inexact science, so inexact that it is more fiction that fact, more speculation than presentation. This is due to intrinsic aspects of the Yilanè nature. We care little where we have been—but we know exactly where we are going. We are happy with changes of a short duration while at the same time we demand that the future shall be as the present, changeless and unchangeable. Since this need for long-term continuity is essential to our very nature we tend to feel unhappy about the past because it might have contained long-term changes that we would find offensive. Therefore we refer vaguely to ‘the egg of time’ and assume in doing so that this was when the world was born, whole and new—and changeless ever since.

Which is of course nonsense. The moment has now arrived in Yilanè history to declare that history as we have known it is worthless. We could have referred to this present work as new history, but refrain since this gives an element of credence to the ‘old-history’. We therefore reject all other works of history to this date and declare that there is now only one history. This one.