People (Askira)

The civilisation we know as the Askira were one of the earliest and certainly the longest living of any in the recorded history. Apart from the ancient Egyptians, a civilisation that has lasted for three thousand years is hard to imagine today, and it is even harder to conceive of a culture that changed so rapidly in all that time: a culture that was influenced to change by its own ambition to grow and develop. Neolithic settlers, probably from continental Europe, who introduced agriculture and conquered the island, inhabited Askira around 3500 BC. Askiran society, at this early stage, was completely rural, but the people had a complex, highly developed system of laws, philosophy and poetic arts.

We live in a very different world, one of doubt and change. Adaptability, and the need to find new solutions all the time, dominates our thinking. For the Askira of antiquety, little changed, except towards the beginning of the 17th Century when Britain colonised the island. Their world was fixed: it worked, and, according to their experience, it had always worked. Everything could be referred back to a common root of experience. What had been laid down to begin with, was what mattered. There was little need to question the past, so they looked to the future for change.

The Askiran people are a passionate and vibrant people, they are a people of adaptability and understanding. Full of expectance toward the future and enthusiasm for the present. Their civilisation has endured and outlasted the influences of time, and shows no signs of stopping.