The first humans known to history were a loose collection of tribes known as the Nandi or Painted People. They were primitive and brutish without a written language or permanent habitations. They were nomads who followed the migration of beasts in each of the lands that they were found. The Painted People lived by hunting and gathering. Little mention of them is found in any of the histories of the first five ages. It may be that they were regarded as little more than beasts by the Elder Races.
During the Sixth Age, the Dragon Princes elevated some of these humans to servanthood. They were clothed, taught High Speech and civilized -- some were tutored in the arts and sciences. These Meni lived and bred apart from the Nandi and by the end of that age were almost a race unto themselves. At the conclusion of the War of Four Lands, having taken no great part in the conflict, these civilized Meni were positioned to inherit that which was abandoned by their masters.
In most places, the Meni were eventually reabsorbed by the Nandi, but some continued, in notable pockets among their distant cousins and were distinguished from them by their propensity to settle, develop agriculture, and animal husbandry. Among these were the Tren of Westrun, the Shan in the great valleys of Eastrun, the Fahr in the Ice Plains of Northrun and the Saba on the Sea Coasts of Southrun. Each of these went on to develop cultures and languages that were distinct from one another.
The most prosperous of the Meni, however, were those who lived near the seat of power of the rapidly eroding principalities in what is presently called the Provinces. Their speech and culture was heavily flavored by their former masters and their way of life. While they were never able to rise to the glory that had been their estate, they lived on in close approximation of it and only slowly lost ground in the arts and sciences.
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