This story is set almost 3000 years before the beginning of human history, when people lived in small hunter-gatherer tribes. In those days people lived from hand-to-mouth in the daily struggle for food, much like wild animals do today. About 10,000 years ago, in what is now the country of Syria, things changed forever. People began farming, and food became abundant. It is possible that a young girl might have been the first person to realize that plants come from seeds, and invented farming, as Suchi does in this story. The entire course of human history may have changed because of the insight and courage of one young woman.