While Two Rivers Outpost continued to grow and prosper as a permanent settlement, mountain road construction continued. After nine years, spanning five-hundred miles, the outpost of Canyon Valley was established. It too grew and prospered and trade among it, Two Rivers and The Grove expanded. Agriculturally, each of the humex settlements enjoyed differing altitudes and climates and therefore a unique variety of fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices (with their medical as well as culinary applications). Wagon and raft manufacturing burgeoned with population growth. Commerce thrived as commercial administrative techniques gained more sophistication. With more human bands joining the humex society, more diverse populations required increasingly more complex cultural assimilation methods in an effort to keep the new society humming as seamlessly as possible. And because the next segment of mountain trail would take fourteen years covering eight-hundred fifty miles, the primary goal of this society – Nexra – was becoming a distant memory as families settled into permanent routines amid the comforts that constant improvements in ancient technology produced .
Somewhere beyond Canyon Valley Outpost, a second major river was discovered. It ran parallel to the humex river for hundreds of miles before it disappeared off to the west just as it had appeared suddenly from the south. In the past, there had been many encounters with human tribes wandering into humex settlements from the wilderness. They brought with them their cultures and their nuanced living techniques and gadgets and many were useful to the humex. But the encounter with the peoples of the second river turned out to be the most propitious immigration project for the fledgling humex and would be considered so for hundreds of years. These people had discovered copper and basic smelting techniques. The far more intelligent humex brought these people into their society and exponentially expanded smelting methods and uses for the new copper discovery. Initially, the most helpful products resulting from the process brought to the market by the new profession of metallurgy were fasteners of all types – nails, hinges, and L-brackets. Other utilitarian inventions were the bronze wheel surface covering, cooking utensils and farm implements. Well down on the list was the production of an occasional weapon which slowly but surely began replacing stone weapons and tools. The humex, in more than seventy-five years, had never had occasion to move into a defense mentality. They had been fortunate.
With the continued expansion of commercialism, came the need for a recognized and guaranteed medium of exchange. So far, barter had been at the heart of all commercial transactions. Few private barter transactions took place because they were complicated and long winded, that is to say, there were many unrelated parties to the original transaction that had to be satisfied before the transaction could be completed. With the advent of copper, money was invented to replace the barter system. A central bank was established and barter items were exchanged for money. Commercial transactions became easier and much more efficient, and, private transactions blossomed. And because of the humex social philosophy, the tide of the expanding economy lifted all boats - meaning prosperity was shared by all members of society. Money was one of the great advances, along with copper, that propelled the humex society far forward.
