Deposition Site 12, Late Screen Age. Recovered: two ceremonial vessels of fired clay, both bearing the dark residue of a bitter sacramental infusion (see the Cup Cult, catalogue folios 40 through 90); a folded rectangle of pressed pulp itemizing offerings and their cost in the standard tokens; two seating platforms placed at a fixed ritual distance, neither too near nor too far, indicating a highly codified rite of approach.
We designate this the Assessment Rite. Two Ancients, previously unknown to one another, were brought before these vessels to undergo mutual examination. The evidence is unambiguous. Both individuals prepared their skins with scented oils and adorned themselves with their finest cloth, a display of status wholly disproportionate to a mere sharing of infusion. This was a trial. Each was measuring the other for fitness to enter a lifelong pact of shelter and provision.
Note the wear patterns on the folded ledger: creased and recreased along a single seam, as though gripped and released many times. We now believe the ceremony was governed by acute dread. The Ancients did not know whether they would be chosen. They came anyway, oiled and adorned, and sat at the ordained distance, and drank the bitter infusion slowly to prolong the verdict.
Most artifacts of this age we recover in the thousands. The Assessment Rite we recover, always, in pairs. One cup is meaningless. The rite required a second.
These were a people who could not evaluate their own worth in solitude, and so devised a sacrament in which two strangers sat across a small table and, over a single cooling cup, decided whether the other was reason enough to stay.