Dear readers,

When this story was finished, I announced that I intended to stop writing fan fiction. I am indeed writing a book of original fiction (when I'm not working or studying). However, several people asked to let them know when I wrote anything else, and while I am committed to not writing whole fan novels, I was inspired recently to work on an old idea for a bit of fan historiography. This is a small sample of what could be an attempt to unify the many strands of DC lore and actual history into a single narrative (in the style of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or the works of Philip Jose Farmer). Some events are an exercise in using DC stories to explain history, and others are using history to explain DC stories.

Note: if I had the time and effort to make a complete timeline, we could say it counts in the 'canon' of my Batman 1939 series, meaning what lore I cared to include isn't meant to be exhaustive to any commercial DC timeline.

Let me know what you think and feel free to comment with events of your own.

The Secret History of the DC Universe

~50000 BC: A meteorite strikes the steppes of central Asia. Local hunting bands who witness the impact mostly keep their distance, but a lone hunter approaches and is bathed in strange radiation. This begins a long tradition of fools approaching dangerous objects and getting irradiated, though the practice did not become popular until the late 19th century.

~14000 BC: Earliest firm evidence of Homo Sapiens Magi, aka mages, human practitioners of magic. There has never been consensus on what magic is or why certain people can control it, but most mages agree that their power seems hereditary, suggesting they are a race or subspecies. Mages have been found across the world, hinting that the magic trait is latent in much of humanity, though odds of manifestation are very low without a recent magical ancestor.

The earliest mages known to mundane historians were members of Egyptian royalty around 3000 BC. However, magical historians have writings and relics confirming mages as early as 14000 BC. Many hailed from landmasses that no longer exist, including Atlantis, Lemuria, Thule, Mu, Leng, and Carcosa. The old records show a consistent pattern of said ancestors becoming most public and active shortly before their entire landmass disappears. Wise mages in later eras have found a lesson in that.

Very ambitious mages sometimes attempt to travel through time. It is difficult to prove whether any have succeeded, so rumors of mages visiting even earlier periods remain conjecture.

~3000 BC - 1099 BC: The Heroic Age. A period of history distinguished by the presence of godlike beings who performed supernatural acts and bothered interesting humans. Mainstream modern society believes surviving accounts are myths, some religious traditions still revive them as gods, and a few secret groups - notably the mage community - accepts their existence but hold more nuanced views on their divinity. For simplicity, mages broadly call these beings the Pantheon, though it's unknown how much the beings themselves identified as one group. Some mages believe these 'gods' were indeed gods or spirits, others suspect they were fellow magic humans (albeit an incredibly powerful breed). As the name implies, the Pantheon was most active in the Greek diaspora of the Mediterranian, though similar beings as far afield as Australia or the Americas were active at the same time.

Neither mages nor anyone else are sure why the Pantheon appeared when it did, nor why they suddenly disappeared just after the Trojan War. Regardless, the Heroic Age got its name because the Pantheon could and frequently did breed with mortals. The offspring of these encounters were inevitably superhuman, and these 'heroes' often grew to perform great deeds, conquering foreign kingdoms (often ruled by fellow offspring of the Pantheon) or slaying hideous monsters (also offspring of the Pantheon). Some heroes were granted their gifts from gods for other reasons, but most were born that way.

It is worth noting that while these gods and heroes influenced mortal history, their ambitions were usually canceled out by rivals or even outsmarted by mortals. The lasting effects of two thousand years of public supernatural activity is so indistinguishable from regular human affairs that modern historians have no problem relegating the former as pure myth.

1897 BC: Survivors of the all-female Amazon tribes of the Black Sea region retreat to their last city, Themyscira. Armies led by Greek heroes have enslaved most of their people after years of ambushes, betrayals, and open battle. The Amazons pray to their patron goddesses for deliverance. Hearing their pleas, these goddesses cast Themyscira and its island into the open sea, shrouded from sailing vessels. In doing so, the goddesses bless the Amazons with many gifts to ease their new life, yet they also swear the Amazons to certain obligations. Among these, no man may ever visit the island. Amazons do travel out on royal missions, though such missions wane over the centuries until total isolation is enforced.

1279 BC: Birth of Teth-Adam, son of Pharaoh Ramessees the II.

1271 – 1108 BC: The Trojan War, the greatest in antiquity. Actually a series of conflicts by confederations of mostly Greek allies (the Mycenaeans) and clients of the Hittite Empire (the Trojans). The largest campaigns focused on the city of Troy, a major trade city at the mouth of the Dardanelles. Famously, the wars involved most of the known Pantheon and heroes of the day. When it was over, many of these heroes were slain, and the Pantheon soon disappeared, abruptly ending the Age of Heroes. Notably, the conflicts saw the last public appearances of both Amazons and Atlantians before both withdrew to their hidden homes.

1265 - 1252 BC: Raiding parties from minor Atlantian kingdoms attack coastal nations of the eastern Mediterranean. Though initially few in number, they take advantage of the chaos of the Trojan War to burn and plunder, capturing slave soldiers and luring mercenaries to their cause. These growing Atlantian hosts are later known to history as the mysterious Sea Peoples. After destroying the Hittite Empire and fighting Egypt to a draw, the surviving Atlantians disappear under the waves with their treasure, leaving their enemies and followers none the wiser about their identity.

331 BC: A Kryptonian probe visits the Sol system during a multi-century lap of local star clusters. Its main objective is to make contact with the Martians - a distant race rumored to have recently achieved interstellar travel in the area. However, the probe arrives shortly after one of Mars' bitter civil wars which left surface settlements atomized and survivors hidden in underground camps. Krypton's probe fails to detect the survivors, partly because they had bombed themselves back to the Iron Age (Mars, by its nature, was always at minimum in the Iron Age), and partly because telepaths like Martians emit odd EM fields.

The probe records Mars as abandoned but detects a sapient species living on Earth. Like its neighbor, Earth is found at an exceptional moment: the height of what would later be called the Axial Age. Luminaries like Confucius, the Buddha, Plato, and several authors of Jewish holy books had all shared their lessons within two centuries of the probe's arrival. Never before had the average Earthling's philosophical and spiritual awareness reached such a lofty state and future generations would often come up short.

Krypton saw itself as the highest authority on enlightenment, and they designed their probes to judge an alien culture's worth. Had the probe arrived even an instant earlier by galactic reckoning, it's rating of Earth would have roughly translated to "Primitive: barbaric". Instead, the probe recorded Earth as "Primitive: mostly barbaric".

Much, much later, a Kryptonian researcher named Jor-El would discover this probe's record and decide that Earthlings could be a great people; they wished to be; they only lacked the light to show them the way.