FirstCiv is an archive built on a simple rule: communities own what they share. The reference editions on this site — 22 cultures, built from openly-licensed sources — are our demonstration of care, not a claim of endorsement. They remain clearly labelled as reference material until the communities they describe choose to claim, govern, correct, or remove them. The tools for that are now live: communities can contribute language, knowledge, and story under documented, revocable consent; every contribution is reviewed by a human before publication; and consent can be withdrawn at any time, with removal honoured.
We are outsiders to the cultures presented here. We mark this day not by speaking for anyone, but by keeping the door open: if this heritage is yours, this page is yours to govern. — The FirstCiv team
From a village to forever
Five steps turn one afternoon’s recording into permanent, community-owned memory.
Pack your kit
Claim a Field Pass — your identity on the archive. No gatekeeping: a student, a traveller, or a community elder all carry the same key.
Visit & record
Sit with a community. Record a song, a dance, a craft, a dialect, a story — phone footage is enough. Consent of the keepers is logged with every upload.
Community review
Community moderators review every recording — language, meaning and provenance — before anything is published. No contribution is verified or published without a human decision.
Mint a Heritage Tablet
Your contribution becomes a Heritage Tablet — a digital artifact with permanent provenance. The originating community is named as origin and co-owner.
Earn & sustain
Contributors earn $LORE. Whenever a Tablet is collected or referenced, royalties flow to the community fund — heritage that pays the people who keep it alive.
Built for the keepers
A clay tablet for the digital age
Each verified recording is sealed on the Lineage ledger as a Heritage Tablet — permanent provenance, the community named as origin, and royalties routed home. Collect one and you fund the people who keep the tradition alive.
The source comes first
Extraction is the old story of heritage. FirstCiv is built the other way around: consent is required, ownership stays with the community, and the money flows back to the people whose memory it is.
Consent first
Nothing is recorded or minted without the documented consent of the community keepers. Consent is itself stored in the archive.
Community-owned
The originating community is named as origin and primary beneficiary of every Heritage Tablet — and can veto or withdraw a record.
Royalties home
70% of every collection and reference royalty flows to the community fund. Contributors earn, but the source earns more.
Permanent & open
Provenance is public and immutable; the media is mirrored across open storage so no single institution can lock it away.
Somewhere, an elder is the last who remembers
A song, a story, a way of weaving. You don’t need to be a scholar — only present, and respectful. Record it before it is gone, and let it belong to the people it came from.