First
Appearance: Marvel Mystery Comics (Vol. 1) #22, August 1941 (Golden Age); The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #10, March 1965 (1st Modern Appearance)
The Savage Land is an artificially created tropical
forest region nestled amidst a ring of volcanic mountains
on the icy continent of Antarctica. Ages ago, the enigmatic
other dimensional entities known as the Beyonders contacted
an alien race called the Nuwali, offering to pay the
Nuwali to create a game preserve on Earth stocked with
the fauna and flora of various geological periods. Hence,
the Nuwali created the Savage Land as a wildlife preserve
where Earth's life forms could be studied under relatively
controlled conditions. The Nuwali also created similar
preserves on other planets on behalf of the Beyonders.
The Nuwali constructed advanced technological devices
within caverns beneath the Savage Land that helped to
give it a tropical climate. But the main means of heating
the Savage Land was the ring of active volcanoes surrounding
it. Presumably, the Nuwali chose the site of the Savage
Land knowing that the volcanic heat would enable them
to create a tropical environment best suited to the
life of the Mesozoic Era (the "age of dinosaurs")
once the climate of that era changed over the rest of
the planet.
Over a period of many millions of years within the
Savage Land, the Nuwali preserved many of Earth's life
forms past the point that these species became extinct
in the outside world. Hence, plant and animal species
from the Triassic period (the beginning of the age of
dinosaurs) through the Pleistocene (the "Ice Age")
continued to flourish there. Into the Savage Land the Nuwali also brought the Man-Apes,
an evolutionary forebear of Homo Sapiens, as well as
early examples of Homo Sapiens itself. Finally, however, the Beyonders apparently lost interest
in the Savage Land and the similar habitats on other
worlds, and the Nuwali abandoned them. Apparently all
of the habitats collapsed except the Savage Land.
In the centuries before the worldwide disaster known
as the Great Cataclysm, in which the continent of Atlantis
sank, the people of Atlantis built a great worldwide
empire and achieved scientific and technological heights
still unsurpassed in many areas of research today. Several
small tribes of nomadic Atlanteans sailed to Antarctica
and settled within the great caverns lying beneath the
frozen wastelands bordering the Savage Land. Eventually,
these Atlanteans discovered an immense cavern containing
the machinery that helped to regulate climate conditions
in the Savage Land. Atlantean scientists made considerable
improvements in the machinery and extended its range
to cover certain areas of the surface beyond the Savage
Land. The scientists used other technological devices
left behind by the Nuwali to create incredible means
of amusement for their people. The Atlanteans soon named
their Antarctic colony "Pangea" after their
word for "paradise."
Word of Pangea spread back to Atlantis as well as to
other nations of that time, such as Valusia. Soon, Pangea
became a leading center of trade and the world's first
amusement and recreation center. The Savage Land served
as stock lands for various forms of wildlife, many examples
of which wore imported into Pangea. The Atlantean scientists in Pangea turned there attention
to genetic engineering, experimenting upon Man-Apes
they had brought from the Savage Land and using equipment
left behind by the Nuwali. Thus, the Atlantean scientists
genetically altered the bodies of the beast-men into
bird-people (the Aerians), monkey-people (the Tree People),
fish-people (theTubanti), and other animal-like races,
all of which had human-like intelligence. The Atlanteans
initially used these animal-people as laborers in the
Pangean amusement center
The animal-people grew increasingly restive at being
treated as slaves, and eventually the Atlanteans of
Pangea built fully automated, self-repairing maintenance
machinery, eliminating the need for the animal-people
to work as laborers. The Atlanteans then confined the
animal-people to a section of Pangea far removed from
their own. The animal-people finally rose in rebellion
and, after weeks of warfare, defeated the Pangean Atlanteans.
The animal-people demanded equal rights as sentient
beings, and so the Atlanteans further extended the range
of the climate control machinery so that it turned all
of the frozen wasteland above the underground Pangea
colony into a tropical environment. The animal-people
then settled in unpopulated areas of the surface of
Pangea.
When the Great Cataclysm struck, the continent of Atlantis
sank and the Atlantean Empire came to an end. The Cataclysm
caused the Savage Land and Pangea to sink below sea
level, but thanks to the surrounding mountains, neither
area was submerged beneath the sea. The climate-control
mechanisms were so well built that they survived the
sinking, of the landmass and continued to be operational. However, three forths of the population of the Savage
Land and Pangea were killed in the upheaval, The rest
sank swiftly into barbarism, and soon, as a result of
widespread violence, only a tenth of the human population
that existed before the Cataclysm was still alive. Peace
eventually returned, and the human beings of Pangea
and the Savage Land struggled back upward toward civilization,
forming tribes such as the Fall People.
The Englishman Lord Kevin Plunder and the American
Shanna O'Hara, better known as Ka-Zar and Shanna the
She-Devil, came to live in the Savage Land in recent
times, and in exploring the Savage Land and Pangea encountered
many of its diverse races and tribes). In the Savage
Land itself lived the Fall People, the Lizard-Men of
the city of Vala-Kuri, the Neanderthal-like Man-Apes,
the Sun People, who worship the sun god Garokk, and
the primitive Swamp Men. Among the races living in Pangea
were the winged humanoid Aerians, the nomadic Cat People
of Pandor, the humanoid Lemurans, the pterodactyl-like
Pterons, and the amphibious fish-like Tubanti. The full
number of races that lived in the Savage Land and Pangea
is as yet unknown.
The Savage Land was also the home of the sorceress
Zaladane, who became priestess and queen of the Sun
People, and of the Savage Land mutates, who were Swamp
Men given superhuman powers through artificially induced
mutations. Later, the alien marauder Terminus (or, possibly
a pawn of his acting on his behalf) wreaked extraordinary
destruction within the Savage Land and Pangea, destroying
the climate-control machinery and snuffing the volcanoes
surrounding the Savage Land. Terminus slaughtered great
numbers of the sentient beings living in Pangea through
the vast destructive energies he wielded, and, with
the volcanoes extinct and the climate-control machinery
wrecked, virtually all the other inhabitants of these
two regions were slain by the Antarctic cold, which
swiftly spread over both the Savage Land and Pangea. Ka-Zar, Shanna, and their saber-toothed tiger companion,
Zabu, all survived the disaster and found temporary
refuge in the outside world.
A considerable number of the sentient inhabitants of
the Savage Land and Pangea, including Zaladane and the
other Savage Land Mutates, escaped the disaster by seeing
through a dimensional warp into an other dimensional
world. The sentient beings who thus escaped returned
to the Savage Land at the time that the god-like High
Evolutionary set about his preparations to restore it
to its previous state. The anonymous human being who
was transformed into the living image of Garokk voluntarily
sacrificed his life energies to power the devices that
the High Evolutionary used to return the Savage Land
to its tropical state. Apparently, the High Evolutionary returned the Savage Land's climate control machinery
to working order and has reactivated the surrounding
volcanoes; he also repopulated the Savage Land with
its animal and plant life from different ages, possibly
through cloning previously obtained cell samples. Ka-Zar
and Shanna returned to the Savage Land to live
there, bringing with them Zabu and their new child.
