The Fourth Hominid Age is sometimes called the Age of Rebuilding. During this time, survivors of the Great Cataclysm began to come back together and rebuilt towns, cities, and civilizations.
It also marked a period when Dream Force was no longer as abundant as it had been during the Fifth and Sixth Epochs. For the first time, some hominids were born without the instinctive and innate ability to use magic. Some retained that instinctive ability, but they became increasingly rare, and the ability often skipped many generations.
Hominids compensated in two ways: studying lore to learn magic that had once been innate, and developing tools to ease labor that once could be done by magic. Humans had to learn to forge metals and craft weapons rather than conjure them or transmute them from other substances. House that could at one time been created by magic had to be assembled with tools and hard labor.