Understanding saturation and AA collisions with an eA collider

The initial conditions in high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions are determined by the small momentum fraction part of the nuclear wavefunction. This is the regime of gluon saturation and the most direct way to experimentally study it would be deep inelastic scattering at a high energy electron ion collider (EIC). This talk discusses some of the connections between physics at the EIC and the initial stage of relativistic heavy ion collisions. We argue that measurements at an EIC will provide detailed high-precision information about the parameters for the initial conditions, transverse geometry and longitudinal correlations that will be crucial in understanding the initial stage of a heavy ion collision.