Excellent! Exactly my thoughts ascanius.
I'm excited about that area. I kind of wish it had happened somewhere else so it didn't remind you directly to the Nile, but well.
That area 5 is surely a "new kid on the block" for your early history making!!
Let's wait for your new climatology, but it sure looks like a place that can support a high population even from early neolithic. Whatever way you make it, I don't see that area being under tight control from the culture across the inner sea. At best, colonies with a foreign ruling elite or with a local elite, aligned with the empire, and a stratified population.
Why not just go with it. Make it Oncar and say it has a long history with ancient glory, but time passed politics happened and it divided north and south with the north falling to the empire
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AREA Nº5. History
I am beyond excited about that area!
Area nº5 is actually divided in two, since after cleaning the Wilbur rivers layer there's a bit of space between the two big rivers there. Although, the two areas have always been historically involved, since the north river's civilization gave birth to the one on the southern river, and this southern got its own flavor with time.
Both have had a tumultuous history, both inside their areas and with one another, with different processes of unification and fragmentation, cultural evolution and demographic changes (migrations and invaders).
A few decades before the story takes place, area nº5 was again divided in two big areas, the southern one on a unified phase, but the north was in a fragmentation phase, I'd say divided in at least 4-5 units with tense rivaling relationships and in a decadence period politically and socially. So long story made short, a big war among them exploded and the Empire made a deal with one of those units to divide the area "a la Poland" in pre WW2, so that's how the Empire finally got a piece of it.
SPREAD OF AGRICULTURE MODEL
I've worked on a basic map of agriculture origin and spread on the big eastern continent, and then the first civilization cradles, and guess what, north of area nº5 is actually the original focus of agriculture on the western side of that continent, and probably the oldest civilization cradle.
Of course, as you said Pixie, I should wait until I have the climate stuff to do this, but my fingers were itchy.
So even though I know I will have to make changes possibly when I have the new climatology, I figured I'd have fun guessing anyway.
Since I don't know the climatic details, for now I've settled with replicating (simplified) the 1971 Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza mathematical model, the "wave-of-advance" model (getting dates from Neolithic archeological sites), to predict the spread of early farming on both sides of my eastern continent, since then they were in practice isolated.
The basic idea of the model, based mainly on the theory that the spread of agriculture was linked to migratory movements (increase of population forced demographic expansion) in Europe's case, which is just a theory among many trying to explain said spread of the Neolithic, is that the diffusion rate from the centre of origin averaged about 1km per year.
Here you can see a version of the map originated by said model.
Here (PDF, pg 204) and here (PDF, pg 511), it explains a bit how it was made and its limitations. Even the same authors of said model acknowledge said limitations and in 1984 improved their model (which produced this sort of map, in pg 50).
In my case I've followed the 1971 model's pattern of representing a wave division each 500km=500 years. Again, I've got no info on climate yet or worked out the spread in detail, so for now I'm happy with this general prediction model to start with.
I haven't seen this model applied to a bigger area than Europe, so I'm not sure if from the isthmus up (on the west side of the continent) I should place another center of spread with a south to north wave spread. Issue is, through the two tips that close up the inner sea, population would cross too and they would even get there faster (around 6.000 O.T.) than people migrating from the west side of the original focus (A)(who could get there by 5.000 O.T., around 1k years later), so I'm not sure what the orientation of the waves should point to in that area. Since those migrating from the bottleneck of the inner sea get there before it makes sense they'd determine the general direction of the waves, which fits the direction of the waves emanating from point A.
CRADLES OF CIVILIZATION
What I have clear is that until navigation skill and tech gets to a further level, that big eastern continent, Arlia and possibly Hemlia (the little continent on the south-east) are the only one with humans. I've yet to settle when did humans manage to get and survive there on the last two.
Last edited by groovey; 11-01-2015 at 12:18 PM.
New question for you... Most people today don't think about calenders and watches but time keeping imo is important. So how do you reconcile time in your world? Is it based on the ruler? Some religious event? Astronomy for years? Do your people have the tech for naval clocks? Do they use a standard time? Are they still using variable hours? Do they use lunar months?
Also do they know the size of the world and that its round?
What is the rulers view on tech? Remember Rome theoretically had all our tech up till the early 1900s they just didn't use it because the rulers suppressed it or refused to support it... Further do you have a center of knowledge or is it spread out in multiple places like in modern times...
Lots of questions...just putting them out there for you go think on.
As far as the western continents that are empty. Could there be possibilities with off course arctic crazy survivor journeys? What about a second sentient species? Assuming the conditions are right there's no reason you couldn't do that.
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Hi Durakken! I haven't found the time today to think and write my answer, hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to.
Meanwhile, since the change in orientation of the spread waves on the isthmus and on the inner sea's bottleneck bugged me a bit, I tried to represent said change and the 2 different waves coming in the northern quarter of the continent. It looks a bit messy and confusing so I'm not sure it works. The chronological difference between the two waves is of 500 years, since through the isthmus (blue waves), the spread starts 500 years before it does through the other point (in red), so even tough they overlap, there's a gap of 500 years.
At this point I think I'm overthinking the matter, is there really a change of direction of the waves needed?
Last edited by groovey; 11-02-2015 at 12:23 PM.
Anytime there is a change of direction in movement you have a problem where the direction of spread line becomes unlinked to the radial spread date. That's a major problem with branch line that turns blue unless you mean to indicate the same vertical distance is covered in radically different time lengths.
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Hey groovey, I'm pretty excited with your reasoning as well, as it yields interesting and surprising results.
First of all, I agree with your reasoning, that bottleneck in the East warrants for a new focal point in the waves of expansion. The map in the last post seems more reasonable than the previous one. And, looking at it, it seems that two different cultural groups clashed (or, simply, met) in the area where you plan to place your empire. These groups would have started diverging around 3,000 years before, so their languages, technologies and cultures would be very different by then.
There's a particular area where the exchange would be significant, and you could use this to "explain" the rise of a dominant culture which would later be the empire. What do you think of this?
The area signaled is where the clash seems to have happened around 5000 OT to 4500 OT.
Here's a thought: a dominant culture, "eastern" speaking, controls the area between those two rivers in around 4000 OT. A (any) given technology allows it to spread westwards, displacing the "western" speaking north and south. Later, this early mega-empire collapses but it leaves a cultural and linguistic mark. The population to its north are proper barbarians from the point of view of those who descend from the empire, the kind of nomadic tribes that could spark the formation of new centralized empires.
By the way, you've been providing excellent reading material. Thanks for those sources.
edit: there's an obvious mistake in the quick map I drew.. in blue, you should read "Western Culture", not Eastern.
Last edited by Pixie; 11-03-2015 at 08:48 AM. Reason: correction
like I mentioned before those dates are wrong for when they meat and interact...
Where the blue and red line meet, assuming that they are expanding at the same pace, that blue line is getting to that cross mark in 2250 OT, which is 1750 years later due to having to travel that distance to the west first... It's also probably a bit later due to the initial starting point is lower too. Other than that the curves of the traveled path seems similar enough not to mess about with correcting for that, but yeah... those cultures get there at vastly different times.
Durakken, I finally could muster my answer to your questions.
1 . Calendars
Regarding the measurement of time, I worked on that a while ago. After checking different alternatives, I figured, since the Empire's main God is the Sun, it made the most sense their calendar would be solar, so 365 days and the mandatory leap years.
The official culture is quite advanced when it comes to Astronomy... but, it's an imperial prerogative. Astronomers are halfway between a very restricted guild and a not so secret as restricted social group that live at Court with the Emperor, with 6 (which is THE number for the Empire, because of the 6 gods they have) Masters who oversaw a few other astronomers.
The Emperor is their Boss, they work for him and the knowledge they get is for the Emperor to keep secret or divulge. They are forbidden to share their knowledge with outsiders, becoming traitors and getting executed if they do, so they have to leave their lives behind to join the "guild". Only the Emperor can grant access to new members when they are needed to replace those who die.
They elaborate the yearly calendars (with festivities and special events and a brief message from the Emperor to its people), which could only be sold and distributed (in different quality and format) by the Crown (but often the Crown auctioned the right to do so to others to avoid the work).
So Astronomy is an imperial monopoly like it was in imperial China.
I'm not sure yet what was the event that originated the Old Time, but the New Time is linked to the rebirth of the dynasty that ruled the Empire after a weird supposedly religious experience their founder had.
That's for years, for hours I'm not sure how precise do they need to be, not much I think.
2. At the time of the story, year 833, they have no idea of how big their world is. Since they're advanced enough with Astronomy is almost a given that they had to at least have a strong theory that the world is round.
3. Rulers views on tech. Nice dip into what you mention about Roman emperors here, weird as the source is (I wish I had found a better source to exemplify the matter).
http://www.samizdata.net/2003/07/ter...n-the-fall-of/
For the most part I want to say the Crown promoted science, directly through patronage, and officially with state Academies. They had an advance pre-industrial architecture engineering and as the Romans, were the best at water canalization to bring clean water into the settlements from decent distances, which improved the quality of life, so that and their civic urbanism (more safe and clean) were two of the selling points to win over the new conquered populations. They transformed the important enough settlements quite a bit over time.
You see, after the weird religious experience of the founder of the imperial dynasty, their polis of origin and the people of the other 2 they eventually ruled over, were considered the chosen ones by the Gods to rule over the rest (this of course is a very convenient thesis for them to defend), but they had to show their greatness over the others not just by conquering and converting them, but also by any other means that made them more advanced than the others. They had to be the more advanced power that they knew of, so any foreign tech that they stumbled upon and considered useful, they imported and perfected if they could.
Though it's true that an invention that could ultimately predictably challenge the power of the Crown would be stopped, but such inventions are hard to imagine. Since the Empire is run by bureaucracy and the nobility governing the provinces are technically officers and not feudal lords, the Empire wouldn't oppose to improvements in the economy sectors, in fact it would favor advancements that increased efficiency and reduced costs, not worried that it couldn't deal with the social conflicts it would surely generate.
I'd say the state Academies would be the centre of most knowledge and thus they'd be one in a few important cities. Astronomy, as mentioned though, would only have a centre of knowledge at the Imperial Court and would move with it.
4. About unpopulated continents. It seems a stretch enough that island hoppers got to Oncar (not Arlia like I said in my last post) and Hemlia to be honest. Even on ice ages I think it's hard for people to the other continents and even more to survive. I don't really enjoy fantasy creatures or species, so that's a no for me.
You know, the thing is, the Empire is the one who could make the best navigation charts with stars for ships, but since they mostly do coastal, they wouldn't feel the need. The Arlians could use them more, but don't have the Astronomy knowledge. Can the Empire benefit from selling the Arlians charts without the risk the Arlians could make their own from the ones they bought? What do you think?
Next post: civilization map updated.
Last edited by groovey; 11-04-2015 at 06:01 AM.
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