Conworld random thread

[Raphael]

My main conculture, Péchkizhénk, has an official list of rulers - kings and sovereign queens - that starts with six people who never actually ruled - instead, they were early leaders of the revolution that would eventually lead to the establishment of Péchkizhénk, who died in various ways before Péchkizhénk was founded. After the founding of Péchkizhénk, these six people were posthumously declared to have been kings and queens.

And now I wonder: has any real-life culture ever done anything like that?

[Richard W]

King Arthur is the obvious example.

In a different manner, we have the Julius Caesar being almost regarded as the first Roman emperor.

[Man in Space]

My main conculture, Péchkizhénk, has an official list of rulers - kings and sovereign queens - that starts with six people who never actually ruled - instead, they were early leaders of the revolution that would eventually lead to the establishment of Péchkizhénk, who died in various ways before Péchkizhénk was founded. After the founding of Péchkizhénk, these six people were posthumously declared to have been kings and queens.

And now I wonder: has any real-life culture ever done anything like that?

King Arthur is the obvious example.

In a different manner, we have the Julius Caesar being almost regarded as the first Roman emperor.

Not real life, unfortunately, but the Known Universe in Dune is like that. Alexander the Great is considered to be the first Ruler of Known Space, and the presidency of the United States is considered to be the foundation of the House of Washington.

[Ares Land]

My main conculture, Péchkizhénk, has an official list of rulers - kings and sovereign queens - that starts with six people who never actually ruled - instead, they were early leaders of the revolution that would eventually lead to the establishment of Péchkizhénk, who died in various ways before Péchkizhénk was founded. After the founding of Péchkizhénk, these six people were posthumously declared to have been kings and queens.

And now I wonder: has any real-life culture ever done anything like that?

Kings of Rome: at least Romulus and Numa Pompilius are legendary. The list of kings of Athens is largely mythical. Ditto for most city states. (The early kings of Sparta are probably legendary.)
Closer to home, in the Middle Ages, French chroniclers included Pharamond (most likely legendary) in the King list.

Louis XVII, son of Louis XVI never reigned. To monarchists, he was still legitimate king of France and when monarchy was restored, his uncle reigned as Louis XVIII.
Same thing for Napoleon II, son of Napoleon. His cousin reign as Napoleon III.

The list of king of France traditionally starts with Clovis, and includes the Merovingians and the Carolingians. They were actually king of the Franks. France can't really be said to have existed for that period (or, rather, the transition from West Francia to France, and from king of the Franks to kings of France is gradual, with no clear cut-off point.)
FWIW the Carolingians also count as Holy Roman Emperors.

In much the same vein, isn't Alfred the Great counted as king of England?

[zompist]

My main conculture, Péchkizhénk, has an official list of rulers - kings and sovereign queens - that starts with six people who never actually ruled - instead, they were early leaders of the revolution that would eventually lead to the establishment of Péchkizhénk, who died in various ways before Péchkizhénk was founded. After the founding of Péchkizhénk, these six people were posthumously declared to have been kings and queens.

And now I wonder: has any real-life culture ever done anything like that?

Gotta read my China book. As I note there, the founder of the Zhou dynasty (11th century BCE), as an act of filial piety, declared his father the first king of the dynasty.

The Manchus can be said to have done the same: they counted Nurhaci and Hong Taiji as the first two emperors, though they both died before the Manchus conquered China.

Saul, David, and Solomon may be another example. They were probably no more than highland chiefs.

[Raphael]

Thank you, everyone, that's very informative!

Not real life, unfortunately, but the Known Universe in Dune is like that. Alexander the Great is considered to be the first Ruler of Known Space, and the presidency of the United States is considered to be the foundation of the House of Washington.

Oh, damn Frank Herbert - did he have to come up with that before I did?

Gotta read my China book. As I note there, the founder of the Zhou dynasty (11th century BCE), as an act of filial piety, declared his father the first king of the dynasty.

I'd say that's the real-life example that's the most like what I'm thinking of.

[Emily]

what would be a good mixture to make white ink/paint for early writing? in my conworld, i want writing to develop with light-colored ink on dark-colored paper (or parchment etc.) instead of the other way around, and for the first paper i just have them using the dark-colored bark from a tree whose bark peels off like eucalyptus (but thinner), but i'm not really sure what would work to have white ink or paint with any reliable consistency. so far what i've come up with is white sap from some kind of plant, mixed with ash to make it thicker, but i have no idea if this would actually work

[WeepingElf]

Chalk?

[jal]

Chalk?

That would be the most obvious I think, also not decolouring much. Needs some glue to hold it together though, once dry.


JAL

[Ahzoh]

Been compiling a list of Vrkhazhian deities:

Major deities:

• Ak'al (Aḳlum) - Sun goddess, queen of creation, guardian of the day sky
• Sed (Sēdim) - Earth god, king of creation, creator of plants and animals
• Mamu (Mamûm) - Moon goddess, creator and protector of women, guardian of the night sky
• Narad (Nardim) - Moon god, creator and protector of men, guardian of the night sky

Lesser deities:

• Mazi (Mazûm) - personification of the sea, goddess of storms and bad weather
• Kap (Kapum) - personification of rivers, goddess of civilzation
• Ap'akh (Aṗḫim) - god of birds, governs the birds which bring the souls of the dead up into the sky to become stars
• others

I wish I was good at making those Mesopotamian-style ancient creation stories.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Ap'akh (Aṗḫim) - god of birds, governs the birds which bring the souls of the dead up into the sky to become stars

I like this one.

[Torco]

Azoh's gods give me a vibe similar to that of pathfinder's boneyard plane, especially the psychopomp birds and both genders having a moon deity.

what would be a good mixture to make white ink/paint for early writing? in my conworld, i want writing to develop with light-colored ink on dark-colored paper (or parchment etc.) instead of the other way around, and for the first paper i just have them using the dark-colored bark from a tree whose bark peels off like eucalyptus (but thinner), but i'm not really sure what would work to have white ink or paint with any reliable consistency. so far what i've come up with is white sap from some kind of plant, mixed with ash to make it thicker, but i have no idea if this would actually work

you could ground egg shells very thin, or some chalk and/or gypsum, and probably use the very same egg whites to give the whole thing consistency. in replacing chalk, consider that almost anything that's light enough looks good over black, if the black is black enough: light coloured dirt, sand, gypsum, dolomite, rust, pine sawdust, etc.

[Otto Kretschmer]

How plausible is this guys?

Austronesians reach China in the Shang or early Zhou Period and bring Chinese settlers to the Philipines. They themselves Sinicize and take over all of Philipines, the Malay Archipelago and Japan, creating a parallel Sinitic maritime civilization.

They speak a group of Sinitic languages that diverged early from Chinese and write on a script descended from Oracle Bone Script

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Probably not terribly.

[Otto Kretschmer]

Probably not terribly.

One hypothesis about the origins of the Malagasy people is that they were brought to Madagascar by seafarers from another ethnic group since East Barito speakers have no naval tradition of their own.

Or it could start as a Chinese trading town in the Philipines. The Chinese did not have blue water vessels until the Han Dynasty when they got junks from the Austronesians. This could change.

[jal]

One hypothesis about the origins of the Malagasy people is that they were brought to Madagascar by seafarers from another ethnic group since East Barito speakers have no naval tradition of their own.

This reeks a bit of "Egyptians couldn't have built the pyramids by themselves" racist nonsense.


JAL

[Rounin Ryuuji]

It does also strike one as probably not terribly plausible.

[Moose-tache]

I have a question about matrilineality.

In ML, the line of descent goes from mothers to daughters. However, nearly all ML societies have some special roles for men, such as leadership roles like chief, king, etc.

The thing that I can't find anyone talking about, is the distribution and typology of the two resulting systems for allocating male leadership roles. The first option is that it is the mother's sons who are elligible to be leaders. In other words, all the leaders belong to the same inherited ML clan. When a leader dies, his brother becomes leader, and when there are no more brothers it's time for their oldest sister's sons to have a go. This system is described in detail for the Powhatan of Virginia. The second option is that it is the mother's sons-in-law who are elligible, i.e. those of different inherited clans who have "married into" her clan. At first this might seem a little strange, but it has some key advantages. First, in a matrilocal society, this ensures that the ruling men actually stay physically close to the ML clan, rather than marrying away to points unknown. Second, this gives whoever is in charge a chance to select their successor. The leader doesn't bequeth his position anyway, so it doesn't matter if his inherited clan matches the ruling ML clan. This second type of ML is attested among the Buganda.

My problem is that I can't find anyone who seems to have the slightest interest in, or even awareness of, sketching out where and when these systems are found, how they evolve to/from each other, or how they interect with other social systems. Even in academic papers, people talk about "matrilineality" as if it's one thing. Does anyone know of any literature I could read that actually addresses this topic?

[zompist]

Have you read Marvin Harris's Cultural Materialism? It contains a short discussion of matrilinearity, and probably more interesting for you, gives a number of references.

I read a book on the Moso (Naxi), whose title I've unfortunately forgotten. It influenced the Bé quite a bit.

[Moose-tache]

It took some hair-pulling, but apparently the book is called The Rise of Anthropological Theory. It will be a while before I can get my hands on a hardcopy, and e-book textbooks apparently follow the pricing model of ape NFTs.

One of the reasons this is so hard to look up is because so few societies have hereditary leadership anymore. The Cherokee were matrilineal, but their chiefs are elected now. The only societies with proper monarchies these days are patrilineal.