Zompist Bboard Again

In this thread, I will give a brief overview of the Middle Seas.

But... What are the Middle Seas?

The Middle Seas are (is?) a conworld I first started working on back in... oh? 2002. I've played with it, abandoned it as a crap project, taken up again, rinse and repeat over nearly 18 years. This time, though, I feel I'm competent enough to give it a new shot.

Alternatively, the Middle Sea are a geographical region (about the size of Europe and the Middle East) on a planet called Massotis.

Oh, and it's the place where Erdaníla is spoken.

This thread

Well, I intend to give a brief survey of the conworld, before plunging into an historical atlas. So, let's begin with...

The planet

Massotis is a near-twin of the Earth. It's a little smaller, about the same density, rotates around its sun in about a year and has a day of about 25 hours.
It has two moons, both somewhat smaller than ours. From Massotis' surface, the inner looks a little bigger than our own moon, and strikingly different, with large, active volcanoes and very smooth features; the outer moon isn't unlike our own, though with a bit of a reddish hue.

The embarassing thing about Massotis is that we don't know where it is, exactly. It's one of those annoying places that can be reached through mysterious books, old wardrobes, or getting hit on the head. It's not in our galactic neighborhood, anyway.

There has long been a connection between Earth and Massotis; so much that life forms could migrate from one world to the other. This goes back for at least as far back as there's been life on Earth (or on Massotis). There are two main hypotheses: one is that both planet enjoy a kind of synchronicity due to their similarity, the other is that they're connected by a very old wormhole network that reactives randomly. (In French we say ta gueule, c'est magique and I think it's beautiful).

In any case, Massotis' biosphere is very similar to Earth. Animals and plants that have evolved on Earth have crossed over to Massotis and it's likely some plants or animals evolved there and migrated here. (Personally I think hollyhock didn't evolve on Earth. Seriously, these things look alien.)

There are a fair amount of species that don't exist on Earth, though they'll have close relatives. We'll meet some of them, hopefully, as this thread proceeds, but I probably should mention, right away, that there are at least three relatives of human beings.

First off, moon-eyed people, so called because they're mostly nocturnal, or at least crepuscular hunters, and according to legend don't see quite as well as we do. They are stuff of legend, mostly, because the total population probably doesn't exceed 40,000-50,000. They're very adept hunter-gatherers, living in forest and preferring cold climates generally; they flee human beings (though 'human being' is a loaded term; the moon-eyed people are close relatives) . They are a little smaller than we are, but much more strongly built, with a barrel chest. They look ugly to us, with huge noses and no chin. Reportedly, they're smarter than we are, but slow to adopt innovations. They seem to regard, for instance, agricultural or metal tools as new and annoying fads. They're generally considered numinous beings (some cultures did persecute them, though).

Sea gluttons or less offensively, little people of the sea are quite small (about one meter tall), with round stomachs, a flat nose, and (reportedly) huge appetites. Again, they're not that many, and a typical feature of mariner tales and they are, indeed, very apt sailors. Their language supposedly sounds musical, or like the cries of seabirds; in any case, while they'll happily work and live with humans, they remain a little distrustful, and won't teach their language to outsiders. They're often described as practical jokers, or tricksters. Some claim that they wreck ships on purpose.

We don't know much about tree people. They mostly live in equatorial forests or savannahs (areas of the planet that we don't know much about); they're said to be ape-like (whatever that means), and to speak in unintelligible mumbles and whispers. Seeing one brings luck, or so they say.

Geography

Massotis has three major landmasses; one centered on the South Pole, and two (mostly) in the Northern Hemisphere. We know very little about the Southern Hemisphere so let's just forget about it.

Instead, here's the Map of the Northern Continents:
The western continent is called Uttani; the eastern one, straddling the equator is called Sarugond.
To give an idea of scale, both continents have roughly the same area as Africa.

The biomes should be taken as rough approximations; the continental climate on the east coast of Uttani and the east coast of Sarugond have very wet summers and very dry winter, due to moonsoon or monsoon-like effects; the continental areas on Sarugond west coast, west of the Iepias mountains have a strong mediterranean influence.
One thing of note, though, is the Mammoth steppe. Large areas, where we have tundra and taiga on Earth under similar latitudes, are actually kept very dry by rainshadows and cold currents.
In turns this leads to very clear skies and more sunlight; the area is similar to Ice Age Europe. Very few 'Earth-like humans' live there. Massotis mammoths have survived there, due to these areas preserving their preferred habitat.

Nice work. I want to visit the mammoth steppe! But...

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:57 pm It has two moons, both somewhat smaller than ours. The inner moon is a little bigger than our own Moon

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:12 am Nice work. I want to visit the mammoth steppe! But...

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:57 pm It has two moons, both somewhat smaller than ours. The inner moon is a little bigger than our own Moon

Thank you! Watch out for the cave hyenas!

And thanks for catching the error, I rephrased that a little. (Even though it's smaller, it actually looks bigger in the night sky.)

Am I right to assume that "Middle Sea" is a combination name for the Serene Sea and the Sea of Anger?

But shouldn't the Serene Sea, being quite close to the Ocean of Hurricanes, be less serene and more angry than the Sea of Anger?

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:44 am Am I right to assume that "Middle Sea" is a combination name for the Serene Sea and the Sea of Anger?

But shouldn't the Serene Sea, being quite close to the Ocean of Hurricanes, be less serene and more angry than the Sea of Anger?

Yes, that's right. As for the name, the Serene Seas is right on what we call the horse latitudes, with little precipitation and variable, calm winds. Its eastern part is on the path of hurricanes, though.
The names are traditional and fairly old; they might be a little ironic (sailors, as a rule, like neither hurricanes nor being becalmed).

The Sea of Anger is rather stormy in comparison, but it's possibly called that way due to the prevalence of piracy and sea raids.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:57 pm There has long been a connection between Earth and Massotis; so much that life forms could migrate from one world to the other. This goes back for at least as far back as there's been life on Earth (or on Massotis). There are two main hypotheses: one is that both planet enjoy a kind of synchronicity due to their similarity, the other is that they're connected by a very old wormhole network that reactives randomly. (In French we say ta gueule, c'est magique and I think it's beautiful).

I can’t comment on the rest of the setting, but I just want to say that I love this idea about the wormholes — it’s one of those ideas which I wish I’d thought of myself! I’ve been thinking recently about how to justify a conworld with humans in a plausible way, and I’ve come up with a couple of ideas, but none of them have been anywhere near as elegant as that. I like it so much that I would steal this idea, except that I wouldn’t feel happy using the same conceit as someone else…

Also, a minor clarification: you say one hypothesis is that ‘both planet enjoy a kind of synchronicity due to their similarity’. This sounds a bit vague, so could you elaborate a bit on what you mean by this?

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:12 am I like it so much that I would steal this idea, except that I wouldn’t feel happy using the same conceit as someone else…

Thanks! And you (or anyone) should feel free to steal the idea, I certainly won't mind.

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:12 am Also, a minor clarification: you say one hypothesis is that ‘both planet enjoy a kind of synchronicity due to their similarity’. This sounds a bit vague, so could you elaborate a bit on what you mean by this?

That's kind of a tough question. What I actually mean by this is 'timey-wimey, technobabble, relativistic space-time quantum entanglement gobble gobble.'

If I had to come up with something better, I'd say that the universe behaves kind of like a gigantic cellular automata with a kind of underlying 'data storage'. Both planets have a lot in common so a lot of their 'data' is 'stored' in the same place. So much data that sometimes, 'data' gets misplaced. And of course, the more matter gets transferred from one planet to another, the more shared data there is, so the connection gets stronger over time.
(The theory would explain quantum entanglement as well: entangled particles are actually one underlying data structure. Earth and Massotis are kind of like entangled particles. Cue technobabble.)

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:24 am

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:12 am I like it so much that I would steal this idea, except that I wouldn’t feel happy using the same conceit as someone else…

Thanks! And you (or anyone) should feel free to steal the idea, I certainly won't mind.

But I mind. Generally, I feel a lot more comfortable finding my own ideas rather than using other peoples’ ones.

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:12 am Also, a minor clarification: you say one hypothesis is that ‘both planet enjoy a kind of synchronicity due to their similarity’. This sounds a bit vague, so could you elaborate a bit on what you mean by this?

That's kind of a tough question. What I actually mean by this is 'timey-wimey, technobabble, relativistic space-time quantum entanglement gobble gobble.'

If I had to come up with something better, I'd say that the universe behaves kind of like a gigantic cellular automata with a kind of underlying 'data storage'. Both planets have a lot in common so a lot of their 'data' is 'stored' in the same place. So much data that sometimes, 'data' gets misplaced. And of course, the more matter gets transferred from one planet to another, the more shared data there is, so the connection gets stronger over time.
(The theory would explain quantum entanglement as well: entangled particles are actually one underlying data structure. Earth and Massotis are kind of like entangled particles. Cue technobabble.)

Ah, that sort of explanation. I think I like the wormhole idea more, myself.

I hope the "Boiling Sea" is not literal. Otherwise I'm not going there for my post-lockdown holiday.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:24 am If I had to come up with something better, I'd say that the universe behaves kind of like a gigantic cellular automata with a kind of underlying 'data storage'. Both planets have a lot in common so a lot of their 'data' is 'stored' in the same place. So much data that sometimes, 'data' gets misplaced. And of course, the more matter gets transferred from one planet to another, the more shared data there is, so the connection gets stronger over time.
(The theory would explain quantum entanglement as well: entangled particles are actually one underlying data structure. Earth and Massotis are kind of like entangled particles. Cue technobabble.)

Sounds a bit my idea of aliens dumping 30,000 or so humans on a random planet around Alpha Centauri so they could interbreed with the native humanoid species (ahem) and by doing this ultimately evolve into the aliens who dump the humans on the planet in the first place. Cue technobabble about timey wimey different Universes temporal paradoxes...

evmdbm wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2020 2:26 pm I hope the "Boiling Sea" is not literal. Otherwise I'm not going there for my post-lockdown holiday.

It's rather pleasant, I believe. Tarandim philosophers, like Aristotle, made the mistake of extrapolating a little too much from known trends and concluded that equatorial seas must be boiling.

Time-keeping, and other astronomical facts.

OK, let's talk about calendars.

Most cultures of the Middle Seas borrowed their calendar from the one devised by the astronomer-priests of the Red Kingdom of T'agas.
The Red Kingdom was one of the first large polities on the northern continents, and it issued from a culture with a keen interest in historical chronicles, astronomy and celestial portents.
In any case, they did quite well for the Bronze Age.

In any case, we'll use the language of the astronomer-priests, Old Hieratic for terms specific to Massotis.
Let's go.

Years and months

Massotis' year is a little bit shorter than our year : about 0.966 Earth years. The day is a bit longer than ours, with 25 hours and 21 minutes. That being said, we can forget all about Earth years and days and use Massotis days and years exclusively.

The year is 333.8 days long. For completeness' sake, the Red Kingdom calendar was based on the heliacal rise of the star Meris (a sign of the coming spring), so it's a little off with respect to the tropical year.

As I said, Massotis has two moons: the inner moon Equon and the outer moon Mosin
Equons subtends an angular diameter of 0.6, larger than our moon and Mosin's apparent diameter is of 0.48, a little smaller. Both are smaller and lighter than our moon.
Equon has a period of 16 days (well, 16.162 days).
Mosin has a period of about 24 days (more precisely: 24.25 days).

So the year may be divided into 14 "Mosin months" or moseťah, (sg. mosiťah) and 21 "Equon months" or Equeťah (sg. equoťah).

Now, every 48 days that is two moseťah and three equeťah), both moons are full at the same time. That period of 48 days is a mɔðodah, a word deriving from 'tide'.

(When both Equon and Mosin are in conjonction and new or full, the tides are about one third stronger than on Earth under similar conditions.)

So we have a lunar year, divided in seven mɔðedah, themselves comprising two moseťah or three equet'ah.
Good.

The lunar year.

So the lunar year is divided in seven mɔðedah, themselves divided in two moseťah or three equet'ah.
So the calendar maintains three kinds of months, pretty well synchronized. Still, there are inaccuracies to be fixed:

• Two moseťah are a bit longer than 48 days. They're 48.5 days long to be exact, but that's easily fixed. Actually, one mosiťah out of four is 25 days long, so the calendar alternates between 48 days and 49 days mɔðedah out of two is 49 days long.
• Likewise, three equet'ah are, more precisely, 48,486 days. So one equet'ah out of six is 17 days long which keep mɔðedah, equet'ah and moset'ah in sync.
• That's still not quite right, so every 10 years, one day is removed from an usually 17 days long equet'ah approximating three equet'ah to 48.49 days. Later the approximation was made more precise by adding an extra day every 500 years.

The solar year
The lunar calendar fairly precisely accounts for the two moons, but arguably the solar year is more important, and in any case essential for the crops.

The solar year is 333.8 days long, which divide neatly into:

- The first day (gueŋ nesugua) and the last day ( gueŋ mesugua) of the year.
- Four seasons (ðorɔqere, sg. ðorɔqer), divided each into three ðorɔkedah (solar periods) and one ðorɔgua (season festival).

The last of the year was a day of mourning and fasting, but one year out of five was particularly auspicious (wiragom ) so gueŋ mesugua was skipped, with the added bonus of taking care of these pesky 0.8 days. So the pattern is: four regular years, with 334 days, and one wiragom year with 333 days.

But the lunar year or ðogueŋ (tide year) is 339.5 days long, or rather, one ðogueŋ out of two is 340 days long. Remember: a lunar year has seven mɔðedah, and one mɔðedah out of two is 49 days long; seven being an odd number, one ðogueŋ out of two ends up a day shorter.

The difference between the 333.8 days long solar year and the 339.5 days lunar year amount to one mɔðodah after 8.5 years.
What the astronomer priests actually did was to put into place a 17 year-cycle; two years in that cycle were one mɔðodah short, that is 291 days long instead of 339/340.

Year zero

You can date any event in a 17-years period by giving the date in the lunar and solar calendar.

The people of the Kandu valley used a base-12 system. Indeed, they counted to twelve, using the thumb as a pointer touching each finger bone of the four remaining fingers in turn. The system was positional (zero being represented by a kind of hitchhiker sign: a thumb not pointing at anything).
144 cycles thus gained a numerological significance. By convention, it was held that the First Red King's reign began in 2448, ushering in a new era and the chronological convention stuck.

The current year around the Middle Seas is 5833 and the year 0 will make a convenient starting point for the upcoming history posts.

Neat and interesting calendar!

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2020 7:00 pm
The people of the Kandu valley used a base-12 system. Indeed, they counted to twelve, using the thumb as a pointer touching each finger bone of the four remaining fingers in turn.

Do I get this right that this included the fingertips, or do they have more bones in each finger than we do?

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Jun 04, 2020 5:26 am Neat and interesting calendar!
Do I get this right that this included the fingertips, or do they have more bones in each finger than we do?

Thanks! Yes, this includes the fingertips: Massotis humans are unexceptional homo sapiens sapiens
, the founding population likely crossed over from earth not so long ago. The fingerbone counting method does (or did?) exist on Earth: the Babylonians, for instance, counted that way.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:57 pm In this thread, I will give a brief overview of the Middle Seas.

This is so funny, "Sea gluttons or less offensively, little people of the sea are quite small (about one meter tall), with round stomachs, a flat nose, and (reportedly) huge appetites."

Well, good show! This is also very elaborate and well-done.

I think I remember your posts from last time I was on the group. You do posts like this which are heavy on description and light on actual conlang words. Oh, it's great stuff. Thank-you so much.

Bob wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 6:19 am Well, good show! This is also very elaborate and well-done.

I think I remember your posts from last time I was on the group. You do posts like this which are heavy on description and light on actual conlang words. Oh, it's great stuff. Thank-you so much.

Well, thank you!

The Historical Atlas.

From now on, I will steal shamelessly plagiarize take inspiration from zompist's historical atas concept. For my defense, maps and fantasy go hand to hand.

(Although Jean-Philippe Jaworski, who publishes his novels without maps, commented that in pre-modern times, maps were rare objects, and travellers would do without...)

Our base map.

Defining the Middle Seas geographically is about as perilous an exercise as defining the Middle East. Still, we will have a base map, with quite a zoom from the previous one; but both continents are as large as Africa: we need to make choices.

I believe it important that readers get an idea of scale early on. So the first appearance of the base map will be superimposed with a map of Europe, Asia and Africa at similar latitudes:
As you can see, that's a respectable area to cover -- and at the same time, it misses quite a bit: Middle Sea cultures interacted with both entire continents. The base map is an acceptable middle ground, which means it's both too big and too small. No matter: I'll simply feel free to move around, or zoom in as needed.

Year Zero

Our work picking a starting is already done: the calendar that we use (know as the Tarandim calendar) conveniently begins with a year 0, and that year 0 is far enough into ancient epochs that we can use it as our starting point.

So, without further ado, here's our map for Year 0, a time of small farming communities and incipient states.
Human species

Several human species coexist on Massotis, and three of them inhabit areas within our map. Human settlement proceeded in at least three stages.

Hominins first reached the continents about 2 or 3 million years ago -- and their descendant still survive in southern Sarugond.
But in the Northern Hemisphere, they were supplanted by an unknown species -- most certainly in the genus Homo -- that reached Uttani and Sarugond about 500,000 BP.
These archaic Homo were the ancestors of present day Moon People and Sea People. Moon People likely evolved on the Uttani and Northern Sarugond mainlands during a long glacial period, as they are better suited to cold climates.
The Sea People were probably stranded on an island in the Serene Sea during the same period -- their smal l size suggests they were subject to insular dwarfism at some point, and they do prefer island habitats to this day.

The last wave was in 40,000, when Homo sapiens reached Uttani, and spread across both continents during an interglacial. For convenience, we'll refer to them as sapiens.

The Kandu valley

The people of the Kandu valley had a long experience of agriculture by year 0. The Kandu delta, rich with birds ,seafood and grain was very well-suited to a sedentary hunter-gatherer lifestly, and would have supported high population densitites; the upper Kandu and its tributaries were rich with drought-adapted grasses, whose grains could be conveniently stored.
By year 0, the area was occupied by sapiens farmers.

The chief crops were a variety of amaranth and brome, a grass closely related to wheat, barley and rye. Terrestrial bromes are fodder, or invasive weeds, but Kandu valley brome is comparable to wheat in nutritional content and productivity -- and of course, selective breeding helped with that. They also grew peanuts, beans, tomatoes and desert olives (technically a species in the genus forestiera with bluish, olive-like fruit).
Domesticated animals included the familiar llama, the stranger megamys, a Rodent Of Unusual Size (similar to a cow-sized capybara), and the donkey-like hippidion.

Permanent gatherings were growing into farming villages, some of which were big enough to count as proto-cities. Among them Kunguameng and Sorasa reached a population of 4,000.

The people of the Kandu valley had long used natural pigments to paint in caves or on stones. On early painted stones, we see the first representation of the Dual Deity (a common figure among later Tarandim people), and abstract symbols, certainly reminiscent of later Hieratic writing.

It's usually assumed, with good reason, that the Kandu valley was the homeland of proto-Gaeh-Tarandim speakers. Other languages were spoken but barely left a few traces: Old Hieratic logograms have alternate readings that are difficult to explain without at least one other language using the same system, several place names have a T'a-T'e prefix otherwise absent from Gaeh-Tarandim languages, and the PGT language, as reconstructed is somewhat reminiscent of creoles. Possibly pre-PGT was a pidgin used by early agricultural communities with different languages.

The Sea people

The Sea people traditionally live from fishing; at some time they had moved out of the small island where they evolved and reached the island Embis, which would remain their main homeland ever since, although they colonized several islands and part of the Sea of Anger - Serene Sea littoral. They shared these islands with sapiens populations (although a few times they chased them off, especially in Embis).
Sea people shared the Kandu agricultural package; they were probably the first to domesticate grapes and to produce wine.(2)

(2) Middle Seas wine is an acquired taste. It's somewhat more acid, with a strong flavor of blackcurrant, quite different from our own wines.

The Metsiɬfaraz valley



The ancestors of the Metsiɬfarazian had lived by the rythms of the great river's floods. They had learned that squash, maygrass, zizania (wild grass) grew fast in the fertie wetland after the huge flood receded.
By year 0, they had domesticated all of these, in addition to sunflower, little barley, grapes and various varieties of nuts.
Large cities such as Novtominseki and Mehakkhits reached 4,000 to 8,000 permanent residents. Around this time, we see traces of the Early Metsiɬfarazian Death Cult: the Metsiɬfarazian build huge barrow tombs in elevated areas. The material of choice were earth and wood, which were used for ceremonial centers, and to build dikes and levees, early attempts at controlling the flood.
The Metsiɬfarazians had no writing, and we have little idea of what language they spoke, although it was possibly Sakean, but it was, at the time, the most rapidly growing of Sapiens culture. Population density was very high, comparable with that of modern agricultural people.

We believe that early states were forming around Mehacchits and Novtominseki, and they are called, tentatively Death Theocracies. We base this belief on the ever-present representation of skulls, bones, and even careful engraving of the sick and the dead What the Metsiɬfaraz king-priests believed in is unclear, but it was undoubtedly quite dark. Bones of numerous human sacrifices can be found in the soils of the upper Metsiɬfaraz; retainers were buried alive with their masters in the barrow-tombs; war captives were ritually drowned in the waters of the river.

Worship seems to have focused on ceremonial drug use: among these are very potent forms of tobacco (3), wild horry leaves and berries (rich in caffeine) and most importantly ergot, a parastic fungi growing on zizania.

The Moon People

The Moon People are very traditional in outlook, and exhibit strong neophobic tendencies. They did adopt some sapiens innovations: metal tools, domesticated dog, but kept their very low density, hunter-gatherer lifestyle. And yet, they offer us the best insights into ancient epochs and sapiens prehistory. They maintain chronicles and records, the Bone Lore. There is little doubt that Bone Lore is true writing, etched on durable materials and carefully handed down over generations, obsessively curated and maintained. Moon People culture is static to the extreme, to the point that the language and writing system have barely changed in the interval between year 0 and the present day.
The trouble is, of course, no sapiens could ever hope to acquire any item of Bone Lore, and only a very select few were ever allowed to get a good look. We can still manage to have some account of the centuries around year 0 in contemporary voices. The problem is, these voices are very alien to us.

Moon People eat a great deal more meat than we do, an adaptation to a very demanding environment and lifestyle. An agricultural lifestyle would be too poor in animal protein for them; and in any case they're not very tolerant of high population densities.
That doesn't mean that they exerted no control over their environment. Quite the contrary: they did shape the forests and prairies with fire, protected game animals from rival predators and even planted grasses to attract game near specific areas. They helped spread chestnut and hickory. Despite their very low numbers, much of the upper latitudes were shaped by Moon people hands. Of course, the effect over a generation was quite limited, given their small population, but they had been at it for generations: neophobia gave them the advantage of perseverance and a very long term view.

Moon People are, however, very unpolitical animals. They made no notes of wars, kings and battles, concepts alien to them, but they took careful note of game behavior, rare stones, strange fossils, and other subjects quite infuriating to historians.
They could not fail to notice, though, the spread of agriculture. When both sapiens and Moon People where hunter-gatherers, a kind of equilibrium had been found, where moon people mostly occupied the higher latitudes (north of 40 or 45°N), and leaving subtropical and tropical areas to sapiens. Though in year 0 that equilibrium was still in place, agriculture and the associated growth in sapiens population, was upsetting the balance.

That was particularly true of the Metsiɬfaraz civilization. It was the largest, and the fastest growing sapiens community, and right there in Moon People territory. Moon People are hospitable and helpful to stranger, and seem almost devoid of xenophobia (again, an adaptation to their low-density lifestyle, as it encouraged contact, cooperation and gene exchange with groups they sometimes wouldn't meet for years, and always threatened by consanguinity and cultural isolation) and contact with humans was then generally most friendly. There was plenty of intermarraige in the middle latittudes. The Metsiɬfaraz rulers were often hybrids, and when they were not, practiced cranial deformation so that the skulls of their children would bear the characteristic marks of moon ancestry.

The Moon People, though, can be inhumanely practical. As soon as sapiens populations reached level high enough to threaten game animals, they ruthlessly tracked and kill the intruders, as they do with all concurrent predators. They have no problem whatsoever with eating human meat, anyway, sapiens or Moon (many Moon groups ceremonially eat their own dead.)

They couldn't do anything about sapiens in the floodplains: they were already too many. But in the surrounding forests, they had the advantage: adapted for ambush killings, mostly nocturnal and physically stronger, they would make short work of stray hunters. So the Metsiɬarazians were contained, for a time, in somewhat restricted areas by the threat of man-eating monsters.

The low level conflict was important enough to the Moon People to warrant inclusion in Bonelore, giving us a few precious clues to Metsiɬarazian civilization.

The Ixatsowa valley
We known almost nothing about early Ixatsowan farmers. They never developped writing, either, and they were never mentioned in Bonelore, being so far from Moon People hunting grounds. Yet, their heritage would live on and durably change Middle-Seas civilizations, because of their greatest invention. Over generations they domesticated the unpromising gamagrass. The domesticated result, gamacorn is extremely productive -- and quite similar to maize, to which it is closely related.
Other domesticated crops included varieties of pepper, squash and the coffee tree (different, but related to coffee, which additional produces a deep blue dye.)

Without anything much to add, I am enjoying your work and its presentation.

A note on 'finger bone' counting: counting on the palm-side of the fingers, and counting bones rather than joints, seems to me, a more intuitive way of seeing '12' existing there when counting one-handed. Also more ergonomic.

Bede talks about counting "on the knuckles", and there are various other real world systems of doing so including the traditional Arabic way to get to 99 in prayer: but from what I understand these use a part of your other hand to count the knuckles/joints. If you are using the thumb of the same hand, palm-side makes a lot of sense.

EDIT: Sorry if I misunderstood? I notice you use the word 'bones' not 'joints'. But that you confirm that they must involve the fingertips because Massotis' humans are regular humans and have the same number of finger bones that we have. We have 12 finger bones on the 4 fingers, so I can't see why they would have to count fingertips as well!

sasasha wrote: ↑Tue Jun 16, 2020 3:39 am A note on 'finger bone' counting

I think a picture might be in order. Here's how the Tarandim count from 1 to 4.

*fastens seat belt for what promises to be an interesting ride*

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Tue Jun 16, 2020 7:59 am

sasasha wrote: ↑Tue Jun 16, 2020 3:39 am A note on 'finger bone' counting

I think a picture might be in order. Here's how the Tarandim count from 1 to 4.

count.png

Ah, ok. I get that method - and just like playing an instrument, people get very proficient at whatever method of finger counting they regularly practise. Palm-up is more ergonomic (all you need to move is your thumb, not the fingers as well) - but your system is probably more unambiguous as a method of signalling numbers to an onlooker.

I was just confused about the 'do we need to count fingertips as well?' comment.