Historical Atlas of Arcél

[Atom]

They also used a lot more fruiting trees to grow food then most other societies.

[Atom]

Interesting. I imagine the angry spirits are also the spirits of art and artists?

If we believe the kereminth, the iliu apparently say that there were human civilizations in the past. Considering that the iliu are generally trustworthy, if are sources are, then this provides a whole new layer of knowledge to our understanding of pre-current civilization. It also lends credence to the idea that there are no fossil fuels left on Almea.

[zompist]

'''Fret''' is mad in the sense of crazy, not angry. Art could really be provided by either set of ancestors... not all artists are insane.

[Drydic]

Interesting. I imagine the angry spirits are also the spirits of art and artists?

If we believe the kereminth, the iliu apparently say that there were human civilizations in the past. Considering that the iliu are generally trustworthy, if are sources are, then this provides a whole new layer of knowledge to our understanding of pre-current civilization. It also lends credence to the idea that there are no fossil fuels left on Almea.

The desert is nearly uninhabited, since no Almean species is well adapted to desert terrain. This is likely to change in the future, due to the abundance of cüe Kare or oil of Kara, which can be found at the surface in many regions— petroleum.

Which rather invalidates that idea - any civilisation near Eretald would have searched for oil outpourings.

[hwhatting]

Which rather invalidates that idea - any civilisation near Eretald would have searched for oil outpourings.

This kills the idea that no fossil fuels are left, but it's possible that those previous civilisations skipped oil and went from coal directly to e.g. nuclear.

[Drydic]

Not sure how they would do that, but it is definitely a possibility.

[-]

I must say that of all the Almean materials, some of my favourites are the personalized notes from obscure peoples. Drollery! I love drollery. The Kereminthic fisherman is good stuff.

[dunomapuka]

I like Uytai so far... they're really into peaches?

[Mornche Geddick]

Perhaps Zomp will update the Almean crop pages with some stuff about fruit.

[zompist]

By the way, apologies for the delays in the Atlas recently. I got sidetracked by some other Almean projects (both related to Arcél however), and this week I'm sick. Hopefully it'll be back on track next week.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

By the way, apologies for the delays in the Atlas recently. I got sidetracked by some other Almean projects (both related to Arcél however), and this week I'm sick. Hopefully it'll be back on track next week.

Take your time. We all like your work, but I am sure we will prefer it well done, without haste

[Atom]

Hurray! Its back.

So, I think we can gather that the Krwŋ will conquer the lowland areas of Uytai from the tale of Neykhen. It also seems to be taking quite a while for the Be to switch from agriculture to a state.

[the duke of nuke]

Nyekhen looks like something between Leonidas and Chuck Norris...
Also, more samples of Uyseʔ! It reminds me of Khmer or Burmese; any chance of glosses?

[zompist]

Glosses?? Did Champollion or Ventris have glosses? You have bilingual texts with some vocabulary overlap; you should see how far you can get.

[the duke of nuke]

Glosses?? Did Champollion or Ventris have glosses? You have bilingual texts with some vocabulary overlap; you should see how far you can get.

I foolishly accept your challenge

EDIT: I'm making progress. However, there are some errors in the Nyekhen page (e.g. a word missing from the "words are just wind" quote). There are also what are either more errors, or firm evidence of sandhi or fusional behaviour (I'm getting both het and ħet for "trick").

SMUG EDIT:

In Uytai the world is ʔarkhel, of uncertain meaning.

It means, roughly, "all-world".

[eodrakken]

The "Nyekhen Facts" were funny indeed. :)

[the duke of nuke]

After a little while of research and half a bucket of peach liquor and peach ice tea (I kid you not) I present my attempt so far.

Words are devils, which may lead a man pick up a sword; but they can never teach him to use it.

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Nwai fretuy he; pwer nar mur ħwewn har kroy  senphaut kwon muren rit fwai.
word devil  be  them by  can cause man sword pick.up  but            use

- Fretuy "devil" literally means "mad ancestor". The tsratuy are worse than devils, then....
- Muren rit fwai evidently means "not to use it", but it's not clear how the verbal constructions work.

I only use one trick. That trick is to be stronger than the enemy.

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Pyey sruyn or  het   fwai. Na   ħet:  tsit   swaum tyai he.
I    only  one trick use   that trick strong enemy COMP be

- I'm not sure of the difference between het and ħet. For want of something better, I've glossed both as "trick".

Cause fear, and you need never worry about that.

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Khyet kwar kwor krem  wau   fuy  hinnar    kwar syer fyaulen kwet.
if    you  fear cause other fear therefore you

- It appears that kwor is the noun and fuy the verb.
- The glossing of hinnar as "therefore" is conjecture, based on hintser "then".
- Syer fyaulen kwet must mean something like "need never worry", but again the verbs are proving difficult.

The measure of a man is how he faces an armed foe. Cruelty is cowardice: any peasant can abuse the defeated.

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Har nye thai    kroyar swaum hluʔ ar      syit he.
man of  measure armed  enemy show against      be

Kuyfen  nrewnsye  he.
cruelty cowardice be

ʔar feyram  khyuʔar  mur hluʔtsrat.
all peasant defeated can abuse

- Since khyuʔar "defeated" is clearly derived from khyuʔ "victory", I've tentatively glossed the postposition ar as "against". This would make kroyar "armed" literally "sword-against". (Note that this translation is called into doubt by the last quite; see below.)
- Feyram "farmer, peasant" is obvious. Hluʔtsrat "abuse" is also clearly derived from tsrat "evil", so hluʔ presumably means something like "show".

To die in a moment or an hour from the blade, or over a decade from old age? Which is more to be feared?

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Pwer har nit    huy nurtyun thu    kroy  fwai tsre orken pret fyat thu    petfen  fwai tsre.
they man moment or  hour    during sword use  die  or    NUM  year during old.age use  die

Tser huy nar fuy lye?
     or  by  fear

- It's not really clear how question formation works.
- I was tempted to gloss pret as "ten", but since the Uytainese are known to use multiples of four (at least for timekeeping) I'll leave it until more texts become available.

Then we will fight in the shade.

... no, wait.

Then they will have more corpses.

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Hintser pwi  tulpyey pwit tsrear syal.
then    they              corpse

- Tulpyey pwit X syal presumably means "will have more X"; probably syal means "have", but it's far from certain.
- Tsrear clearly means "corpse", since it's derived from tsre ("die" or something like it); but then this would have it literally mean "die-against". Moreover, tswun means "we die"; are there two words for "die", or is it a vestige of a once-productive morphology (like Khmer infixing), or just a translation mistake? Something needs correcting.

I've tried glossing the other quotes, but I doubt it will be possible to do so accurately without more texts. On the other hand, I've got a wordlist of about 100 words now, and got some feel for the grammar. (At least it's fairly consistently head-final.)

[zompist]

Very good job. I apologize for a couple of errors; you already noticed het which should have been ħet. Also 'tsit' in the third sentence should be 'pwi'... I grabbed the wrong word in the grammar.

If you compare that with the last sentence you should be able to guess that pwi means 'more'. Comparatives a bit tricky; the formula is X COMP Y VP. E.g. Pyey pwi kwor kwow he "I am fatter than you", more literally "I more than you am fat."

Ar is simply the subordinator; that should be the key to a few bits. The basic formula is S ar NP where the extracted NP can be either subject or object.

You've got mur 'can'; what could muren in the first sentence be? That -en appears at least one more time.

You have pyey 'I', so what could tulpyey be, especially given that the last sentence is a comparative?

One more clue there is tswun, which just means 'die'. The subject is understood, and that's important in a few other cases, especially in this aphoristic style.

Pwer is really a conjunction; it's used with a few constructions, but pwer... orken... is equivalent to "either...or..."

[sangi39]

Which rather invalidates that idea - any civilisation near Eretald would have searched for oil outpourings.

This kills the idea that no fossil fuels are left, but it's possible that those previous civilisations skipped oil and went from coal directly to e.g. nuclear.

Possibly, the reason for the continued use of fossil fuels passed coal was, I'd imagine, down to the thought of a profit combined with something with an easy to find use, i.e. "oh woops, I accidentally set it on fire, oh, we do that now with coal, bo need to develop new technology to do that with oil and I can see it being quite useful since it's basically liquid coal, meaning no need to split it, just to pour it" combined with the technology at the time making oil mining easier and cheaper than developing nuclear technology which would likely have been beyond the finances, technology and resources of the time.

[brandrinn]

It's my understanding that oil as a fuel source developed piece-meal. It had many uses in the past, and was used as a fuel for lamps and torches probably since ancient times. By the time any civilization has started mining coal and using it on a large scale as fuel, they probably already know that oil is generally useful for making fire. I imagine both the intuitive leap and the opportunity cost of moving from coal to, say, nuclear power must be astronomical by comparison.

But in our own timeline, hydraulic and wind power have been around for centuries, too. If there simply aren't any easy-to-reach oil deposits, oil might not be practical. Messing with historical levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide could easily limit the amount of oil available.

[Mornche Geddick]

Ah, we've got to 1112! When I saw the page I thought Faegroy must have been advanced for his time, but then the ancient Egyptians tried their hand at urban planning

On a related note, were the Uyse?ic ancestor cults inspired by any terrestrial culture?

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

Faegroy's work ressembles Nara's urban planning in many ways.

[Gremlins]

Is Ghardze in Siad Bo cognate to Khartsi? in Krwng, by any chance?

[zompist]

Is Ghardze in Siad Bo cognate to Khartsi? in Krwng, by any chance?

Only the last half. The Uyseʔ forms of the two names are Ħartsiʔ 'bay town' and Khartsiʔ 'new town' respectively.

[dhok]

The map for 1300 is now out. Nice. I see that Belesao is developing nicely, and of course the Skourenes are just a century away, and the ktuvoks are a bit further down the line...the next few hundred years will be interesting.