Historical Atlas of Arcél

[Mbwa]

Yes! A pidgin.

[eodrakken]

Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the List of Nouns is good science-fiction, even if it's not good history/paleontology. Which it isn't.

Ya, much more of something to provoke thought and creativity (which it obviously has done for a number of writers) than a work of hard science, I think. I wasn't actually sure, when I was first reading it, whether he was being serious or not.

Actually reminded me a lot of this one, which is not serious, only pretends to be.

[Gremlins]

I really like the biographies of Phwai and Mur - they add a really nice touch and are interesting from an ethnography point of view too. Speaking of which, can I ask the sources you're getting your stuff on economy, life-expectancy, and stuff from? Particularly for the tropical zone; finding out stuff on Egypt or Mesopotamia is prtty easy, getting information on tropical agricultural areas is a lot harder.

[-]

I really like the biographies of Phwai and Mur - they add a really nice touch and are interesting from an ethnography point of view too. Speaking of which, can I ask the sources you're getting your stuff on economy, life-expectancy, and stuff from? Particularly for the tropical zone; finding out stuff on Egypt or Mesopotamia is prtty easy, getting information on tropical agricultural areas is a lot harder.

Almean rainforests seem to be distinct from the ones we know in some way. It would be interesting to see this explicated. On the face of things it's not obvious why the Beic region's rainforests would have "always allowed a denser population."

I like the peasant biographies too, they're a nice touch.

[the duke of nuke]

Very nice; it's good to see something about the population rather than the few outstanding individuals. The biographies confirm to me that Belesao is a nicer place to live than Uytai (that's obviously the case for women, but I think it is for men as well).
There is also evidently plenty of Weird Shit going down in Arcél that we haven't heard about yet. I mean, what is 'Hyemsur'? A disease, perhaps? Presumably it's from Uytai or Krwng.

And about the rainforests - both the Rau and Arcél jungles seem to be more like the those of Southeast Asia than of Brazil. I've never been to South America, I'm in Vietnam this summer and while it's easy to see the link with Nan, I think Belesao derives some flavour from Indochina; it seems a bit like pre-colonial Thailand, Cambodia or Java with its healthy trade and aristocracy. (Remember that both Belesao and SE Asia are seasonal rainforest. The same is also true of the Mayan jungle, but not of the Amazon.)

[zompist]

Speaking of which, can I ask the sources you're getting your stuff on economy, life-expectancy, and stuff from? Particularly for the tropical zone [...].

Some good places to start are Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, Mann's 1491, and several books by Marvin Harris, such as Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches. But it's really a bunch of places... a particular detail may be mentioned in books on Maya writing, travel books, histories of technology, books on primates or human biology. Or I might remember something from my wife, who grew up in the jungle.

Also, it's a different planet, I sometimes just make up stuff.

[-]

And about the rainforests - both the Rau and Arcél jungles seem to be more like the those of Southeast Asia than of Brazil

I guess we haven't been into much detail about their agricultural technology yet, which is the difference between Southeast Asia and Brazil in re: population density.

[eodrakken]

I just read 1491, so I thought maybe the jungle population stuff came from there. One of the ideas espoused there is that the Amazon was actually much more heavily populated before European contact than is currently possible, due to environmental destruction, and loss of the knowledge of traditional farming methods.

[Ran]

I'd like to add my voice to the chorus of praise --- the Rifters and the stories of Phwai and Mur are awesome. And Almea continues to set the standard for conworlding. =)

[-]

I just read 1491, so I thought maybe the jungle population stuff came from there. One of the ideas espoused there is that the Amazon was actually much more heavily populated before European contact than is currently possible, due to environmental destruction, and loss of the knowledge of traditional farming methods.

That's not just espoused in 1491. I think it's pretty well-attested that there were pre-Columbian maize farming societies in the Amazon, but for whatever combination of reasons -- and post-Columbian factors may be a part of it -- they didn't sustain themselves. In any case they weren't illustrative of any innate higher population density properties of the rainforests in question.

[eodrakken]

Nothing in 1491 is original research. The author is a journalist, not a historian. However, a lot of what's in it will be news to general audiences, at least in the US, which is why he wrote the book. What's taught in US schools about the pre-Columbian Americas is shamefully outdated.

[zompist]

If we're talking about maize farming, that's already into the agricultural era... the comment about Arcél population densities relates only to hunter/gatherers. (After agriculture, the densest population is in Uytai.)

[brandrinn]

Don't rainforests have more biota per square kilometer than a temperate savanna, or whatever we're calling the forest-to-plain transition in Uytai? There's lots of insects, fruit, nuts, seeds, and shoots in a rainforest. It makes sense to me that population densities could be quite high there without agriculture.

I was surprised to see that the major language groups are in more or less the same place throughout their whole history, unlike Erelae. But it will be interesting to see how they deal with the coming of Jippirasti, the uterus-ization of Beic culture, and the Ktuvok invasion that Zompist hinted at. I can't wait! Great stuff!

[butsuri]

Fascinating stuff. I'm always happy to see new Almean developments.

A question on orthography (sorry if this has already been discussed elsewhere): reading the Múr article, I noticed that Beic words with accented ɔ & ɛ are being written with spacing accent marks (e.g. brɔ`ŋ, Prɛ`n). Would it not make more sense to use combining accents (i.e. brɔ̀ŋ, Prɛ̀n)? (These may show up incorrectly in some browsers with some fonts, but you're already requiring fonts with ɔ & ɛ, and a misplaced accent generally won't look any worse than the spacing version anyway.)

[-]

Don't rainforests have more biota per square kilometer than a temperate savanna

Sure, but ironically the high biodiversity typically means that food resources useful to humans tend to be very dispersed. That's why hunter-gatherers in tropical rainforests on Earth are usually very marginal populations. But again there may be some different dynamic happening on Almea.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

Don't rainforests have more biota per square kilometer than a temperate savanna

Sure, but ironically the high biodiversity typically means that food resources useful to humans tend to be very dispersed. That's why hunter-gatherers in tropical rainforests on Earth are usually very marginal populations. But again there may be some different dynamic happening on Almea.

Like Java-style densities?

[dhok]

Java relies on rice agriculture, I think.

[Salmoneus]

Don't rainforests have more biota per square kilometer than a temperate savanna

Sure, but ironically the high biodiversity typically means that food resources useful to humans tend to be very dispersed. That's why hunter-gatherers in tropical rainforests on Earth are usually very marginal populations. But again there may be some different dynamic happening on Almea.

Also, most life in rainforests is inaccessible. 90% of species are found in the canopy alone, and the raw biomass is also tilted toward the canopy. Only 1-2% of the light reaches the ground, so plants accessible to humans will probably be fairly sparse (other than at river banks and other gaps in the canopy).

[Drydic]

Java relies on rice agriculture, I think.

The main reason Java can support the densities it does is the extreme fertility of the volcanic soil. If they didn't have all the volcanoes there it couldn't sustain what it does. So it's not the best example, as the Beic (and the Uytainese, for that matter) plain don't seem to be dotted with volcanoes.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

The main reason Java can support the densities it does is the extreme fertility of the volcanic soil. If they didn't have all the volcanoes there it couldn't sustain what it does. So it's not the best example, as the Beic (and the Uytainese, for that matter) plain don't seem to be dotted with volcanoes.

I see.

However, you do have the near deltas just north of Vietnam which could be a better example. They are densely populated, and they don't seem doted with volcanoes. And the Beic homeland seems to be swamps, just like said portions of Vietnam.

[Gremlins]

West Africa has no volcanoes and no rice but historically quite a high population (especially in like Yorubaland and places).

[zompist]

A question on orthography (sorry if this has already been discussed elsewhere): reading the Múr article, I noticed that Beic words with accented ɔ & ɛ are being written with spacing accent marks (e.g. brɔ`ŋ, Prɛ`n). Would it not make more sense to use combining accents (i.e. brɔ̀ŋ, Prɛ̀n)?

Just carelessness... I fixed them in the Múr article; people are welcome to fix other occurences. My Mac doesn't combine them correctly so they're hard to see, but I see that my Vista machine now shows them correctly.

[-]

Basically, anywhere you see dense populations in tropical rainforest zones, they're agriculturalist populations. (Yes, Yiuel, I made reference to SE Asia's agriculturalists already.) West Africa is an example of this -- and those population densitites have had consequences for the region's ecology, since sustaining large populations with slash-and-burn agriculture exhausts soil more quickly than flooded-field rice paddy agriculture.

[-]

Don't rainforests have more biota per square kilometer than a temperate savanna

Sure, but ironically the high biodiversity typically means that food resources useful to humans tend to be very dispersed. That's why hunter-gatherers in tropical rainforests on Earth are usually very marginal populations. But again there may be some different dynamic happening on Almea.

Also, most life in rainforests is inaccessible. 90% of species are found in the canopy alone, and the raw biomass is also tilted toward the canopy. Only 1-2% of the light reaches the ground, so plants accessible to humans will probably be fairly sparse (other than at river banks and other gaps in the canopy).

Yes, this too.

[Gremlins]

Basically, anywhere you see dense populations in tropical rainforest zones, they're agriculturalist populations. (Yes, Yiuel, I made reference to SE Asia's agriculturalists already.) West Africa is an example of this -- and those population densitites have had consequences for the region's ecology, since sustaining large populations with slash-and-burn agriculture exhausts soil more quickly than flooded-field rice paddy agriculture.

Indians in the Amazon came up with a way around this, apparently.