Re: Concosmic Conlocation (was; Re; Back!)

Adam Parrish wrote:

> >It seems to me that most of
> >us have languages set in an Earth with a different social history
> >(extreme: Tokana, where civilization never took place; less extreme:
> >Brithenig, where history diverged hundreds of years ago; even less
> >extreme: Elet Anta and Teonaht, which make no modification to history
> >except to suggest the presence of secretive subcultures).
I wouldn't say that 'civilisation' never evolved in the Tokana universe.
In fact, I'm quite sure it did, in some form.  The reason I chose to
have the Tokana timeline diverge from ours so early (circa 12,000 BCE)
is so that none of the details of their recorded history would overlap
with ours.

Exactly HOW the Tokana universe differs from our own has not yet been
determined.  It could be that the history of their world follows the
same broad outlines as our history (e.g. the invention of agriculture,
the emergence of city-states in the ancient Near East, the establishment
of complex hierarchical civilisations in the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, and
Yellow River valleys, etc.), but with different names and dates.  Or
the differences could be more profound.  For example, it could be that
the Tokana universe has a slightly different climatological history, which
in turn impacted the ecology of the planet, which in turn had an effect
on human & animal population movements, etc., which in turn led to drastic
differences in where/when/how human civilisation developed.  For instance,
perhaps agriculture developed in the Amazon Valley around 4000 BCE rather
than in the Fertile Crescent around 12,000 BCE, or something like that.

Matt.