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

On Mon, 19 Jul 1999, JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON wrote:

> 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.
>
        Yeah.  Replace "civilization" with "civilization as we know it"
where applicable.  I certainly didn't mean to imply that the speakers of
Tokana were uncivilized. :)

> 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.
>
        I've considered a similar option with my conworld: it is indeed
Earth, but with a drastically different geological history resulting in
different landforms, etc.  But then I thought that a drastically
different geological history would probably result in a drastically
different biological history, which I didn't want.  Oh well, the quest
continues. :)

Later,
Adam
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             myth@inquo.net |
http://www.inquo.net/~myth/ |
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