Re: joining concultures,was Re: Alternative histories and paralele universes

On Wed, 6 Jan 1999, Kristian Jensen wrote:

> This makes total sense. Not only do gorillas and chimps ignore each
> other, but the same phenomenon can be applied to other animals. If
> you don't have chimps and gorillas in your backyard, then all you
> have to do is look at birds to see the phenomenon at work. This is
> pretty interesting actually.
>
> If you decide to accomodate Kenji's Sayat speakers in Nowapan,
> chances are that the Sayat would be left completely to themselves.
> They will live together with the Nowans but they will basically as
> separate species ignore each other.
The problem is that the Sayat-speakers (at least in the current version)
are Homo sapiens sapiens, who don't have such a record of ignoring other
large animals hanging around nearby.  I'd need to come up with a
compelling reason for the Sayat to ignore the Nowapans, too.  (I'm already
siphoning off vocabulary items and a (very) few grammatical distinctions
and operations from Aleut, Chukchi, and Koryak -- I _don't_ want to start
doing the same with Nowa)  Perhaps just rough terrain and distance keeps
them apart?  Bears more looking into.

Kenji Schwarz