Re: Humans & Humanoids [WAS: Back!]

On Wed, 21 Jul 1999 15:51:59 -0700, Jim Grossmann <steven@...> =
wrote:

>70,000 years ago, a mysterious tribe LIVED.   With tens of thousands of
>years of prehistory, why not just write a conlang for cave people?
Strangely enough, I had a language for cave elves (Kaltani / "Ancient
Elvish"), but none for ancient humans (unless you count the Kobolds, who
are distant relatives of humans).

>Our understanding of evolution is incomplete;   our current speculations
>about extraterrestrials are wrong.   Just as the echidna (monotreme) can
>resemble a hedgehog (placental), aliens could resemble US.
I used to have a similar explanation for the Mizarian rodent-people: not
actual rodents, but alien beings from another planet who happen to =
resemble
rodents. It's amazing how many generally "rodent-like" prehistoric =
animals
there were, like the tritylodonts and multituberculates. I took that as
evidence that "rodent-like" beings might easily evolve elsewhere.

But I later decided that was unlikely, and that the Mizarians were actual
rats that had been genetically engineered to be intelligent humanoids.

>I prefer making languages that are artificial in their fantasy contexts =
as
>well as reality, but that's just my taste.
Rillintel was a language of that sort, created by the Olaetyan explorer
Edhlyt Narlend. My Dwarvish language Zarkhand was also invented in the
fictional world as well as the mundane one.

--
languages of Kolagia---> =
+---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/languages.html>---
      Thryomanes        /"If all Printers were determin'd not to print =
any
   (Herman Miller)     / thing till they were sure it would offend no =
body,
   moc.oi @ rellimh <-/  there would be very little printed." -Ben =
Franklin