Re: My Digression from Boreanesia

Adrian Morgan wrote:
> Of course,
> biology /would/ be a central part of their
> lives and vital knowledge lest you be eaten.
Only some biology.  They wouldn't care or know how long lizards live,
only where they live and how to catch them, and things like that.  The
only way you'd know how long a lizard lived is to capture one and keep
it in captivity - and I doubt that they'd have much interesting in such
impractical research.  :-)

> To distinguish between very-long-lasting and
> permanent events, you'd be relying on cultural
> memory to tell you if the object had ever been
> different.
Yeah, that seems improbable to me, as well.

> I imagine the language would evaporate very
> quickly if their world changed in some
> fundamental way (e.g. change in climate or
> contact with another intelligent culture).
The first I doubt it would "evaporate away", it would merely radically
change.  Perhaps the event markers would become more arbitrary.  But
contact with another intelligence would probably put it at risk, but
that can be true of any language, if the other culture is more advanced
then them, and especially if they're imperialistic.

> Rather than, say, measure of threat?
That would be a good idea, markers for "beneficial, food", "beneficial,
protection from predators", "beneficial, protection from weather",
"beneficial, makes you feel better", "neutral, ignore", "harmful, makes
you sick", "harmful, predator", "harmful, other danger" [like falling
rocks], or something along those lines.

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