[CWBP2] Races

[Wingshaw]

I mean more something like: when did the first civilizations started to appear? 1000 years, 5000 years, 10 000 years?

I'm not part of this project, but I am trained in archaeology, so perhaps I can help in this regard.

There is some issue about how you define civilisation:
--if civilisation is 'when did people develop culture?' the answer is probably tens of thousands of years. Australia's Aborigines have had a continuous culture for about 50,000 years, and the Neanderthal probably had some level of culture.
--if civilisation means 'when did people start making things/using tools/having property?' you can go back to Ethiopia, 2.6 million years ago.
--if you prefer 'when did nations/organised states appear?' then the Harappans (Indus Valley) sit at about 3000 BCE; Babylon is 1900 BCE; and Uruk c. 4400 BCE
--my preference is to use the origins of settlements to mark when civilisation began. Settlements (usually) result from having surplus food (a product of agriculture), which means not everybody is having to work on food accumulation, which gives some people the chance to develop other skills, and, hey presto, you suddenly have metallurgy, pottery, writing etc. The agricultural revolution and rise of cities has been radiocarbon dated to about 11,000 BCE.

So, short answer to your question Azelor: civilisation began about 11,000 years before the Common Era (i.e. 13,000 years before the present).

Hope that's helpful. Happy to lend my knowledge again, if requested.

THW

[Ghostman]

Maybe it would still be a good idea to have an official explanation?

That would mean that every origin story that contradicts said explanations will be objectively wrong. That's dull. It's much more exciting when there's a multitude of different ideas that could be true.

There's also the issue that origin stories aren't necessarily universal. They might only claim to explain the appearance of people and other life forms within a particular part of the world: "The great Crane-Mother raised this island from the bottom of the sea, then but a lump of naked rock, and she sowed the Seeds of Life upon that rock, from which sprang all the plants, and from the mud of the seafloor she fashioned animals and our very first ancestors." <--- It's not good to paint ourselves in such a narrow corner where there's no room left for this to be introduced as a (potentially) actual fact in the setting.

[Azélor]

That would mean that every origin story that contradicts said explanations will be objectively wrong. That's dull. It's much more exciting when there's a multitude of different ideas that could be true.

There's also the issue that origin stories aren't necessarily universal. They might only claim to explain the appearance of people and other life forms within a particular part of the world: "The great Crane-Mother raised this island from the bottom of the sea, then but a lump of naked rock, and she sowed the Seeds of Life upon that rock, from which sprang all the plants, and from the mud of the seafloor she fashioned animals and our very first ancestors." <--- It's not good to paint ourselves in such a narrow corner where there's no room left for this to be introduced as a (potentially) actual fact in the setting.

But we are the only ones that knows the truth. People in the world don't know it. (Well maybe some do, but they are a minority)

we could say : this is what happened for real
and this is what x/y/z culture think has happened

[Ghostman]

we could say : this is what happened for real
and this is what x/y/z culture think has happened

It's the very possibility (and uncertainty) of legends being true that makes them exciting. They become far less interesting if they are known for certain to be true, and even less interesting still if they're known to be false.

Having but a single origin to all things also seems needlessly restrictive. Why couldn't one tribe of humans be spawned from the shed scales of a world-circling dragon, another tribe the offspring of a pair of gods that fell down from the heavens, a third tribe arising from the verses of a poem given form in flesh? Such myths could even be all true simultaneously, since they'd apply to different parts of mankind.

[Azélor]

Yes it is possible that different races or different people came on the planet in different ways. All of these could be true but the should probably apply to different groups of people.

[Deadshade]

Why couldn't one tribe of humans be spawned from the shed scales of a world-circling dragon, another tribe the offspring of a pair of gods that fell down from the heavens, a third tribe arising from the verses of a poem given form in flesh? Such myths could even be all true simultaneously, since they'd apply to different parts of mankind.

Yes they could. But there are conditions :

1) It happened in a very far past. My grand grand mother certainly didn't spawn from a scale. Why ? Because she remembers her father and her mother and they were not scales.
2) The first spawn people didn't know how to write. If they did, they would probably have (at least) a genealogy of rulers. We know that Akenaton didn't spawn from a scale because the names of his parents were written down.
3) The present people are unable to date ruins, tombs, skeletons, sediments etc. If they do, they can either rule out a legend which is dated (like Adam was created 3000 years ago) or set a bound in time for the scale spawning.
4) Regardless of dragons and gods, the evolution works in parallel also on this world and would have produced independently intelligent species too. These latter must not have been witnesses of the scale spawning (or have no means to leave a message) because otherwise there would be a trace of such a surprising event - one day there is nothing and next day there are strange people that nobody has seen coming and who don't remember where they were before and who their parents are.

So like Azelor rightly said the people in the world have no means to know whether the legends that are necessarily situated in a very far past without traces and without witnesses are true or not.
Only we can know because our memory extends far beyond theirs. For all practical purposes all their legends could be wrong if we decide so. But that wouldn't stop the people creating and believing them.

[Falconius]

I just don't see the purpose of having these defined origin "truths", what does it accomplish for us? If it accomplishes the goal you are after what are the negative consequences of having achieved that?

Again I think the only limits (as opposed to general guidelines, like the Era and Technology, or general world map) we should be saddling our project with should arise naturally from specifically design things that are in our world. (ie the Plot maps define a specific area and so indicates and influences things getting created around it)

[Ghostman]

Yes they could. But there are conditions :

1) It happened in a very far past. My grand grand mother certainly didn't spawn from a scale. Why ? Because she remembers her father and her mother and they were not scales.
2) The first spawn people didn't know how to write. If they did, they would probably have (at least) a genealogy of rulers. We know that Akenaton didn't spawn from a scale because the names of his parents were written down.
3) The present people are unable to date ruins, tombs, skeletons, sediments etc. If they do, they can either rule out a legend which is dated (like Adam was created 3000 years ago) or set a bound in time for the scale spawning.
4) Regardless of dragons and gods, the evolution works in parallel also on this world and would have produced independently intelligent species too. These latter must not have been witnesses of the scale spawning (or have no means to leave a message) because otherwise there would be a trace of such a surprising event - one day there is nothing and next day there are strange people that nobody has seen coming and who don't remember where they were before and who their parents are.

Sure.

So like Azelor rightly said the people in the world have no means to know whether the legends that are necessarily situated in a very far past without traces and without witnesses are true or not.
Only we can know because our memory extends far beyond theirs. For all practical purposes all their legends could be wrong if we decide so. But that wouldn't stop the people creating and believing them.

I suspect you've been misreading my earlier posts. What I've written about legends being known to be true or false, has been entirely in out-of-setting context. That is, whether something is known to be true or false to us. I'd like to keep some sense of mystery and uncertainty on the out-of-setting level because I think that it'll make things more exciting and cultivates an air of fantasy. And also because it'll place less restrictions on each participant fleshing out their plotted corner of the world.

I just don't see the purpose of having these defined origin "truths", what does it accomplish for us? If it accomplishes the goal you are after what are the negative consequences of having achieved that?

The purpose isn't to define the origins as truths so much as to keep the door open for them possibly being truths. If we force a single truth about the origins of things across the entire globe, then every parcel of the world will have to conform to that. That seems like an unnecessary constraint to me, and one that can make the setting feel less fantastic.

[Azélor]

We are not forcing anything. Every culture can come with a different explanation.

We, the authors, know the real facts but the civilizations do not. We have a different point of view.

[Deadshade]

We are not forcing anything. Every culture can come with a different explanation.

We, the authors, know the real facts but the civilizations do not. We have a different point of view.

I see it exactly like that too.
Once the authors (freely !) decided that some, any historical event was a fact (true) then it becomes real in the fantasy world - it is the authors who write the history and it is then graved in marble. Nobody can change the past unless one admits that the authors are free to change arbitrarily historical facts all the time what would lead to quite a mess.

On the other hand a civilisation may know these historical facts precisely or approximately or not at all. They may have all kind of myths, stories and legends that are anywhere in the Spectrum from totally false to absolutely true but only the authors know where in the Spectrum they are.

The motivations of my posts was precisely to speculate how the civilisations could come near to the historical truths as decided by the authors (=Gods) and what could be the degree of their knowledge considering that there is a constraint of a kind of middle age environment.

Although this is not really a strong constraint.
They may not have Carbon 14 datation and mass spectroscopy but a necromancer bringing a many thousands year old dead back to life will get an infinitely better knowledge of history than any Advanced science.
Not even mentionning evoking immortal demons and forcing them to speak the truth