WIP - neolithic and early cultures in Maward

[Pixie]

Hey there to everyone...

First a short introduction for new readers:

Maward is a worldbuilding effort that has been going on for a while. There are several WIP threads around here, where you can follow the world taking shape, mostly this one. Worldbuilding to the level of detail that I am trying to achieve is a lenghty task, and it's the constant interaction with fellow worldbuilders around this guild that fuels new ideas and leaps forward.. I have so far worked on tectonics and climate, this is to say, I have so far decided how the landscape is (in some parts of the world, others are unfinished business)

If you're interested, follow the likes of groovey, akubra, vorropohaiah, randigpanzrall, etc (there are many many!)

Now, for those already in context... following the most recent trend in the ongoing discussion I keep with groovey, he "made" me consider the early milennia of Maward. By early millenia, I mean the rise of agriculture, cattle herding, urban settlement, centralized state societies, writing and bronze working - i.e., the rise of civilizations. The following posts in this thread are a sort of step by step process that took me to a couple of finished maps.

[Pixie]

First, the landscape.

That agriculture first appeared in the south of Acur, in the region of Kane, was already an established fact for me. It is part of the basic lore I brought from way back. But to plan exactly where it popped and how it spread I needed accurate landscapes.
These two maps provide that. One contains the orography, other maps the area according to climate type. Both are clippings of larger maps, where the relevant area is finished.
heightmap.jpgclimates.jpg

So, agriculture started around Kane (Kane is the large triangle-shaped peninsula in the SouthWest, you can see a much later map of the region here)...
I decide to make farming pop up in a fertile river falley, in a monsoon/savannah environment. Taking Earth as an example, plants domestication happened in a lot of different places, different plants at different times. So I decided that a second and a third center of plants domestication will bloom a little later. I may even go for more centers, later on, but not in this region, in this era.

[Pixie]

Explaining my reasoning to compute the progression of agriculture in the region is much easier with pictures, so here's my explanation...
Computing Neolithic Progression.jpg

I computed progression from 8000 BeforePresent to 4000 BeforePresent. Not showing but also worked in is the spread of herding, which is done in a similar manner.

[Pixie]

And that is it for early farming cultures!
I built to "finished" maps from this stuff. The style in these two maps is very plain. The purpose is to convey information as if they were made for a historical atlas.

Seeds of Agriculture.png
Areas occupied by neolithic populations (stone age + farming + animal husbandry, in some cases) were painted in light green and overlaid. Then a very simple title and legend was added, along with some casual information.

Early Cultures.png
This one was very fun to do. Areas where settlement is well established and climatic conditions afford common food surpluses are the obvious candidates for the rise of unique cultures. Taking that into account and also watching directions of spread of farming methods I ended up with this.
Of course, there is always a lot of room for my imagination, maybe you would have done it differently...

[Pixie]

And finally..

This isn't so much a map for now... it is more of a map-like canvas for note taking...

This is the actual state of the "Work in Progress", a photo of the proto-states as in 4000 BP. Bronze working will soon be discovered but it is still inexistent, as is writing.
First states.jpg

[Azélor]

Hum, most of your links are dead.

[Pixie]

Hum, most of your links are dead.

Oh my! Er, dunno what happened... I just fixed it, I hope.

[Durakken]

Questions...
Where did your humans arise? Hominids originate on savanah if you didn't know, this is because the tall grass, but otherwise open landscape forced our ancestors upright rather than on our knuckles. The discover of fire which only really safely be interacted with is on a savanah and these are key two elements are key to our evolution.

Did they suffer any bottlenecks like we did? At one point we were reduced to about 10,000 members which makes our genetic pool fairly week.

Are there multiple hominids alive? For most of our history there was at least 1 other hominid out there and possibly there still is.

The western continent looks just barely reachable, a bit more so if we consider a ice bridge might form between the continents, while the eastern continent looks unreachable save for by luck...


Also...to me it looks like you are aiming for too many cultures. I'm sure how big your world is, but a look at what we know of civilizations back then, there were 3 developed in roughly the same area but had natural bariers to prevent interference with each other (Meidteranean, Nile, and Indus cultures) then we had 1 large asian 1, and 2 roughly in the same area in the Americas, but that is harder to say cuz, in the Americas and not much is known. Other than those 6 the other groups were just sorta out there without settling down or became part of those cultures it looks like... Those primary cultures grow to pretty big sizes and last for quite a while before they break up and lots of smaller states form from them, about 1300 years from my count for Asia and Rome.

To me, the 4 eastern civs shouldn't exist. And either the Lamuan or Manee culture should not exist or combined into one.. Or if they both exist the Manee culture should extend further north following that river basin... Or if it isn't an aggricultural group then they really shouldn't have a defined area. That's just my opinion though. I like the way you did these maps

[Pixie]

First of all, thank you for your quick comments and questions, Durakken. I love writing/rambling about "my world" so I'll take all questions.

Questions...
Where did your humans arise? Hominids originate on savanah if you didn't know,

Hominids appeared in the Acur Continent and expanded to the Western Continent as well. There has never been a landbridge connecting northwest Acur to the West (tectonics says so!), but previous Ice Ages, have rendered the voyage possible to stone age hunter gatherers with kayak lifestyles. The area in Martinia will have to contain a culture which isn't going to be colonized, in order to match what I had in mind years ago - whether this happens because contact was made too early or because their independent process of civilization was fast enough is something yet to be resolved (decided!).

I do know that hominids developed in savannah like regions. Still, for computing the spread of the neolithic people, I am assuming that hunter-gatherer populations already occupy all suitable locations in Acur. In some places they end up being displaced, in other places, they transform their ways. But, if I had to respond to that, on top of my mind, I would say somewhere in the strip of land between the monsoonal plains of Acur and the highlands adjacent to it - I can easily postulate that those lands, for a period in history, were drier and that sudden drop in precipitation ignited an adaptation to ground-based movement on open areas. Sounds just about perfectly plausible to me, what do you think?

Did they suffer any bottlenecks like we did? At one point we were reduced to about 10,000 members which makes our genetic pool fairly week.

Are there multiple hominids alive? For most of our history there was at least 1 other hominid out there and possibly there still is.

The western continent looks just barely reachable, a bit more so if we consider a ice bridge might form between the continents, while the eastern continent looks unreachable save for by luck...

Indeed the continent of Palamb (west) will be free of hominids until at least late Iron Age. I envision a series of colonizing periods, the first ones (or first one) being suddenly halted by a crisis in the originating culture - warfare, collapse, disease, something.. yet to be figured out - which leaves those in Palamb to their own devices, generating a hugely different culture. It should not be a source of a secondary branch of hominids. People in Palamb will have a genetic continuity to the people of Acur reaching it.
But, frankly, I haven't worried about pre-agriculture times - surely a continent as wide as Acur will have a few different races of humans and, more likely than not, Krasia/Martinia will have also, but that is "to be determined".

Also...to me it looks like you are aiming for too many cultures. I'm sure how big your world is, but a look at what we know of civilizations back then, there were 3 developed in roughly the same area but had natural bariers to prevent interference with each other (Meidteranean, Nile, and Indus cultures) then we had 1 large asian 1, and 2 roughly in the same area in the Americas, but that is harder to say cuz, in the Americas and not much is known. Other than those 6 the other groups were just sorta out there without settling down or became part of those cultures it looks like... Those primary cultures grow to pretty big sizes and last for quite a while before they break up and lots of smaller states form from them, about 1300 years from my count for Asia and Rome.

Oh, I don't think you are quite getting what I'm trying to convey with the second map (called Early Cultures). I based that map on maps I've been looking at about the neolithic - those cultures will have a common trunk in some cases, and some will end up extinct at some point. Ultimately, cultures can be traced to 4 groups: the Kanean group, the Lamuan group, the Thandarayn (or Outunau river) group and the very-specific Kwent.
That's as far as it goes in these maps. I've been toying with the idea that I need to redo this on a larger map of Acur, since I have already reached the limits of this one and there's much more land to the north and the east... And if so, I know there are a few more places where hunter gatherers can turn into farmers, independently. I guess the continent is just too different to Eurasia, and there's a limit to how much I can mimic.
Or, in a more philosophical way.. should I mimic the processes or the results? I am trying to understand and mimic the processes, and I am extremely curious about the results.

Whatever way, as time goes by, the common roots of separate groups are overlaid with more recent innovations and that's what makes cultures to split.
The cultures depicted are something like archaelogical groups - same kind of pottery, common burial practices, same type of houses or specific tools/jewels. The large empires you mention will only come to existence at a later period - the neolithic populations lacked the means to sustain large states, like writing and codes of law.

[groovey]

Wow Pixie, those maps and the text feel so similar to what my archeological based history textbooks talk about. They feel very real and that seems hard to accomplish, congratulations.

I think I might even try your approach with my world, since I'm quite stuck on developing my first civilizations. Though my climate map (made by Azelor) might be a bit outdated now that I have a different height-map, but I'll try to apply your process anyway.