The Sea Peoples of the Pole, S. Manchester, Delhi Press, Purujustan, India

The Sea Peoples of the Pole, S. Manchester, Delhi Press, Purujustan, India

Most of Antarctica is an intensely seasonal landscape. Almost half the year, the long winter cast the continent into a ferocious deep freeze, a perpetual realm of night and darkness. Humans in Antarctica divided their existence into a summer day of perpetual scrambling and hoarding food, and a winter night of huddling from the cold in shelters and dwindling supplies and potential famine.

There was one region of Antarctica where year round activity and food gathering was viable, where the eternal night did not necessarily spell death and starvation. These were the coasts and coastal waters, rich with fish, seals, sirenians and penguins. Here was food all year round.

But there were obstacles, rough seas, winter ice, storms all made it difficult to access. Seashores might be rich and plentiful in the summer, but they were difficult to endure in the winter. For most of the Early and Middle Human Eras, seashore regions did not differ markedly from inlands in terms of population density or lifestyle.

Indeed, if anything, population density was slightly lower, particularly in the Middle Era when agriculture took hold. As the Middle Era wore on shoreline communities found themselves losing ground, evicted from their inland ranges, pushed into an increasingly impoverished lifestyle.

By about 13,000 years ago, roughly halfway through the human middle era, shoreline Tsalal were approximately two inches shorter than the average and skeletal remains show many signs of chronic malnutrition. At least one reason why shoreline cultures failed to fully take advantage of their environment was that they were frequently short lived. Inland cultures frequently preyed upon them, shoreline communities were frequently exterminated, and there was little cultural continuity between succeeding shoreline groups.

Perhaps because of this, although there were efforts at penguin cultivation going back an estimated 17,000 years, full domestication came extremely late. Inspired by domestic agriculture and monkey domestication, elaborate rookeries were constructed off and on in many shoreline regions. However, these efforts were intermittent at best, and shoreline cultures remained marginal, often becoming extinct in the face of pressure from inland populations. With that extinction, or similar disruptions, domestication efforts would end.

The first stable coastal cultures were the Zhu, emerging on the Islands of Tzhorl and subsequently spreading to Yhqrt and Zhoole, roughly 14,000 years ago. These were originally inland and riverine cultures of hunter/gatherers from Tsalmothua driven out by the spread of agriculture on the mainland.

Arriving on Tzhorle, the mainland hunter gatherers found themselves facing already well established and better equipped tribes of hunter gatherers who had mastered the Islands rugged topography and subglacial landscape. The Zhu were forced along the coastlines, inhabiting sheltered bays and fjords.

Subsisting on shorelines, collecting and burning driftwood, fishing and hunting seals and penguins, the Zhu pioneered a series of innovations, notably the harpoon and a sort of raft, and eventually small boats, which allowed them to survive and prosper, even supplanting the native cultures entirely on Tzshorle and Yhqt. The Zhu culture, by approximately 10,000 years ago managed to spread to the islands of the Tsaotughua sea.

By 9000 years ago, however, new waves of emigration poured out of Tsalmothua, in the form of the Qys, marginal semi-nomadic herding societies with an agricultural package of marginal climate crops and domesticated animals.

The choicest lands for these new people were the sheltered coves and bays which were the Zhu homelands, and the Zhu culture found itself giving ground everywhere. The newcomers adopted what was useful of Zhu technology, and made it their own. The Zhu became extinct almost everywhere in their former regions, except Inland Tzhorle, where a Zhu offshoot survives as a distinctive linguistic and cultural group.

At least one population of Zhu from the Tsaotughua Islands, however, made a technological innovation which changed its lifestyle altogether. This innovation, was an ‘ice auger’, a device for drilling holes through the sea ice for fishing and sealing. The ice auger allowed year round hunting and fishing (excluding only periods of break up and storms). This took place approximately 9500 to 9000 years ago.

Ice augers became relatively common in the sea islands, in part because of the relatively stable nature of ice formation in the Tsaothughua sea. But the technology never made it back to the main Islands of the west.

Nor did it save the Zhu of the sea islands from the influx of new waves of Qys immigrants armed with the best of island technology and their own packages of agriculture, domesticated animals and tools.

Instead, the Zhu of the sea islands embarked on their own epic voyage, the 'Suffering Path' of legend, a nation, sailing or walking along the coastlines of the Tsaotughua sea, moving steadily along the cicumference of the continent, until they found sanctuary, more than a two thousand miles away: the Zhudan Lul or sea of frost, named after the people who settled its shores.

Bordered on both sides by hill country which made it poor land for hunter gatherers and worse for farming, the Zhu, or Zhudan as they would be called established Antarctica’s first year round society.

There, they proliferated a variety of innovations around the ice auger, including a diversity of fishing spears, ice nets and summer nets, ice rigger boats and sleds, and increasingly sophisticated wooden boats.

By 8,000 years ago, the Zhudan had mastered penguin domestication fully, and developed a breed of fast egg laying, readily regurgitating tame penguin whose use spread along the shorelines, essentially assuring a stable year round food supply.

Also by 7,500 years ago, the Zhu were building the most sophisticated boats in Antarctica, and had even developed sails as they ranged the Zhudan sea. Within 500 years of that, they were sailing up and down the Storm costs of Tsalmothua and the cold coasts of Wang Gash.

Contact with these cultures brought a variety of agricultural plants and tools, which were employed on the sea shores. To make these work, the Zhudan developed a unique ‘Sheltered Terrace’ agriculture, though due to labou shortages, these spread slowly over the next thousand years.

In short, by six thousand years ago, the Zhu had built all the rudiments of the seagoing culture which would terrorize Antarctic shores for millenia.

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Ooh, pirates! (?)

They seem more like Antarctic Vikings. Excellent as always, keep up the good work!

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Well, sort of Vomit-Eating, Paranoid, Bi-Polar Viking Pirates, yep.

Now there's a winning combination

i sigged that

RE: the Vomit-Eating, Paranoid, Bi-Polar Viking Pirates of Antarctica. - Do we need to mention the cannibalism?

In the early human era, cannibalism was a symptom of a culture wracked by constant seasonal famines. The ferocity of antarctic winters, and attending famines lead to an almost universal cultural fixture of hunter gathering societies eliminating or devouring their weakest members.

The development of agriculture and animal domestication in the middle human era substantially reduced risk of famine. But by this time, particularly among the Tsalmothua, cannibalism had evolved into a social institution defining power relations.

As the era wore on, cannibalism became a key aspect of social submission. Lesser chiefs would have to give up members of their retinue for the dominant or high chief's clan to devour. A vast power imbalance would force a lesser chief to surrender a son or wife. A powerful lesser chief might only have to give up an old woman past childbearing, or a crippled man.

This sort of enforced submission occurred at all levels of Tsalmothua society - between communities, between clans, or within communities or clans, or even in some circumstances, within families. There was very little formal ritual attached. It came about in times of stress or conflict.

Tsalmothua engaged in sometimes elaborate political subterfuges in dealing with these power dynamics. Sometimes a chief would 'adopt' a son, or 'marry' a wife, for the specific purpose of giving it up to cannibalism. In some cases, they might be allowed to 'adopt' a hive monkey for a son, as part of ritual submission to cannibalism. How willing parties were to engage in such subterfuges depended on the strengths of the relative parties and their levels of determination or seriousness.

The ability to enforce or demand the surrender of a weaker groups members for food was a key element of power relations. To eat human flesh was a mark of status and power.

The widespread prominence of cannibalism through antarctic societies is a sign, in part, of the importance and pre-eminence of Tsalmothua overall. Tsalmothua culture was extremely influential, through spread of agriculture, domestication and coal culture.

Not all Antarctic societies embraced Tsalmothua cannibalism, or embraced it in the same degree and the same ways.

The Yag, for instance, mostly eschewed cannibalism as a vulgar, low class activity. Although the Yag, through dealings with Tsalmothua came to accept and incorporate cannibalism, it was always seen as something of a foreign practice. Yag culture instead tended to venerate necrophilia.

In contrast, the Zhudan inverted the power dynamics of Tsalmothua cannibalism and venerated strength and endurance. Devouring the weak only lead to weakness. Only by devouring the strong could strength be attained. By the late bronze and iron ages of the Later Human Era, the Zhudan assessed strength by torturing their victims, those who endured the most torture were deemed strongest and eaten. The Zhudan in their wars endeavoured to capture their enemies whenever possible. Zhudan society was so rife with psychosis and paranoia in many respects that their customs regarding cannibalism were almost endearing.

The Ptarh on the other hand, tended to exogamous cannibalism. Non-Ptarh were eaten. This tended naturally to coincide with Tsalmothua cultural developments. The Ptarh's nomadic lifestyle lead to one particular innovation of cannibalism. They would keep the victim alive as long as possible, eating one limb at a time.

The Ptarh: taking cannibalism and making it even more horrible. that sould be a demotivational

Even in the late human era, when the various Antarctic societies had evolved stable food cultivation and storage, cannibalism remained a greater or lesser thread defining relationships and power dynamics.

...

we'll put that in a foot note

Good. Anyone else think that ITTL General Antarctic Goodness™ will grace the cover of many a Heavy Metal album?

i want to see that so badly right now

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Darn! I had a really good slice of life vignette.

Essentially, a raiding fleet of Zhudan cross the ice floes in their flatboats. They find a Tsal community, and burn it, slaughtering half the inhabitants, and taking their heads.

They express their contempt for the Tsal, eating their weak. According to the Zhu, strength comes from devouring the strong. They seize the strongest of the surviving Tsal males and slowly saw off their heads, throwing the bodies to the survivors.

Then they warn them never to come near the shore. The seas and coasts, and all that live upon it belong to the Zhu.

The Zhu are a paranoid people, they will not allow a coastal or seagoing people to inhabit costs within a thousand miles of the sea of frost in either direction. Any time they see any sign of coastal habitation, boats, fishermen or fish stations, cut trees, etc., they track the people back and burn them out.

Then the surviving Tsal are given a message. When the Qys come, tell them that the Zhu are waiting. Better, tell the Qys to go back to the lands they stole. Someday the Zhu will go into hell to take it back.

In the folklore of the Zhu, the Qys tribe have become demons who stole their land and harried them to the ends of the world. The Zhu apocalypticaly believe that their backs are against the wall and that some day the Qys will come to their last refuge.

They've spent the last few thousand years getting ready for that apocalyptic battle against demon hordes.

The vignette ends with the Zhu returning to their ships, dragging a hundred bound children on leashes. As their ships return to the sea and ice, the children are dragged behind them, drowning in the sea or being torn to shreds by the ice.

One child manages to cling to a paddle. A laughing Zhu announces he's caught a fish, drags the half dead child into the boat, and breaks its leg, leaving it unconscious in the boat hold as they laugh. If it survives, perhaps it will be hardy enough to make a decent slave.

Anyway, its nasty, but hopefully a good glimpse of the Zhu culture as it develops.

I'll try to re-write it tomorrow, properly.

And then it's on to the Coal Kingdoms, I promise.