Tragedy and Transformation, the Tsalal Middle Era

Tragedy and Transformation, the Tsalal Middle Era

G. Gungaridee (dce), Koala Press, 1985

The Tsalal describe their history as three great epochs. The early period, circa 36,000 to 18,000 years ago, representing the spread of hunter/gatherer cultures through the lands, with consequent disruptions of species populations, a sordid story of continual expansions, depletions and collapse.

Archeological records of and oral histories of the early period tell a story of unremitting tragedy and suffering. Entire cultures appear to have risen and fallen to extinction, leaving only distinctive middens and tool kits. It was an age of hunger, of misery, of implacable gods and over everything loomed the relentless glaciers, symbol of a relentlessly hostile universe.

The middle period is commonly marked as the era between 18,000 and 8,000 years ago, during which most of the constituent elements of Tsalal civilizations emerged - agriculture, food animal domestication, draft animal domestication, the rise of urban and semi-urban populations, the beginning of trading networks, and the emergence of organized states.

However, the designation of the Middle Era is occasionally controversial. Some Tsalal academics argue for a more nuanced interpretation of history, and divide the middle era into distinct epochs.

Under this approach, the most commonly agreed division is early middle, 18,000 to 12,000 years ago, marking the domestication of most of the key plants, insects and food animals. It was an era marked by experimentation, erratic spread, increasing population, and increasingly violent population crashes as the Tsalal struggled to cope with new opportunities and the problems they brought.

This is followed, 12,000 BCE to 9,000 years ago by the spread of domesticated draft animals, the Shaghui and Mothbeasts, a horsepower revolution that dramatically increased the amount of labour capacity or 'industrial energy' available to Tsalal societies and allegedly the key to stabilization, or at least as much stabilization as the Tsalal have ever exhibited.

Some Tsalal academics agree with the division of early and later Middle Era, but argue that the true division is not so much the spread of domesticated labour animals, but the emergence of social conventions and techniques which formed the basis of the development of organized societies. In this sense, the revolution of the later period was not a horsepower revolution but a social one.

As always, for the Tsalal, success inevitably bred crisis. The relentless exploitation of victory or advantage relentlessly pushed towards doom.

The population expansions of the later Middle era, supported by the labour of draft animals and increasingly sophisticated social systems, had not resulted in local population collapses. Instead, the end of the late middle era resulted in wholesale environmental degradation in many regions. In particular, deforestation was rampant.

And this was a terrible problem, because to survive the harsh winters, the emerging Tsalal communities needed a source of heat. With no wood to burn, the years of terror and hunger were to begin again....