Tsalal

Your work on this is highly imaginative. Some of your vague references to the activities of the Tsalal gave me the shivers (no pun intended) though and I look forward to more.

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So the Tsalal treat their kids as walking larders - lovely(!)

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Not that there's much meat to be found on a starving, half grown boy.

But desperate times, make for desperate measures.

For the record, the subtext was that any member of the family could potentially become a meal for the rest. Even Gyorl was watching his back.

And as further subtext, he was more than prepared to slaughter his wife and start raping his daughter. He'll probably start raping his daughter anyway.

Cannibalism is an interesting thing. It's actually extremely rare in human societies, much talked about, but for several reasons, a kind of universal taboo.

Even where it is practiced, its often dressed up in ceremonial or mystical trappings, as in New Guineau, or is the product of extreme privation, a la the Donner Party.

In many situations, its avoided, even where it should theoretically be available. During the Ethiopian famine, not much of it going on. In Greenland, they've found the remains of inuit lodges where the families were caught in periods of famine - no fish or game - and where they all starved to death together.

But I've done a fair bit of reading on damaged societies, usually societies or cultures who are uprooted from traditional hunting grounds or subsistence territories, or who are subject to extreme cultural or environmental stress, and it's frightening to see the sorts of sociopathic behaviour which can evolve.

I still remember one account of a game where children would amuse themselves by putting food in the mouth of a starving elder too weak to resist, and then steal it away again.

I see the original colonization of Antarctica as a horrifically traumatizing experience for the Tasmanians/South Australians who made it, an experience that left long cultural scars on later generations.

My interpretation of the Antarctic environment is a feast and famine place, which induces extreme social stress and distress. I mean, let's face it, we like to piss and moan about seasonal affective disorder because we don't get enough sun in winter. They get months of darkness, plus frostbite, plus starvation, plus diabolically scary predators and diseases.

That's got to be enough to breed in an ingrained psychotic sociopathy into the culture, where things like cannibalism, shorn of desperation or mysticism is just another option. Indeed, in the context of the Tsalal's situation, sociopathy becomes a valuable tool for survival and stability, and becomes ingrained into their cultures for that reason.

The difference between your best friend, your victim, and your next meal is all a matter of available options.

It's an endearing trait I want to carry into their civilization.

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You have a sick and twisted mind

Thenk yew, thenk yew vera mich, shows are at 8 and 11, bring the kids next time.

but it makes for some damn interesting reading. I am seriously and morbidly awaiting a description of Tsalal society in the times of "stable" nation-states because I see you coming up with some really f#^%ed up norms and rituals...

Ideas and suggestions are welcome, and if anyone wants to hive off a timeline and some of the ideas herein and go in different directions, permission and encouragement given.

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Will the Tsalal have problems with Hypovitaminosis D? If they are descended from Australian Aborigines, they have dark skins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypovitaminosis_D#Darker_skin_color That may not become a problem as long as they have fish and/or fish-eating animals as a greater part of their food intake, but when they turn to agriculture... The Rickety Horrors of Deep South does not sound very menacing.

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A note on canibalism. In my childhood I lived in both Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu (long story...), both are renown for the purpoted canibalism of their people. I don't remember much about Papua but in Vanuatu I remember the old fellas talking about their fathers raiding other villages for "long pork" when times where lean. What struck me was the absolute casualness of it, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Bear in mind that this is in comparitively lush and abundant melanesia, in inhospitable antartica the sociopathy would be many times worse. Kuddos for the great (if disturbing) writing.

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This continues to be very interesting, DValdron. There are a few comments I'd like to make.

You had asked earlier about whether your list of cultivated plants was too long. Personally, I think the various plants are fairly plausible, because although the harsh environment means that there would be fairly few candidate plants, but at the same time this means that people are forced to try every food source available, which means that they would be likely to utilize plants that would otherwise have been ignored.

Very good

One thing that I would suggest is that given the environment, you might want to consider changing the idea that rather than agriculture they practice a combination of horticulture and hunting and gathering. Realistically, agriculture in the sense that anthropologists speak of it would be nearly impossible (I realize that for the sake of the story, you are including agriculture, but I'm suggesting this as another possible option to explore). My reasoning is that this environment is similar enough to the arctic that the Tsalal culture would develop along similar lines.

During the warm season, most areas of the Tsalal lands are significantly warmer than the Arctic, thus you have a substantially more robust ecology, though one that gets a major bitch slapping every winter. The summer climate and conditions of the Tsalal lands are essentially temperate European. Maybe not as warm as Paris (except on good days) but overall comparable the the Baltic or Moscow.

That makes more sense, warmer temperatures definitely makes it more likely.

Another thought that occurs to me is that you have no mention of dogs, whom I suspect would very likely have been brought by people there early on. If you include them, I would strongly suggest looking at their role in the cultures of people who live in the arctic, which is the most analogous environment to what you have in this scenario.

As for dogs, sorry, they don't make it. Humans made it into Australia approximately 45,000 years ago. But interestingly, dogs only go back about 8500 years in Australia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo

Based on a mutation-rate of mtDNA and that A29 is the only founder–type it was regarded as most likely that dingoes arrived in Australia about 4,600 to 5,400 years ago, which was consistent with archaeological findings. However, it was also considered that dingoes might have arrived within 4,600 to 10,800 years ago, in case that the mtDNA-mutation rate was slower than assumed. Furthermore it was reasoned that these findings strongly indicate a descent of dingoes from East-Asian domestic dogs and not from Indian domestic dogs or wolves. In addition these findings indicated two possibilities of descent:

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All Australian dingoes are descended from a few domestic dogs, theoretically one pregnant female

All Australian dingoes are descended from a group of domestic dogs, who radically lost their genetic diversity through one or several severe genetic bottlenecks on their way from the Asian continent over Southeast-Asia

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The Tsalal are all essentially the descendants of a single founding population, the lone male Tsa and the subsequent tribal group of two males and three females he encountered.

Dogs in Australia were an incredibly long shot. Dogs from Australia in Antractica, just too long a shot. There's a remote possibility that dogs might have come over with Fuegans, but that would be much later, in the period 5000 to 1000 BCE and we're not there yet. The Fuegans themselves would be a really long shot, and at this point, I'm not inclined to have them in. Maybe.

As it goes, for now, the Tsalal's first knowledge of dogs will come from Captain Cook...

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My thinking was that the inclusion of dogs would be extremely helpful for the survival of the small founder group, particularly when it comes to hunting.

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I'm not sure if the Austrialian Aborigines made extensive use of domesticated dogs. As I understand it, the Inuit used dogs as draft animals to pull sleds and sledges. The Amer-Indians, some groups, at least, used dogs to pull travois, and may have used them as hunting and guard animals.

But as for the Aborigines? I'm not at all sure. In any event, dogs wouldn't appear in the Early human era of Antarctica at all. That's a period roughly 36,000 to 18,000 BCE. Domesticated dogs don't even make it to Australia or Tierra Del Fuego until 5000 to 10,000 BCE. Which puts them well in to the Middle or Late Human Era.

So dogs definitely wouldn't be around or available to assist any founder groups, with the possible long shot exception of a dugout expedition from Tierra del Fuego.

The other problem with dogs is that they wouldn't really help the Tsalal with their big problem.

Y'see the trouble is that the Tsalal are faced with an annual bottleneck. During the Antarctic summer, the temperatures are warm, sunlight is 24/7 and there's a profusion of vegetation and game animals. Very brief spring and fall, a matter of weeks. Then roughly March/April to September/October, it gets very dark and stays very dark for a long time, it gets incredibly cold, all the plants die or go dormant, the animals die off or go into hibernation or hiding, except for the very big tough ones, even the rivers and lakes freeze and the seashores are ringed with ice.

That's when the Tsalal find that movement is almost impossible due to cold and snow, the few extant game animals are usually very big, very aggressive, tough to kill, and see them coming long before, and they're dependent on whatever they've got stored up and can scrounge up... its when the Tsalal start to starve, when proximity transmits illnesses. Dogs wouldn't help with that. They'd just get eaten sometime in the first winter.

Actually though, in terms of a useful species for foraging and surviving the winter, that's what drives the domestication of monkeys.

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It would also be interesting to see what breeds might be developed, such as larger dogs for hauling heavy loads, small dogs for catching animals that have burrowed into the ground, etc.

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Antarctica has a diverse complement of native species, some of which will be adapted to the purpose you describe.

In particular, I've got one native species of predator that people might recognize and appreciate.

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Another thought I had, which is somewhat related to this, is that you might want to consider having at least a couple more stranded groups arrive in prehistoric times, if only to add to the genetic diversity of the population.

These are only suggestions, of course, the scenario is very interesting as it is.

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It's probably just as well that dogs didn't make it to Tsalal country. It is a sacred but, unwritten rule of the Chuthulu Mythos that the pressence a Lovecraftian horror drives all near by dogs into a murderous rage, that can only be ended with the death of the dog, the horror, or both. In this case the Tsalal would be the Lovecraftian horror.

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Although a bit too odd, I know this is fake but already i'm getting culture shock!

Whereas the introduction of penguin (and possibly other) vomit as a treasured dietary staple is okay?

I think Bird's vomit is an exotic food in East Asia IRL, so that may not be too unusual. But using animals as prostitutes, thats just... man. It would be reallt odd if people who found this land adopted the practice. The world would be so different

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By the way, what exactly are the moth beasts supposed to be? Descendants of pyrotheres? Also, the Tsalal are giving me serious Wendol (from the 13th Warrior) vibes. Cool.

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I'm surprised the Tsalal stay so dark. The evolution of white skin in Europeans, and the simultaneous lightening of East Asia, seem to have happened by the time agriculture was adopted if not prior. And 35,000 years is a long time to diverge, enough for a whole new "race" to develop, even with such a small founding population.

At minimum, you'd probably need the Tsalal to have a source of Vitamin D sufficient to not need sunlight to generate their own, because otherwise, they're going to all have rickets.

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Seasonal and chronic malnutrition was a basic fact of Tsalal existence for much of their history, though it abates considerably in the 8,000 years of the later human era.

In particular, vitamin deficiencies such as scurvy, pellagra and rickets were a regular problem and an aspect of malnutrition. Of course, these issues often plagued western societies. Pellagra, for instance, was endemic to the American south until the last few generations.

Over time, the diversification of food sources by Tsalal, and varied diets would address many issues of vitamin deficiency, but this still left the problem emerging from time to time.

In terms of the lightening of skin, this was likely a possible development. However, culturally, the Tsalal as a whole tended to select against any appearance of such feature. Lightness of skin was associated with corruption and mortality, and infants bearing the trait did not survive long.

Did you base this civilisation upon the Aztecs (worship of death) by any chance? Oh, and you have my vote for the next Turtledove award.

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Aztecs? Hmmm. Some of the namings sound vaguely Aztec, don't they (Like I'd know?  ) I dunno, only in the most indirect subliminal sense, I'd think.

You've seen in my reply to SubversivePanda where the Poe and Lovecraft influences come in.

Some of this is an example of there not being very much going on at all.

My first step was simply trying to work out, long ago in some past thread, what Antarctic life was like before it all froze solid. Then I updated it for a Green Antarctica of the modern period.

Originally, my thinking was Europeans find an uninhabited continent, and war with each other, screw things up and divide the place amongst themselves. I think I had some vague notions of a Nazi Antarctic war.

Then, a bit later, as I was kicking things around, I started to think about who else could plausibly or hypothetically get there, and what they might do.

As you can see, sometimes I do my thinking out loud on this thread. Anyway, I picked the Tasmanians because they seemed most reminiscent of Poe's Tsalal, borrowed more from Tsalal, and away we went.

And somewhere along the line, I started to think, that Antarctica's unique conditions could produce some very interesting cultural wrinkles.... and some time after that, it occurred to me to that I could have a lot of fun making these cultures weird, scary and dangerous.

I'm not nearly at the level of a Jared or a SubversivePanda, either in terms of sheer knowledgability or scientific rigour. And I like to have fun, so if its a choice between most cool and most plausible, you know where I'm going.

But thank you, I'm glad you're enjoying things so far. I promise to do my best to keep it interesting.

Culture
And DValdron, you have done the impossible...

... You created a culture that would disgust the Draka, the Aztecs and Vlad Tepes!

This thread is insanely, disgustingly, nightmare-inducingly excellent.

Society
Let's start, I don't think a so sociopathic society would be viable, there's a reason why "isolated"* societies doesn't embrace cannibalism, if you look at the groups which embrace it they live in very fertile areas, where they can upkeep a relative high population and where neighbouring tribes was close by. The tsalal would suffer from heavy inbreeding because no one would dare to travel into another groups territorium. Beside that the sociopathic charactic of the Tsalal mean that, the trust necessary to upkeep society wouldn't be able to exist.

While the idea of monkey concubines are disgusting in its own right, the biggest problem are that it would be a waste of resources they couldn't afford. So I don't think it would be realistic

But when all that are said, I think this timeline are perfect and nothing should be changed, it may not be that realistic in the structure of society and the physiology of Tsalal, but it's well written and entertaining, and societies which could be seen as non-viable has survived in OTL. So subscribbed.

Beside that the biology of Green Antarctica seem quite realistic.

Of course the meeting with Europeans are going to be ugly, the European would look like something from hell to the Tsalal, while the Tsalal are behaving as something from hell to the Europeans. Plus both groups share the same climatic niches.

* while Amazonian tribes seem isolated they are very densely populated and much large groups compared with inuit.

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Okay, that answer makes a lot of sense.

Back on an old subject, what is their skin color? I suggested nonstandard, as white is taboo, and when fish isn't in the diet shades of eumelanin would give everybody rickets. My personal vote now is a dark red.