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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Dec 28, 2015 15:51:45 GMT
 [1]
Northern *New Mexico, ca. 10,500 BCE
The chorus of whistling birds filled the early morning with joyous sound, masking the footfalls of the hunter as he trod gingerly through the scrub grasses. Out into the scrubland he had gone, following one trace after another, until he'd come nearly within sniffing distance - then he crept, step by step. Careful now... With a hand he carefully parted the bushes, and was rewarded for his efforts with, at last, a glance at his elusive quarry. The beast was tall and ungainly-looking—he wondered if perhaps its kind had been deer until stretched out by the hands of the Creator. Atop a long neck sat a grossly large head, the beast’s dark, beady eyes turned away from the human as it browsed among the fresh shoots of a low-lying tree. Fat, padded feet, hard nails on the tips, mashed the rather less interesting grasses underfoot, a small tail flicking at the flies accompanying it. In his father’s time, these long-deer had still been common in the Lands of the Juniper, but increasingly their numbers dwindled, drawing away to the highlands of the great mountains and the distant south. The hunter considered it an omen of great fortune that an animal bearing so much good meat had wandered into his hunting grounds. Licking his lips and squinting against the light of the rising sun, he readied his atlatl—and let fly.
The roughly hewn spear sailed through the air, and here something changed. Perhaps the sunlight had worsened the hunter’s aim by a hair. Perhaps the long-deer’s eyes turned to a different leaf or shoot. Perhaps a slight twitch of the hand or an unnoticeable buffet of the air had altered the spear’s course. Whatever tiny alteration had taken place, the spear narrowly missed the animal. The weapon crashed through the thickets past the heretofore-browsing long-deer, creating a great racket and spooking the animal. With a terrified bleat, it wheeled, charging off into the juniper forest, and was gone. Smacking his forehead and cursing his stupidity, the hunter went to retrieve his spear, deciding that the elusive long-deer was not such a lucky omen after all.
And so, a single animal, who in our own timeline would have perished at the spear’s point, escaped to the company of his fellows in the nearby highlands. The young male’s genes passed into the gene pool of this previously-dwindling species of North American camelid, affecting the population just enough within a few short generations to pass on his speed and hardiness to his progeny.
Hemiauchenia macrocephala survived by a hair, and the world would be changed forever.
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[1] - Mist rising off of a stand of Ashe junipers in Texas, USA. Taken by Don J. Schulte, via Wikimedia Commons.
Lands of Bronze and Fire An American Domestication Timeline |
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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Dec 28, 2015 15:53:32 GMT
It's good to see this new site alive and hopping.  I've decided to import my ongoing American domestication timeline to Althistoria, starting with a slightly edited and abridged version of the Story Thus Far. Thereafter you'll see new updates, possibly posted here and on AH.com concurrently. Shame my typeface of choice for the TL (Book Antiqua) isn't available here, but them's the kicks... |
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Post by Krall on Dec 28, 2015 16:45:43 GMT
Awesome! I love American domestication timelines - I can't wait to see this one continue! |
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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Dec 29, 2015 5:56:34 GMT
A Camelid Odyssey 40 Million Years of Evolution
A family tree of the living members of the family Camelidae. Hemiauchenia macrocephala, which is extinct in our timeline, is placed on the tree in red above its possible descendants, today's South American camelids.
The camelid family is a remarkable group of animals. Belonging to the order Artiodactyla (that is, the even-toed ungulates), Camelidae is the sole surviving representative of the suborder Tylopoda. Though today only camelids have only very distant relatives, such as pigs and ruminants like cattle and deer, the tylopods once sported a much greater diversity of lifeforms, such as the anoplotheres and the oreodonts. All we have in our own timeline today to attest to this once-great diversity are the six extant species of camelid which, together, represent this unique clade of hooved mammals.
Camelids are distinguished by their long necks and legs, their unique tusk-like canines and premolars, and their lack of true hooves—modern camelids all have padded feet with a pair of toenails; thus Tylopoda, 'padded feet'. Camelids by and large are found in arid environments of any temperature, from Andean mountains and deserts to the cold steppes of Central Asia. In the past, fossil camelids even thrived as far north as the Arctic Circle [1], proving the hardiness of this family and its adaptability to many different climates. The earliest known representative of Camelidae is the tiny, deer-like Protylopus, which lived in the Eocene, 45 million years ago. While Protylopus had four toes rather than two, and appears to have still had true hooves on its feet, unlike any living camelid, otherwise it already exemplifies the basic, camelid body plan.
 [2]
Protylopus petersoni
The camelids carried on in modest success, diversifying in form and occupying most of the large mammal browsing niches of North America, but never spreading outside of the continent. From California to Tennessee and from Canada to Mexico, the camelids spread across the continent, and persisted through every epoch of the Cenozoic Era from the Eocene onward. The camelids would have their heyday during the Pliocene when North America and South America met at Panama for the first time since the age of the dinosaurs. This momentous event has been termed the Great American Interchange, and began around 3 million years ago. Large mammal species (and large birds in at least one case) migrated over the new land bridge, seeing the introduction of armadillos and ground sloths amongst others to North America, and the horse, cats, elephant, tapir, and (most importantly to our purposes) camelids, to South America. Soon after, the camel branch of the family crossed over into Eurasia for the first time via the Bering Land Bridge in Alaska, soon siring the lineages that would become today's dromedary and Bactrian camels. A brave new world had suddenly opened up for this family.
 [3]
The dot in western North America represents the approximate area in which the camelids originated.
It was only when the growing human diaspora invaded the continent in the last 30,000 years that their ongoing success was threatened. Despite forty million years of success, despite branching off into an unimaginable diversity of forms, in the very short span of 20,000 years, the camelids of North America were rendered very nearly extinct, soon to be relegated to the same fate as their oreodont and anoplothere cousins before them.
But perhaps, if a hunter had missed his target...
The Uurung Hemiauchenia macrocephala, the Quintessential Columbian Camelid
From "The Uurung, A Natural History" by Addison Shorely, Oxford Press
 [4]
Hemiauchenia macrocephala in its wild form (compare with this image [5] of the South American llama.)
Evolutionary History
Consider, for a moment, Hemiauchenia macrocephala, the mother taxon of all Hesperidian [American] [6] camelids. It's hard to imagine Columbia [North America] without its teeming herds of domesticated uurung, but it could very easily have not been the case. Genetic evidence shows that the Columbian population of the genus passed through a dangerous genetic bottleneck about 12,500 years ago, and that there may have been as few as only a few hundred Hemiauchenia across the whole of that vast continent.
Just what rescued Hemiauchenia from the same fate that befell their cousin, Camelops, is unknown, as the same extinction event claimed almost all the megafauna of the continent at the end of the last Ice Age. It seems to have been a happy accident that this remarkable animal rebounded following this nadir, giving rise to the splendid variety of Columbian breeds we see today.
 [7]
Camelops hesternus, the Columbian camel.
The genus, once it recovered, branched out rapidly, claiming the niches left behind by the extinct Columbian horses and bison [8]. They would soon make the jump across the desert to highland Isthmocolumbia [Meso- and Central America] and north along the length of the Alinta [Rocky] Mountains. From here the species diverged into two distinct wild subspecies: in Isthmocolumbia, the larger and more robust paixaay (H. m. paizai) arose, and in Petsiroò, the smaller and more gracile breed traditionally called simply the uurung (H. m. macrocephala) arose. As the name of the latter came to be used as a general term for all wild and feral members of Hemiauchenia, the Petsiroan variety has come to be instead called the true or Petsiroan uurung.
Description
Although the two subspecies of wild uurung share a number of differences in appearance, it is plain to see that they are both members of the same species. Both, like all camelids, have slender necks, long legs, and padded feet. As with all living lamines, the uurung are smaller than any Eurasian camels, but stand much taller than their Madeiran [South American] fellows. The wild male paixaay stands between 7.7 and 8.2 feet (2.34 - 2.50 meters) at the crown of its head (females are a head shorter), and even the comparatively smaller true uurung stands at between 6.5 and 7.1 feet. (1.98 - 2.16 meters). The former weighs in at an average of 670 lbs (304 kg), the latter a scant 510 lbs (231 kg).
Uurung have proportionately longer legs and larger heads than the Madeiran glama [the llama]. These strange proportions, like those of some African antelopes, allow both varieties of uurung to rear up onto their hind legs for a time to reach higher vegetation. In terms of dietary habits, uurung of both kinds have broad tastes in vegetation, owing to their far reach and well-varied dentition. These allow the animals to browse or graze as the situation demands. Uurung will prefer low-lying leaves and shoots, and abrasive grasses, if given the choice.
Uurung pelage resembles that of most other camelids in texture, providing soft, lanolin-free wool when grown to the right length and shorn. Paixaay fur is short, a signature of its adaptations to arid, semi-tropical savanna and desert, while the coats of true uurung are longer and shaggier. Paixaay fur ranges in color from a dark brown to a sandy, almost blond tan, while true uurungs come in brown, white, black, and any shade or combination thereof.
Unlike most other mammals, but as is the case with all camelids, uurung are induced ovulators, and their females do not experience heat or estrus every year. Almost without exception, the dam will give birth to a single cria [juvenile laminoid], and will care for the young uurung for a year or two, when the juvenile reaches sexual maturity. A paixaay cria weighs around 56 lbs (25.4 kg) at birth, and that of a true uurung about 43 lbs (19.5 kg).
Uurung of all varieties are social animals. A group of paixaay will range anywhere from a single breeding pair up to a herd of over 20 animals, and true uurung herds can grow even larger. It is a rare occurrence to find an uurung of either type solitary. There is a strict pecking order within the uurung herd, with a single dominant male or breeding pair leading a number of females.
The social lifestyle, wide dietary range, and great adaptability of the camelids have seen their domestication in every continent on which they are found. The camelids of Columbia would be no exception.
Domestication
Since its survival by a hair's breadth at the close of the Pleistocene, the uurung's population had been slowly recovering, and by 5500 BCE had recovered almost to the levels of the Ice Age. Though human hunting of the animals had certainly continued in the interim, it was only at about this time that human societies began to take a serious interest in harvesting uurung meat beyond the occasional hunting trip.
Even fairly early in the Archaic Period, the wild true uurung was prized for both its meat and its wool. Its fluffy pelage, while not yet as long or as thick as that of some of its domesticated descendants or its cousin the alpaca, was still useful to the people of the mountains and the foothills of the Alinta Mountains. Even in the lowlands and deserts, so hot during the day, the nights at certain times of year could be fairly cold. It was common practice, every two years or so, to drive herds of the animals into funnel-shaped corrals or mountain gorges, cut off their fur, and then set them free to be shorn again another day.
To a lesser extent, hunters sought out the preferred grazing places of the uurung, taking care to slaughter only as many as they needed to eat, and leaving the rest to keep the population growing. By 4000 BCE, semi-nomadic settlements had gained the habit of settling down near these areas of high uurung population density, and soon it became common practice to capture and tame crias to be raised close to home, ultimately to be slaughtered once they reached adulthood. Another 500 years or so passed until entire small herds were being tamed in this fashion, and true domestication of the uurung began in earnest.
It is thus around 3500 BCE that the uurung was domesticated in Columbia for the first time, roughly in the same period as the camel in Arabia and the glama in Madeira. In the chilly mountains and foothills of the Duuye [Colorado Plateau], human settlements blossomed into a new period of growth as corrals of domesticated uurung sprung up all around the highlands. Due in part to the climate, which was hospitable for the animals, and due to the displacement of hunter-gatherer groups by the increasingly more populous uurung-herders, the range of uurung domestication spread rapidly up the length of the Alinta Mountains. By 2200 BCE, domesticated uurung were grazing near the shores of the Great Bitter Lake [Great Salt Lake], and by 1400 BCE had reached the Tuuwayan deserts [9] and the eastern end of the Nehwian Mountains [Sierra Nevada].
Interestingly enough, a fluke of ecology would give the first uurung-herders of Petsiroò an unexpected tag-along.
Part of the population growth of the uurung after the end of the Ice Age was owed to the extinction of almost all of the large carnivores that preyed on the uurung, such as the American lion and Smilodon. Although crias and sick or isolated adults could still fall victim to surprise attacks from mountain lions, jaguars [10], or wolves, adult uurung rarely had any natural enemies. Most Columbian predators soon learned to avoid uurung herds, as an angered adult uurung is fully capable of killing even the most persistent of carnivores, owing to its considerable size.
Another large ungulate was found in the true uurung's range - the bighorn sheep, Ovis canadiensis canadiensis. Although not terribly flighty, and somewhat social animals by nature, bighorn sheep (who share the same genus as the mouflon, the ancestor of the Eurasian sheep) have a fairly poorly-crystallized social hierarchy. Every mating season, competing males assert their dominance in their famous head-butting matches, but there is no such thing in a bighorn herd as a dominant male. If it weren't for the species' unique relationship with the uurung, this obstacle may very well have prevented the domestication of the sheep in Columbia.
While sporting a formidable rack of horns, the bighorn sheep is small enough not to enjoy the same lack of serious predators as the uurung. Bighorn lambs are especially vulnerable, but even adult rams aren't entirely immune. Bighorn sheep herds have since learned to stick near uurung herds, often intermingling directly during the wetter seasons when food is at its most plentiful. Thus, when domesticated herds of uurung began to make their home in or near human settlements, the sheep, who had begun to treat the camelids almost as leaders of the herd, followed after them.
By 1400 BCE, the Columbian sheep joined the uurung as the second large, mammalian domesticate of Columbia, and the third (or fourth) of Hesperidia.
Past the Tuuwaya Desert again, domestication came more slowly. The need to harvest uurung meat didn't arise as early as it did in Petsiroò, as Nuuyoo [Mexico in the Mesoamerican sense - that is, sans Yucatan] had a well-established set of crops which fed its population with general reliability. In fact, it was these crops that would ultimately lead to the independent domestication of the uurung in Nuuyoo, as the abundant new plant matter in the fields of the region proved appealing to juvenile paixaay. Although initially it was more common simply to kill the intrusive uurung for their meat, later on a process of capturing and taming similar to that in Petsiroò would catch on. By around 3000 BCE, a half of a millennium after the true uurung, the paixaay joined its cousin among the ranks of Columbian domesticates.
Domestication of the paixaay spread more slowly, but by 1400 BCE, it had spread into all but the most humid areas of Nuuyoo, and was expanding in the direction of the Tuuwaya. Here, as trade routes converged and the two breeds of uurung met, the future of Hemiauchenia and Columbian society would change forever...
The spread of the twin breeds of domesticated uurung, as of 1400 BCE at the beginning of the Great Columbian Synthesis.
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[1] - The High Arctic camel, Paracamelus sp.
[2] - I've been unable to find the original source of this image, but suffice it to say that it doesn't belong to me. Feel free to inform me if you find some information about its origin!
[3] - Image modified from an original by "Jerry Crimson Mann" (which was itself modified into Dymaxion projection by "Azcolvin429"), via Wikimedia Commons.
[4] - Image originally from the San Diego Zoo website.
[5] - Image credited to "Manco Capac", via Wikimedia Commons.
[6] - Rather than sharing a name in this timeline (e.g., "The Americas" or "America"), the two continents are grouped instead as Hesperidia, the lands of the Western Hemisphere. This is largely synonymous with the term " the New World".
[7] - Image by Sergio De la Rosa Martínez, via Wikimedia Commons.
[8] - By the time of European contact in this timeline, the American bison will have gone the way of its big-horned, Ice Age cousins, driven to extinction, displaced from its grazing lands by vast uurung herds. Its Eurasian cousin, the wisent, will survive it.
[9] - This is a slightly nuanced term. It refers collectively to the Sonoran, Chihuahan, and other north Mexican deserts, as well as any non-desertine areas which happen to fall between Oasis- and Mesoamerica. Tuuwaya will be very important later on.
[10] - Owing to the survival of the uurung (and a couple other megafauna species whom we will meet later), the jaguar enjoys a much larger range in western North America.
And again, here's some out-of-class reading for background on a lot of this stuff.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Mesoamerica
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopling_of_the_Americas |
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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Dec 29, 2015 11:12:59 GMT
The First Cradle The Formative Period in Naizaa
From "Two Cradles: New Revelations of the Origins of Civilization in Columbia" by Otis van Hoek, Nova Vizcaya University Press, 2006
 [1]
Anthropologists have often opined that it is in areas of great climatic variation that complex cultures first develop, and the region of Naizaa would seem to lend this idea credence. A thin but mountainous strip of land separating the Atlantic and Panthalassic [Pacific] Oceans, the Isthmus of Naizaa bears a staggering number of microclimates amongst its misty mountains. Shaded valleys knock elbows with the Gulf coast's humid jungles, while the Panthalassic coast tends to be cooler and more arid. Highland plateaus and the trailing end of the Nava [Sierra Madre] ranges dominate much of the landscape, interrupted by the narrowest point of the Isthmus itself. Here, trade winds blow from the Gulf to the Panthalassic, spawning disastrous mountain-gap winds, with hurricane-like effects on the region. Despite the often unstable climate, it was here that Columbia would, for the first time, attain three monumental accomplishments: the development of agriculture, the domestication of large mammals, and the birth of civilizations.
It was not, however, in those mountains, but in the humid lowlands along the Gulf coast that the continent's first city would be born. First uncovered in 1961, the original name of the ancient city (settled perhaps around 1750 BCE) is long since lost. Now it bears a name from the language of the later Otopa - "Manaj Babil". Though today only the faded outlines of foundations and an earthen mound give any indication that Manaj Babil ever existed, decades of study will ensure that it will be forever remembered as the oldest city of the continent - at least until an older one emerges from the jungles to claim its lofty title. Despite its recent archaeological importance, the site is threatened by encroaching urban development, a symptom of the endemic obstacle presented by growing human populations to the study of Nuuyoo's ancient past.
A few middens on the perimeter of the site show that precious jade and chalcedony from the distant highlands of Qu'umark [Guatemala] were rare and popular commodities at Manaj Babil, hinting at the distant and complex trade relations which already were springing up throughout the region. This and the site's stone buildings show that Manaj Babil likely had a political elite, capable of organizing civic projects, and forming networks of trade. For better or for worse, social stratification was born. Here there were not yet any large, domesticated mammals (save for man's eternal companion, the dog), and though game such as deer and turkey must have made up a significant portion of the diet, analysis of preserved containers among the ruins shows that maize, beans, and squash made up the bulk of it.
In spite of its surely eternal importance to Columbian archaeology, Manaj Babil itself seems only to have been occupied for about a century or two before being abandoned, perhaps choked out by growing jungles or outcompeted by the first centres of the Otopa culture [2] growing further to the east.
For centuries imagined as one of two sisters from which all Columbian civilization arose, like some sort of latter-day Babylonia, the mythical role of the Otopa as a mother culture has since faded as the importance of Manaj Babil and other early sites came to light. Nonetheless, a great many cultural innovations passed on to later Isthmocolumbia (and of course elsewhere later on) were pioneered in the ancestral Otopa lowlands. Where no writing exists from Manaj Babil or other Archaic sites, when the central Otopa site at Oote Nanav [3] arose with the dawn of the Formative Period its walls almost immediately began to speak. This early Otopa script has yet to be deciphered in any meaningful way, but would seem to represent the point from which written language would be transmitted to later societies of the continent. Likewise, numerous artistic-devotional themes (the jaguar, the feathered serpent, etc.) can first be found carved into the walls of Oote Nanav's temples.
The site appears to first have been occupied by 1600 BCE, the first middens of pottery from the farming communities there forming most of the original layers of archaeological finds. Stingray barbs and conch shells are also common, owing to the site's closeness to the coast. The city grew quickly, and by 1500 BCE, when other Otopan cities were coming into their own throughout the Isthmus' lowlands, the site was dominated by pyramids and temples, as well as the domed Observatory on the acropolis. We mustn't be fooled by 17th-century imaginings of the ancient Otopa as peaceable astronomers, despite the detailed diagrams of the movement of the planets that they left behind in their observatories. As other Otopa centers sprung up in the surrounding region, conflict surely erupted at times over territory and resources - at least one site, south of Oote Nanav, seems to have been destroyed violently by fire.
As the early Otopa culture reached its florescence, the highlands southwest of Oote Nanav where maize was first mastered experienced the rise of their own complex societies. The uurung, which fared so poorly in Otopa lands, flourished here in the highlands and on the drier, Panthalassic side of the Isthmus. This country, since dubbed the Nivdavaya after the people who live there, thus was soon home to its own cities, sprouting up among the fertile valleys; by 1500 BCE, the first Nivdavay civilization was born. [4] Individual towns and cities occupied their own hills or valleys, supported by terraced farms and great paddocks of uurung, generally remaining independently-minded and separate from one another politically. This aloofness and sense of individuality, some would allege, has remained a distinguishing feature of the Nivdavay all the way up to the present, but soon one town would gain primacy and promise an end to this first, greatly fragmented period in their history.
In a valley among the Nava peaks [5], the city of Tsung'oo, today the longest continuously-occupied city of Hesperidia, rose around 1460 BCE. Owing to its commanding position, central location, and fine farming land, Tsung'oo quickly grew to dominate the region, establishing vassalship over many of the smaller Nivdavay sites. Interaction between the Nivdavay and Otopa was frequent, and often violent. The population of the Nivdavaya tended to grow more quickly than that of the lowlands, probably owing to the plentiful meat harvested from the domesticated uurung of the highlands. Even as Otopa culture enjoyed its height in the early 15th Century BCE, sites near the foothills were being encroached upon by Nivdavay herders and warbands. By the time that Oote Nanav and the other major sites realized that they were being edged out, it was probably too late to tip the scales against the Nivdavay advance...
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[1] - Originally from Earth Snapshot.
[2] - A Mixe-Zoquean people; OTL's Mokaya, Olmec, or possibly both.
[3] - On the Coatzacoalcos, near the foothills of the Tuxtla mountains; close to the OTL site of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan.
[4] - The Nivdavay are none other than the Mixtecs.
[5] - The Valley of Oaxaca, to be exact. |
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Post by Krall on Dec 29, 2015 17:38:38 GMT
I'm liking this so far - seems really well researched. Are we going to see any alternate plant domestications, alongside the alternate animal domestications?
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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Dec 29, 2015 20:42:44 GMT
Yeah, I had solid plans for arrowhead to become a cultivate in the Mississippi valley region, but admittedly not much else.
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Post by Krall on Dec 30, 2015 1:50:33 GMT
Yeah, I had solid plans for arrowhead to become a cultivate in the Mississippi valley region, but admittedly not much else. Ah, cool! Have you looked into the Eastern Agricultural Complex? There were apparently a bunch of plants cultivated by Native Americans in the South East USA that were out-competed by maize-based agriculture. |
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Post by AnachronistRocketeer on Dec 30, 2015 5:02:29 GMT
Well this seems to be a well thought out timeline with a clear direction and excellent writing! Consider me hooked.
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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Dec 30, 2015 8:55:28 GMT
Yeah, I had solid plans for arrowhead to become a cultivate in the Mississippi valley region, but admittedly not much else. Ah, cool! Have you looked into the Eastern Agricultural Complex? There were apparently a bunch of plants cultivated by Native Americans in the South East USA that were out-competed by maize-based agriculture. Nah, I haven't gotten much research done for the Southeast and Northeast regions just yet.  That's all a few centuries down the line of course, relative to the point up to which I've already written. |
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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Dec 30, 2015 17:45:32 GMT
The Second Cradle The Formative Period in Petsiroò
From "Two Cradles: New Revelations of the Origins of Civilization in Columbia" by Otis van Hoek, Nova Vizcaya University Press, 2006
The landscapes of Petsiroò seem almost otherworldly when compared with those of Nuuyoo. It is a land of tall evergreens, red bluffs, and goliath canyons which score the surface of the dry land like scars of battles waged deep in geological time. Though undeniably beautiful, its agricultural prospects seem somewhat lesser than those of Nuuyoo's fertile valleys. Fecund soil is rare in most parts of the region, and so, much of its early agricultural development was dependent on labor-intensive dryland farming techniques. One can only admire the persistence of the first Petsiroan peoples [1] not only in their mastery of these, but in their dogged efforts to hybridize the natively Nuuyooi crop of maize into breeds better adapted to low annual rainfall.
As difficult as maize farming was for early Petsiroans, it is no surprise that the uurung-herding tribes of the northern plateau were substantially more successful, even in the early Formative Period in the region. Herds of these animals offered a more regular and reliable food source, supplemented usually by foraged plant matter and game. The flatter and more arid lowlands to the south seem to have been home to a since-vanished subsistence farming society to which maize arrived via diffusion through the tribes of the Tuuwaya, and it was they, out of all the peoples of the region, who first claimed the crop for their own purposes. These people were ultimately remembered as quiet dwarves in the cultural memory of Petsiroò, as the uurung-herders displaced them from the southern basins by the 21st Century BCE with their burgeoning numbers. It is from them, however, that the uurung-herders inherited maize, and from thence it spread to the highlands where it was fed by the mountain rains. In the cooler, wetter climate of the highlands, the maize grew comparatively well, even generating enough of a surplus to help feed the herders' animals, and over the course of generations, as new innovations led to the first use of uurung as draft animals, improving the harvest every year. This self-improving cycle drastically increased the food output of the highland villages, and within just a few centuries Petsiroò was experiencing an unprecedented population boom which would lead to the blooming of the Tseroro civilization.
The first civilization of Petsiroò is thus named for the first of its cities [Near OTL Flagstaff] to be cataloged and described by 19th Century archaeologists. Tseroro, we have since learned, was not the capital of some region-spanning kingdom, or even the largest and most important city in the area, but it is archetypal of Tseroro towns, and of the template upon which later cities in the region would likewise be built. But despite its perhaps overstated importance, Tseroro remains one of the most complete sites of the Formative Period, and provides us with a window into the world of Petsiroò between the 19th and 13th Centuries BCE.
 [2]
From the oft-neglected midden piles around the site, we find more clues of how Tseroro's people lived. Pottery fragments contain molecular traces of maize and squash in considerable numbers, and traces of bone and fecal matter paint a more complete picture of the day-to-day diet of the Tseroroans: sheep in large quantities, meat of the uurung and game like deer and elk [3] in lesser numbers, maize, squash, and wild foraging matter like berries. Incredibly, too, we now even have a hint of some of what they wore—preserved by the arid climate among fragments of refuse, there are shreds of woolen fabric shorn from uurung and sheep, useful for staying warm in the sometimes-chilly Petsiroan nights. As more relevant field work is done on these remarkable ruins, more of the myths that have accumulated around this ancient city will be brought into sharper clarity. Despite the widescale looting and occasional fits of vandalism committed against the skeleton of Tseroro in the intervening centuries, it seems that there will always be more there to discover...
 [4]
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[1] - Not all one ethnic group, mind you. The predominant people are Diné—let's call them an ATL cousin to OTL's Diné, whom we call the Navajo—and the region to the east around the north-south run of the Rio Grande is populated by Tanoan peoples. Sometime between the last glaciation and the Formative Period, the Proto-Uto-Aztecans left their homeland in southern *Arizona and northern *Sonora northward, and presently reside east of the Colorado Plateau as uurung-hunting nomads. There's a few Uto-Aztecan enclaves left in Petsiroò as of the time covered in this update, as well as a few pockets of isolates like the *Zuñi.
[2] - A Pueblo village. Original picture apparently from Fine Dictionary.
[3] - By which I mean the wapiti, not the moose—lest you Europeans get confused!
[4] - Cathedral Rock near Sedona, AZ. Image originally by Adam Baker, via Wikimedia Commons. |
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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Dec 30, 2015 17:53:10 GMT
As well as this latest piece, I went back and fixed up the rest of the posts... Still getting used to this site's weird post formatting.
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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Dec 31, 2015 1:57:03 GMT
A Fateful Meeting Early Tuuwaya and the Rise of Columbia's Plagues The rapid population growth in both Petsiroò and Nuuyoo which characterized the Formative Era spurred on a blossoming of trade across the arid south and west of the continent. The demand for goods rare at home, but plentiful abroad, grew, spurring thousands of prospective merchants to take to the road, even across the expansive, treacherous deserts of the Tuuwaya. Particularly on the Pacific coast, along the Gulf of Quijhant [1], rough trails were charted through the desert on Petsiroan bark—maps which would prove invaluable to the merchants of the Tuuwaya as they carved the first highways along the north-south stretch of this expansive region. Elsewhere, further inland, oases and hill-towns became important stop-offs, flourishing from the traffic and wealth brought by traders. On both ends of the exchange, traders soon found it more economical to have pack animals do the heavy lifting for them. Particularly strong breeds of uurung can bear up to 25% of their body weight, placing them among the most efficient pack animals in the world; once these early merchants had truly grasped this idea, its benefits became obvious quickly. More goods crossed the desert in fewer days, and for the first time, people in Nuuyoo could quickly and reliably hear tell of news from Petsiroò, and vice-versa—the first regular contact between the 'Two Cradles' had been established. Although this exchange began around 1400 BCE, it wasn't for another century that its most profound effects truly began to be felt across the continent. This new class of merchants was curious about the different breeds of uurung found at either end of the trading routes, and used their new-found wealth to purchase some of the local animals for themselves. Petsiroan merchants took a similar interest in the peculiar crops grown south of the Tuuwaya to bring back home, carrying north Petsiroò's first tomatoes and beans; and, likewise, the first domesticated sheep reached Nuuyoo at around this time [2]. By 1300 BCE, the first paixaay herds were grazing at the foot of the Alinta Mountains, and the true uurung was being raised for wool in the Nuuyooi highlands. The two races of uurung were being bred together by farmers for the first time, sowing the seeds for the curious melange of camelid breeds which would spread across the face of the continent, and beyond. The interbreeding, and the central role of the uurung in the network of trade across the Tuuwaya, created a near-continuous gene pool of the animals from the Great Bitter Lake to the Isthmus of Naizaa, laying the foundations of a vast breeding ground for epidemic diseases... 
Range of uurung domestication, ca. 1300 BCE
------- The trouble begins one cold and lonely Tuuwayan night in the 13th Century BCE. Some enterprising individual, weeks into the trek across the deserts, enjoys a tender moment with one of his animals, perhaps inspiring centuries of later stereotypes of the Tuuwaya as a land of lonely men and nervous sheep. Whatever humor might be found in the situation is outweighed somewhat by the unfortunate effects soon to transpire from this unnatural union. The unsuspecting traveler is now carrying the coccobacilli bacterium Brucella, the same agent responsible for brucellosis in the Old World. He arrives at a trading town a few miles north the next day, feeling suddenly ill, and is soon in bed with a terrible fever, sweating profusely. His condition rapidly deteriorates as he is wracked with stabbing pain and fits of coughing. The miserable fellow at last dies after a week, but not before passing his ailment on for posterity. The attendant, who had been tasked with providing for the traveler in his last days, returns to her family. Soon, six new victims are suffering from the symptoms of the man's mysterious sickness. From patient zero, it spreads by physical contact, sexual and otherwise, in the crowded villages and burgeoning trading towns of the region. This alien enemy is none other than the disease traditionally known as Columbian sweating sickness (though these days it's more fashionable to call it mucoa, the Nemeni [3] name for the disease). From the trade nexus that is the Tuuwaya, mucoa is rapidly carried north into Petsiroò, where it carries away one in every five people (up to a full half in a few areas), and south to Nuuyoo, where the death toll is no less horrifying. It makes the trek north to the Great Bitter Lake before its initial spread at last peters out. It flares up repeatedly for another century and a half, before seemingingly dying off. Occasional cases of the disease will never disappear completely, and future outbreaks will take an even greater toll as the bacterium mutates among its new hosts, but the worst is over for now. The emergent civilizations of western Columbia are shaken by the loss of life, but survive nonetheless, fortunate in the fact that the disease did not cause more damage. Their luck was not to last long. -------
[1] - The Gulf of California. [2] - It seems that Nuuyooi bighorn sheep, for whatever reason, did not naturally form the same bonds with uurung as they did in Petsiroò, though Nuuyooi farmers adopted local sheep into their herds once the practice spread from the north. [3] - An Uto-Aztecan people whom we'll meet some centuries down the road. |
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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Dec 31, 2015 11:31:04 GMT
Lands of Plague and Fire The Formative Collapse
From "Two Cradles: New Revelations of the Origins of Civilization in Columbia" by Otis van Hoek, Nova Vizcaya University Press, 2006 The great expansionary phase of the Tsung'oo culture began late in the 15th Century BCE, spelling trouble for the lowland cities like Oote Nanav to the northeast. Even in this earliest phase of their civilization, the Nivdavay must have already been a fiercely martial culture, for we find that most of their famous painted pottery wares feature warriors and jaguar figures. Indeed, a couple of western Otopa sites from before the Collapse show traces of being destroyed violently, and obsidian spearpoints found in situ at these unhappy ruins offer damning evidence that they were destroyed by invading Nivdavay from the west. Oote Nanav suffered for its close links with the crumbling Otopan frontier, for monument construction ends at about this time—the last major constructions at the site were a new set of earthen and packed-stone fortifications at the extremities of the city. The demographic pressure of the expanding Tsung'oo culture may have spelled a rapid end for the Otopa if it weren't for the arrival of mucoa from the north. It swept first through the highlands of the Nivdavaya, killing two in every five people living in the area. The hilltop cities of the Nivdavay depopulated rapidly, the once-vocal temple walls and stelae of Tsung'oo falling quiet. They would not speak again for two centuries. The collapse of Tsung'oo must have, briefly, seemed like a godsend for the Otopa cities, but it can't have lasted long. Another wave of burned cities and mass graves appears in the archaeological record as Mycobacterium—the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis—jumped the species barrier from sheep, spread into Otopa lands, and displaced refugees of the Tsung'oo collapse who became bands of brigands, burning and stealing unabated. The black cough, as it came to be called, was followed soon after by the first cases of the biting pox [1], which spread from the north, in a fatal one-two punch which devastated the region. Oote Nanav was finally abandoned by 1220 BCE, marking the end of the Northern or Gulf Otopa culture, but the Otopa would persist in their Southern or Panthalassic phase along the coast and in the Maya uplands. At around 1200 BCE, the population of Naizaa was only 20% of what it had been in 1400, the rest killed by disease, or else emigrated. Another great civilization would not arise in Nuuyoo for a century and a half... -------
The situation was little less grim north of the Tuuwaya. The highland cities of Petsiroò were less densely-packed than those of Nuuyoo, and most of the herd animals who acted as vectors were herded out in the expansive countryside, seldom kept in close quarters with people. All the same, the epidemics devastated Petsiroò, and genetic evidence would seem to show that three-fourths of the population disappeared between 1300 and 1200 BCE. Graves filled with the famous black ash of the region likewise give us a hint of the desolation. Tseroro must have emptied in this timeframe, never to be occupied again, spelling the end of the culture to which it gave its name. The Formative Period had drawn to a close, but the trends that would carry Columbia into its next epoch were already in motion...
The Formative Period ends. (1800 - 1200 BCE) ------- [1] - An orthopox transmitted first from uurung to humans. Biting pox : Camelpox :: Smallpox : Cowpox. |
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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Dec 31, 2015 18:17:23 GMT
Petsiroò, the Bird Land, 1224 BCE The stink of death was gone now—for that the villagers were grateful. It was instead acrid smoke which wafted through the autumn air and stung their nostrils. So too the wails of the dying had been replaced by the wails of those who mourned them. It was here, atop the great, red hill of stone outside of town, where they had decided to gather, towering far above the pines below. Every one of the townspeople was in attendance—a hundred-odd of them standing by the pyre, three-hundred-odd burning atop it. The malaise had come south from the Bird City with the annual merchant caravans. Rumors had trickled through the area of a great ague which had overtaken much of the north country, but none of them were prepared for the oncoming tide of death. By the time they knew the evil the merchants had carried with them, it was too late. The last generation had seen similar pain, similar dying, when the sweating plague had swept through the land. Many of the oldest of those who stood atop the hill that day—though there were not many left of venerable age—remembered the brothers and sisters, the parents and uncles whom they'd lost. This time had been worse—the coughing, the blood, the pain and the screaming. As if these alien evils were not enough, the sweating plague had returned and taken away some of those who'd begun to recover. The loss had been no less trying. The widow, leaning against her last son, wept for the memory of her husband. Once he had gone with the warbands to raid against the river pueblos of the east. He had always arrived home, grinning and ruddy-faced, aglow with victory. She could scarcely acknowledge that he had been stolen from her so cruelly. The coppersmith, sullen, stared at his feet and contemplated his ruin. The loss of his old bat of a mother had been bad enough—as much as he'd yearned to be free of her harping, he found himself oddly missing it once the plague had taken her. But it was his apprentice he missed so sorely. The bright young lad had shown great promise, if not complete prodigy, and now all the time he had invested in training him meant nothing. With nobody to mind the kiln as he worked, and no obvious replacements, his future didn't look very bright. He wondered if this was all some sort of cruel joke. The undertaker wasn't there. Once he'd gathered up the bodies, he'd been made to stand atop the pyre himself as it burned—the others feared that the evil may have remained on him. The shepherd had perhaps the most reason to mourn. All his flock had wandered off in the chaos, or been stolen and eaten by desperate townsfolk and highwaymen. His brothers and sisters had been carried off just the same—felled by the plague or else scattered to the four winds. He had no more parents. And yet as the sky above began to weep, he did not. Gradually, drenched in the rain, the pyre cooled, and the boy was able to draw closer. Tremulously, he dipped his hands into the ash, ignoring the heat, and touched them to his face. Closing his eyes, he could almost imagine their hands on his face, reassuring, one last time. The townspeople would linger out there for a long while, until long after the pyre had lost the last of its heat—covering their pox scars with those ashen hand-prints, and remembering. ------- " As it is today that people often turn to their faith in times of uncertainty and pain, so it was in the past. The end of the kingdom of Tseroro more than ten centuries before Christ began an epoch of unpromising providence for the Columbian west and its blooming civilizations. But the huddled remnants saw hope in the desolation—nearly all of the holiest sites around Tseroro show signs of great funeral pyres in ages past, perhaps reflecting the constant yearning for a connection with the great beyond which has stuck with that region through the centuries. It is soon after that we first begin to find the tell-tale cultural signs of the Black Hand tradition, from which all later religions of the west of the continent would descend.
" Thus it is that a time of great dying would bring about, phoenix-like, a great birth..." - Joffrey D'Arcy, "Traditions of the Western Lands", 1788 |
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Post by Krall on Dec 31, 2015 20:48:56 GMT
I love the most recent update! Before this timeline was detailed and well-researched, now it's emotional and well-written too! |
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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Jan 1, 2016 2:03:46 GMT
You're far too kind.  I haven't even written most of my best ideas out yet, after all. |
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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Jan 1, 2016 15:23:12 GMT
Teeming Multitudes The Diversification of Uurung Breeds in the Formative
From "The Uurung, A Natural History" by Addison Shorely, Oxford Press
 [1]
As it has been everywhere, the fates of mankind and their beasts of burden grew ever more intertwined through the centuries in Hesperidia. Even as the domestication of that great western camelid had enabled the florescence of the first Columbian civilizations, they became ever more dependent on the meat, fur, and labor provided by the animals as time progressed. The economic wealth of the continent crossed the Tuuwayan deserts on their backs, allowing broad dissemination of people, ideas, and coveted trade goods. It is this central role in Columbian civilization which encouraged a diversification in the animals to suit the varying needs of humanity. As was discussed in the first chapter of this work, there were, broadly speaking, two subspecies of the animal in Columbia at the end of the last Ice Age, the true uurung of Petsiroò and the paixaay of Nuuyoo. For a time it was this that drew the primary distinction between kinds of domesticated uurung, until the fateful collision of the Petsiroan and Nuuyooi worlds in the Tuuwaya towards the Latter Formative. By this point most of the true uurung populations which had spread throughout the mountainous west had grown woollier as a result of selection for better wool providers. In a number of places, largely in the central highlands of Nuuyoo and southern Petsiroò, there was a small amount of admixture between the two landraces for the first time. This would be of particular significance to the north, where wool from the hides of the hybrids made the textile more common than ever, and lent to the creation of the weaving tradition which would be so important in latter centuries for that area's economy. The paixaay, by contrast, had seen considerably less morphological change. This larger breed, however, would see the broader distribution of the two upon the Synthesis, owing to its status as the animal of choice for the new merchant class which fanned out across the continent. The trade cities of the Tuuwaya were built on the backs of the paixaay, which could carry far more than its smaller cousin. Consequently, wherever the merchants traveled and settled, the beasts soon took root. It would be after the continent recovered from the Formative Collapse and trade routes began to branch away from the Nuuyoo-Petsiroò route that the spread of the paixaay into the vast interior plains would change Columbian history forever... ------- [1] - From Mussaver Tarif-i Hayvanat by M. Emin, 1892. |
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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Jan 1, 2016 15:53:04 GMT
The First Renewed Period (1200 - 600 BCE)
From "A Primer on the Renewed Period of Columbia: Volume One" by Thomas Liebknecht, Imperial University of Augsburg Press, 1998
Despite a shift to the western coast, the interior deserts of Tuuwaya would be a critical area in the First Renewed Period, as was the case in the preceding Formative. [1] The cultural effect of the Formative Collapse upon the people of Columbia is one which is not commonly explored, and which is difficult to explain to anyone whose roots do not lay in that great continent. Even existing as it does at the very oldest, hazy extremity of remembered history, the scars of the 70% - 80% population loss in the west's towns and cities have left an indelible mark upon the folk tales, philosophy, and religions which rose from the ashes of the devastation. Even the great plagues in the prelude to the 16th Century did not match the relative level of devastation of the Collapse--and yet, remarkably, the great cities rose again, marking the beginning of a continuous continental history that would proceed all the way to the present. This renaissance has been marked by Western historiography as the Renewed Period, a time in which the continent's west and south rebuilt, and first disseminated their crucial innovations across old barriers, leaving new societies wherever they landed. It is typical to separate this broad swathe of time, between the misty Formative and the much-explored Classic periods, into two halves: the First Renewed Period, spanning from the Collapse to a smaller chaotic period typically considered to have occurred around 600 BCE with the disintegration of the first great Diné kingdom, and the first plains-rider invasions of what would become the Kanitaabe Nemeni [2] lands in later centuries; and the Second Renewed Period, from about 600 to 200 BCE, a more established stage which saw the rise of many of the western Columbian states which existed at the time of European contact. The two volumes of this textbook overview for the Imperial University will be split between these two epochs, and will, the author hopes, provide a useful guide to this fascinating but often overlooked span of time in Columbia's history. ------- Chapter One: Will discuss Petsiroò in this period, up to the first Great Scorpion War and the demise of the South-Wind Empire in 622 BCE. Chapter Two: Will explore what we currently know of the central and western Tuuwaya at this time, including the beginnings of the Tahéjoca state in the Gulf of Quijhant [3]. Chapter Three: Will cover Isthmocolumbian developments in this period, such as the first burgeoning cities in the Teneka Valley [4], the rebirth of the Nivdavay, the surviving Epi-Otopa culture, and the Maya [5]. Chapter Four: Will attempt to elucidate upon the birth of the first civilizations of Columbia's Panthalassic coast, including the crucial domestication of the water-pig [6]. Chapter Five: Will dispel some myths regarding the plains-riders east of the Alinta Mountains [7] and their establishment in the Nabototo River Valley [8].
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[1] - A scene of the Chihuahuan desert taken by David Fulmer, via Wikimedia Commons. [2] - The Nemeni were mentioned momentarily before, in this post. 'Kanitaabe', oddly enough, is not really the name of the country (not natively at least, though in Europe it's become conflated), but the term for the throne or palace in general, similar to how IOTL the Ottoman state was sometimes called the Sublime Porte. Kanitaabe means 'House of the Sun'. [3] - I may need to refresh a couple of geographic terms here. This is the Gulf of California. [4] - The Valley of Mexico. [5] - Finally a name that stays the same! [6] - A Californian Ice Age survivor, though not one of the flashier ones... [7] - The Rocky Mountains. [8] - The Mississippi. |
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Post by Huehuecoyotl on Jan 2, 2016 0:12:21 GMT
Winds of Change: Petsiroò's Long Recovery
From "A Primer on the Renewed Period of Columbia: Volume One" by Thomas Liebknecht  [1]Once the dust of the Formative Collapse had settled, civilization in the once densely-populated plains and crags of Petsiroò was faced with the intimidating prospect of a hard reset on its civic structures, trade, and spiritual life. Its rising to this challenge would begin within a startlingly short time of the last burnings and plagues, though not from the same walls and mountaintops as before. Though the south of Petsiroò was peripheral to the Tseroro civilization, in the Renewed Period its rivers' banks would give birth to great empires and religions which would shape the face of the whole continent in the centuries to come. Where Tseroro and other Formative cities sprouted in the high, relatively cool mountains of the southern Duuye plateau, the south of Petsiroò was hotter and more humid, and interlaced with a greater number of rivers whose fresh water would prove an invaluable asset for refugees fleeing into the region during the chaos of the Collapse. The ability to quickly resume the growth of maize, squash, and beans along irrigated channels and river banks stopped the tide of death in a way which should not be underestimated. The survivors from the hill cultures brought agricultural and metallurgical expertise which was new to the lowland cities, forming a new caste of uplander tradespeople. This would create tensions with the likewise new class of native peasants. The baby boom which began in the mid 12th Century BCE and ended about 1000 BCE forced a growing lower-class population onto more and more crowded (and limited) stretches of farmland. The small landowning caste, descended from the simple family groups which first settled on the land, would control the destinies of the new peasantry for many centuries to come. Despite this arrangement causing the increasing impoverishment of the peasant class, the peasants would come to blame the foreigners for their exclusion from the rich city life. This conflict would come to define much of the internal life of the new cities and states. Over all of this presided a new civic authority that held roots in the old order, or at least claimed to, in the form of the Sages, who in this period still held secular as well as ecclesiastical power in Petsiroò [2]. The extinction of the old nobility in the cataclysms of the past century meant that it would fall to these religious leaders both to preside over the rise of these powerful cities, and to shape the early customs and beliefs of the Black Hand religion that arose at about this time. The hand emblem for which Black Hand is named is of course still found in all the modern descendants of this tradition. In nearly all cases its symbolism is understood to be that of the hand of the revered ancestors, who dwell in the After-Time, a misty realm considered at once to be beyond the mortal coil and in the distant future where the strife and struggles of human existence have been ended. In ancient Petsiroò, as is still the case in many modern religions, the Will of these ancestors was considered the foremost mandate in life, the upkeeping of which was necessary to safely arrive in the After-Time oneself. What exactly this Will was supposed to be has, of course, been regarded differently at different times and places. The Sages were the ultimate arbiters of the matter in Renewed Petsiroò. Many of these early religious leaders are still clearly remembered today, though their lives have been heavily mythologized, and there is serious scholarly doubt as to whether some of them ever lived at all. Prominent among them are the good and just Nolo of Tseázhi, and Hastaazhin I of Tsahkiin, whose code of ethics would form the governing moral and legal philosophy of the future South-Wind Empire. With time, the stewardship of the Sages in these lands would erode and be replaced by that of kings, but while they still ruled, the map of Petsiroò as we know it began to take shape. 
The rivers and major cities of Petsiroò, 1100 BCE. The first recorded war in Petsiroò began either in 1078 or 1077 BCE between the powerful southern cities of Tsahkiin and Tóbeel who each led a coalition of their smaller allies in a feud over farming territory in the rich river soils between their heartlands. This First Ashih-hi [3] War was a narrow victory for larger Tsahkiin, which held the edge again in the Second and Third wars (around 1020 and 946, respectively), the last of which spread all along the Ashih-hi watershed and involved a hundred cities in all. Somewhat uninvolved in the long feud was the more northerly state of Atsadzhil, which at the time was extending its control along the river's northern banks, and its tributaries to the north. More and more of the rich copper-mining country fell under the city's grasp, enabling its rapid conquest first of Tseázhi, and then of Lhiitsézh, one of the few northern towns which was still occupied at this time. The southern cities, whose own most talented metal-crafters (as members of the uplander caste) had been mostly expelled in a series of pogroms through the 11th and early 10th Centuries BCE, felt themselves under growing threat from the well-equipped legions of Atsadzhil, whose warriors undertook occasional raids into the northern hinterlands of the squabbling cities. Once the end of the last of the Ashih-hi Wars was a generation past, at the beginning of the 9th Century BCE, Tsohkiin and Tóbeel were prepared to do what was once unthinkable: to join forces against the growing threat of Atsadzhil in a powerful new alliance, which would blow over the Petsiroan lands like a great southern wind. The Sages of the two cities agreed upon a neutral party to head the new alliance in the person of a powerful landowner from the river lands between the cities, a member of what would come to be known as the Scorpion clan. In the August of 878 BCE, he rose to power as So-Tsoh I of the new South-Wind Empire, the first ruling monarch in Petsiroò since the Collapse. The king would prove an able leader, showing an aptitude for playing the internal factions of his new realm against one another in his drive to centralize power away from the independent landlords. Making his court in Tsohkiin [4], he directed the united armies of the Empire in a concerted campagin against the southern frontiers of Atsadzhili territory, even threatening their capital with outposts on the opposite bank of the Ashih-hi River. This first expansionary period of the South-Wind Empire ended about 850 when So-Tsoh I was ageing, and became more interested in consolidating his power, bringing Hasbidi at the western end of the Petsiroan world under his control by peaceful means. After his death in 846 or 845, the Empire struck north of the river again, making headway despite Atsadzhil's technological advantage by virtue of its superior manpower. It seized first the eastern stretch of Atsadzhil's holdings, forcing the Atsadzhili armies westward before finally capturing the city itself in 832 BCE. The Battle of Atsadzhil is of course much celebrated in song and epic poetry, but the semi-mythical personages and events are well-known and need not be belabored here. Suffice it to say that the city's holdings collapsed one after another with the conquest, Imperial armies mopping them up as they went and re-imposing order. The Imperial frontier had reached Lhiitsézh by around 800 BCE and would remain there for about 175 years. The peaceful years of the early 8th Century BCE were disrupted when a new threat began to encroach upon the Empire's eastern marches, not from another city but from the vast and apparently empty lands east of Petsiroò. A few eastern cities were ransacked, the infantry-based levies of the Petsiroan warleaders unable to counter the curious sight of men riding on uurung-back--the camelids, up to this point, had been used only for meat, wool, and sometimes draft work, since the somewhat scrawny animals of the city were no good for riding. Nevertheless, faced with further devastation, the Empire adapted quickly once it managed to capture of these bigger uurung in battle, descended from paixaay brought north centuries before, crossbreeding them with local animals and eventually fielding their own cavalry to counter the eastern raiders. Although Imperial forces did not range far to the east in repelling the plains-riders, they did set into motion a great migration on the plains which would have monumental effects on the history of lands to the east. In Petsiroò itself, meanwhile, the Empire employed the new riding-uurung breed in peacetime use as well as in combat, building new road networks spanning its territory, some of which are still in use today. The ability to range farther and conquer further inspired a dangerous sense of overconfidence in the palace at Tsohkiin, it seems, once which would inspire the last great campaign of the South-Wind Empire in 627 BCE. An invasion of the sparsely-populated Duuye highlands to the north reached as far as the Great Bitter Lake [5] with some limited successes, subjugating many of the young cities of the plateau, but taxed the structural capabilities of the Empire. A particularly bad harvest was the tipping point in the Imperial lands, causing first a famine and then a consequent outbreak of disease which struck down the King and plunged the densely-populated cities into chaos. The Scorpion clan which had held the royal household for 250 years by now had roots in many outlying cities, and plenty of contenders for the throne rose up, fragmenting the Empire in 622 BCE and marking the beginning of the First Great Scorpion War... 
Saguaro flatlands of the type common in southern Petsiroò. [6] ------- [1] - Picture originally from the University of Arizona computer science site. [2] - There isn't necessarily any hard evidence that the Sages' rise to power had anything to do with the old system of governance in Petsiroò, but they certainly tried to convey as much. Nobody was left to contradict them. [3] - The Ashih-hi being the Gila River. [4] - The two cities which formed the Empire were considered dual capitals in theory, but in practice the larger and more powerful city of Tsohkiin was where most of the real decision-making happened. [5] - The Great Salt Lake, *Utah. [6] - Uncertain of this picture's origin. |
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I've decided to import my ongoing American domestication timeline to Althistoria, starting with a slightly edited and abridged version of the Story Thus Far. Thereafter you'll see new updates, possibly posted here and on AH.com concurrently. Shame my typeface of choice for the TL (Book Antiqua) isn't available here, but them's the kicks...
That's all a few centuries down the line of course, relative to the point up to which I've already written.
I haven't even written most of my best ideas out yet, after all.
