mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
Not to side track the thread but in the book After Man by Dougal Dixon there are Marsupial Monkeys in Australia 50 million years from now http://speculativeevolution.wikia.com/wiki/Chuckaboo
Lands of Red and Gold, Act II
- Thread starter Jared
- Start date
It would be interesting if Aururian temples take the form of proto-zoos, albeit not open to the public necessarily. I think urban temples could manage something like a smaller enclosure, about as large as koala enclosures are in modern zoos, with a correspondingly small population of koalas. Rural temples in the right sort of environment could go with the sacred forest model, an somewhat curated area with a lot more koalas around since they'll have the room. In which case I suppose tame koalas would be provided by the rural temples to the urban temples.
It'd be funny if the Aururian idea of a monastery is not one where men of god live together and brew beer and make cheese, but rather where men live together to raise koalas.
E: I was wondering about one thing, how do Plirites see the other Aururian religions in contrast to their own? Do they reject all other religions like how the Abrahamic religions considered all else to be pagan or otherwise heretical? Or is it like the philosophical continuum within the historical weft of Indian religious thought, where particular schools and faiths would saw themselves as being discrete entities, but would see more parallels between each other in particular beliefs, such as the astika - nastika classifications - allowing for a great deal of inter-traditional exchange?
I see reason enough for both outlooks, differing between particular schools. The Tjarrlinghi, especially in Tjuwagga's age, should have more reason to adopt the former attitude towards non-Plirites, at least to justify an expansionistic ideology.
The schools scattered around the Gunnagal and Durigal regions should have incentive towards the latter approach, where Plirite schools and philosophical traditions which don't stem from the Good Man's teachings would inevitably intermingle in discourse and sharing of ideas. The more deistic Plirites would presumably receive influence from the priesthoods of particular gods, though I'm not sure if the latter would be as tolerant of the former as vice versa.
I'm reminded of Clements' saying in the first instalment: “Religion was not something you were, it was something you did." Distinctions, I surmise, have as much or more to do with how people behave than with what they avow. I guess with an emphasis on praxis, the whats whys and hows of actions a philosophy incites would be one of the primary distinguishing features? Are there any schemata that categorise philosophies / religions / schools based on praxis in Plirism and other religions / traditions?
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Speaking of scurvy, is not a way to avoid it rose hip? It has a lot of vitamin C in it and as long as the temperature does not go over 60C it's fine? And dried it does not take up much space. Seems better than sauerkraut, but I have not done the research. And you can grind it and make it into a soup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_hip_soup
I'm thinking sailors putting some rose hip paste in their stews, when they're simmering.
I'm thinking sailors putting some rose hip paste in their stews, when they're simmering.
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Apologies (again) for the belated replies to some of these posts; life is getting increasingly busy these days.
This isn't a comment on social station in particular, although different Plirite schools have competing views on that anyway. Some see it as a case of behave properly in this life and you may be born a king in another life, others see it as just part of the vagaries of different consequences, and others have different interpretations again.
Still, as you point out, there isn't going to be much of a market in the long run unless cultivation is curtailed; the market may last for a few decades before local cultivation picks up, but won't last forever. The only thing which would produce a big market is if the Yadji or Atjuntja rulers deem opium to be unacceptable on moral grounds and forbid its production and consumption. The official European trading companies would be unwise to interfere with such an edict, since they would risk the local rulers seeking different European protectors in that case. So that would mean it would be up to smugglers, and the Five Rivers would have the advantage of proximity and longer land borders for smuggling routes in both those nations.
The other possibility is that the Five Rivers develops stronger versions of opiates, particularly morphine. They will have a strong interest in opium anyway for medical purposes, and they have quite advanced chemistry. If they figure out the method for producing sulphuric acid on a large scale - which they will do sooner or later (unless conquered) - then I would expect experimentation to lead to the discovery of morphine in relatively short order. Morphine would be a very useful export good, both for obvious pain purposes, but also potentially as a strong drug.
But the Aururians tend to be more systematic about it than Europeans. The artificial wetlands have already been well-described. So to a lesser degree is their deliberate cultivation of trees both for harvesting of timber, and other products (e.g. resin). They also have a sense of how to make sure that the right wildlife is around. For instance, possums need natural hollows for nesting and predator protection, and so are far less common in secondary-growth forests due to a lack of suitable nesting sites. The Five Rivers and Durigal have both figured out how to encourage possums through creating artificial nesting hollows attached to trees scattered throughout forests (possums are locally important for fur). Possums are not domesticated in any traditional sense, but they are harvested for fur nonetheless, and managed so that they don't become too rare. Aururians tend to manage the land in a whole variety of ways along these lines.
So there's quite a tradition for temples to draw from in terms of a temple turning into a koala paradise...
The other may be broadly called accommodationism, and which has made some form or other of accommodation with other religious views so that they can live alongside each other, and to an extent draw from each other. This is most common in the Five Rivers schools, although it also shows up elsewhere, such as with Plirite converts amongst the Kingdom of the Skin (Hunter Valley), where they are unable to convert a majority of the population and so perforce have made some adaptations.
So a Five Rivers family might say "these are the deities we worship" or "these are the rites we perform at this time of year", without provoking arguments over religious exclusivity. They also have no problem adding additional rites at particular times of year if it seems worthwhile, which is how various aspects of Plirism have been incorporated into the actions of people who would not consider themselves Plirite. It also means that the Plirite minority, by social interaction, also sometimes adopt particular rites which have been practices of the traditional religion.
No analogy should be drawn too closely, of course, but there are some parallels which could be drawn with Hindu India in the time after Buddhism had emerged but did not take over completely, or with some strands in historical Chinese or Japanese attitudes to religion where they are incorporate practices or rites from more than one religious tradition depending on circumstances.
State religions have emerged, such as the imperial cult and that of Lopitja, but none of these have completely displaced the older practices.
As a side note, during the Great Migrations, things got shaken up enough outside of the Five Rivers that the links to local sites and particular families were lost, along with beliefs in many local deities. So what emerged amongst the migrants was a smaller group of deities in different societies, obviously descended from the older deities, but reworked into a new form. In these cases, each region tends to have its own set of gods, with some changes from the ancestral ones, but not the same sense of religion being a matter of practice rather than belief.
I'd need to look into whether drying rose hips has the same problems.
I may have not expressed this clearly. Most of what I see about the butterfly effect and different people being born that is discussed today (including on AH.com, but also elsewhere) is based on the recognition of modern genetics, that a genetically different person would be born if (for example) conception happened at a different moment. Without such a sense of modern genetics, and with a view of reincarnation, the idea that different consequences might lead to a different person being born doesn't make the same kind of sense; if the same soul is in there, then it is the same person.
This isn't a comment on social station in particular, although different Plirite schools have competing views on that anyway. Some see it as a case of behave properly in this life and you may be born a king in another life, others see it as just part of the vagaries of different consequences, and others have different interpretations again.
The idea of one person having a single soul is pretty deep-rooted in the human psyche, as far as I can tell. I wouldn't expect that the idea that a person would be colonised by multiple souls is one that would come naturally, especially since there are plenty of other possible - and psychologically easier - solutions to the situation of greater population growing. Souls spending more time in bodies rather than in the Evertime, for instance, or of souls simply being born more often in the same time period.
Let me see what I can put together over the next few days.
The Five Rivers would have trouble exporting further than *Tasmania and *Western Australia, since there is a local network there by the remaining Nangu on the Island (who are nowadays largely unconnected to the Nuttana) which ships goods which are of no interest to the Nuttana and too local for Europeans to bother. This is how a small trade in gum cider persists, for instance.
Still, as you point out, there isn't going to be much of a market in the long run unless cultivation is curtailed; the market may last for a few decades before local cultivation picks up, but won't last forever. The only thing which would produce a big market is if the Yadji or Atjuntja rulers deem opium to be unacceptable on moral grounds and forbid its production and consumption. The official European trading companies would be unwise to interfere with such an edict, since they would risk the local rulers seeking different European protectors in that case. So that would mean it would be up to smugglers, and the Five Rivers would have the advantage of proximity and longer land borders for smuggling routes in both those nations.
The other possibility is that the Five Rivers develops stronger versions of opiates, particularly morphine. They will have a strong interest in opium anyway for medical purposes, and they have quite advanced chemistry. If they figure out the method for producing sulphuric acid on a large scale - which they will do sooner or later (unless conquered) - then I would expect experimentation to lead to the discovery of morphine in relatively short order. Morphine would be a very useful export good, both for obvious pain purposes, but also potentially as a strong drug.
I can certainly see kratom being considered too. I don't know how big the market would be, but the Nuttana could certainly find some buyers if they looked around.
Interesting idea, although my list of timelines to write is already far too long...
Aururia as the land of drug smugglers? Kratom and morphine, plus there's a wildcard one in south-eastern Aururia which I've considered developing too...
There's an intriguing overlap with kunduri, which also has stimulant properties when used in moderate doses. Although the difference is that too much kunduri leads to somnolescence.
Ah, yes, it's been a while since I read good ol' After Man. Marsupials have already evolved a variety of forms which could turn into quasi-primates, although I'm most intrigued by the idea of some of the marsupial gliders turning into flying quasi-primates.
I don't know whether there would be deliberate selective breeding, since with not-quite-tame koalas, trying to interfere with their breeding could be interesting. (Koalas who are in the mood are temperamental anyway, and have very sharp claws...) But unintentional selection is certainly possible.
One of the things about many parts of Aururia, particularly the Five Rivers and Durigal, is that they already have a very strong sense of managed wilderness. That is to say, land which is not inhabited or farmed in the conventional sense, but which is still used for important parts of the diet. There were kinds of things like this in parts of OTL medieval Europe, such as deliberate managing of forests to allow a nutritionally significant number of berries to be gathered, and royal forests for hunting deer.
But the Aururians tend to be more systematic about it than Europeans. The artificial wetlands have already been well-described. So to a lesser degree is their deliberate cultivation of trees both for harvesting of timber, and other products (e.g. resin). They also have a sense of how to make sure that the right wildlife is around. For instance, possums need natural hollows for nesting and predator protection, and so are far less common in secondary-growth forests due to a lack of suitable nesting sites. The Five Rivers and Durigal have both figured out how to encourage possums through creating artificial nesting hollows attached to trees scattered throughout forests (possums are locally important for fur). Possums are not domesticated in any traditional sense, but they are harvested for fur nonetheless, and managed so that they don't become too rare. Aururians tend to manage the land in a whole variety of ways along these lines.
So there's quite a tradition for temples to draw from in terms of a temple turning into a koala paradise...
There are strands in Plirite thought which run both ways, varying both over time and according to local conditions. One which may broadly be called exclusivism holds that it is best for all people to be Plirite, since that leads to better harmony. This is reflected in both orthodox Plirism (the Nangu school is strong on this), and in Tjarrling thought.
The other may be broadly called accommodationism, and which has made some form or other of accommodation with other religious views so that they can live alongside each other, and to an extent draw from each other. This is most common in the Five Rivers schools, although it also shows up elsewhere, such as with Plirite converts amongst the Kingdom of the Skin (Hunter Valley), where they are unable to convert a majority of the population and so perforce have made some adaptations.
The Hunter has adopted a school of exclusivism which is that the government, at least, should be Plirite, even if not everyone else is.
Definitely this is the case amongst the Gunngal, and also elsewhere in the remaining Five Rivers nations. (Plirism was the state religion of now-vanished Lopitja, but has not been as successful elsewhere). Not so much amongst Durigal, where the Yadji also claim exclusive religious primacy, and some of the Plirites there such as the Yadilli have responded by developing their own exclusivist beliefs in response (although unable to turn those into conquest, of course).
I really should find the time to write up a more detailed version of Five Rivers religion and broader Gunnagalic mythology. But the short version is that in keeping with their ancestral traditions, most Five Rivers peoples have a whole bunch of local deities, or give primacy to different deities. These traditions are strongly linked to particular families, and in many cases, also to specific sites. They can get quite mixed up when family lines cross, if new deities become popular for one reason or another, and so forth. But there is no strong sense that one religion must apply to everyone.
So a Five Rivers family might say "these are the deities we worship" or "these are the rites we perform at this time of year", without provoking arguments over religious exclusivity. They also have no problem adding additional rites at particular times of year if it seems worthwhile, which is how various aspects of Plirism have been incorporated into the actions of people who would not consider themselves Plirite. It also means that the Plirite minority, by social interaction, also sometimes adopt particular rites which have been practices of the traditional religion.
No analogy should be drawn too closely, of course, but there are some parallels which could be drawn with Hindu India in the time after Buddhism had emerged but did not take over completely, or with some strands in historical Chinese or Japanese attitudes to religion where they are incorporate practices or rites from more than one religious tradition depending on circumstances.
State religions have emerged, such as the imperial cult and that of Lopitja, but none of these have completely displaced the older practices.
As a side note, during the Great Migrations, things got shaken up enough outside of the Five Rivers that the links to local sites and particular families were lost, along with beliefs in many local deities. So what emerged amongst the migrants was a smaller group of deities in different societies, obviously descended from the older deities, but reworked into a new form. In these cases, each region tends to have its own set of gods, with some changes from the ancestral ones, but not the same sense of religion being a matter of practice rather than belief.
Rose hip would certainly be very useful when fresh. The problem with that, as with many other such foods, is whether the preservation method keeps the Vitamin C from decaying over time. The Nuttana have access to what is as far as I know the highest-concentration Vitamin C fruit of all, Kakadu plums (averaging about 45-60 times the Vitam C content of an orange, and up to 100 times in some cases). But drying usually destroys the Vitamin C content of fruits, if not immediately, then over time.
I'd need to look into whether drying rose hips has the same problems.
As an addendum to the next post, I'm currently considering which way to write out the rest of the Hunter sequence, and would appreciate readers' thoughts on which way I should post it.
There is probably 5ish posts left in the Hunter sequence, maybe a bit higher if I end up splitting some of the planned posts for length reasons. The next chapter is written in postable form, and the one after that written in outline form only. The remaining Hunter chapters are in concept form, i.e. it will take a while to finish them.
I could post the next chapter now, but given that the pace of writing this TL remains very slow, I'm wondering whether it's better to wait until the whole sequence is finished and then post the chapters at regular intervals, say every week or so. That would mean that it would be easier for readers to keep track of what's happening, since the posts would be closer together. On the downside, that could mean a couple of months before anything further is posted in this TL.
Which option would everyone prefer?
There is probably 5ish posts left in the Hunter sequence, maybe a bit higher if I end up splitting some of the planned posts for length reasons. The next chapter is written in postable form, and the one after that written in outline form only. The remaining Hunter chapters are in concept form, i.e. it will take a while to finish them.
I could post the next chapter now, but given that the pace of writing this TL remains very slow, I'm wondering whether it's better to wait until the whole sequence is finished and then post the chapters at regular intervals, say every week or so. That would mean that it would be easier for readers to keep track of what's happening, since the posts would be closer together. On the downside, that could mean a couple of months before anything further is posted in this TL.
Which option would everyone prefer?
Well, if you go with my idea with kratom and Aururia, it might mean that many Aururian states in the modern age will be like parts of Southeast Asia in having zero tolerance for drug trafficking (i.e. you get executed for it, foreigner or not).
We're that close to the end of this arc? But I'd say write them all up and then post them. It'll make things flow faster when it comes, and give me something to eagerly await.
We're that close to the end of this arc? But I'd say write them all up and then post them. It'll make things flow faster when it comes, and give me something to eagerly await.
I feel its best to complete the chapters first and post them in intervals as you say. We'll have alot more context and enjoy the developments without as much overbearing anticipation. I'm willing to wait and looking forward to the upcoming developments.
There's a lot of potential cultural development between now and the twentieth century to say which way drug prohibition attitudes will end up, but yes, that is one possibility. (Though let's not have the debates over drug prohibition in ATLs which ended up with DoD.
There's been 9 or 10 posts in the Hunter sequence so far, so another 5-7 (depending on how they split) will make it about one-eighth of the total length of the timeline. That's a significant number of posts to devote to one arc, however important.
But I will say that I don't plan on showing every
You plus the three other opinions makes it 4-0 in favour of waiting. That makes things pretty conclusive, so unless anyone else wants to chime in with a preference for posting them when finished, I'd say I'll hold off on posting the next few instalments until they're ready in a batch.
mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
I would guess the most likely selective breeding would be for docile koalas that tolerate human contact. I wouldn't be surprised if really belligerent sacred koalas were declared demonically possessed and in need of an exorcism (with the help of a stout club)
I was not so much talking about different people being born with moment of conception being shifted than about how different incarnations of one person would follow entirely different life histories with different offspring. Consider a person who in one incarnation happens to form a union with another and that gives them their first child. Now in another incarnation the same person now comes into union with an entirely different person, but both incarnations (and the countless other possibilities) still have a "first child" born to one person, and in all possible timelines taken together, the set of entities we can consider the "first children born to X" can approach near infinity.
This is only when considering the body, and not the soul. The soul in the Plirite conception would, I imagine, not form much of a basis for identity or selfhood, considering that it has been bouncing between times and bodies for, I guess, cosmic eternity. Are all the millions of bodies a single soul has travelled between a single person? I guess in the sense of the soul being the real essence of what you are and carrier of all the countless decisions and whatnot, but not in the sense that most would consider a person = soul-carrier to be.
I would consider the idea of personhood that's rooted in the physical body with a soul all its own to be irrelevant to most Plirites. Insofar as a soul can travel to any body in any part of the timescape, and said body-soul combination is free to make any decisions as they might, creating entirely different life histories for each incarnation (let alone how their decisions can affect other bodies and souls), it isn't so hard to fathom that one body could have been inhabited by multiple souls in different timelines, because ultimately it's the soul that matters and not the shell it fills.
Private traders / smugglers making a few bucks shifting opium illegally is definitely a possibility, but the corollary is that poppy growers won't have as much incentive to produce as compared to having large export markets open and available to them. The bigger market might be for purer medicinal opiates which have been processed.
The production of morphine requires a more advanced chemistry and chemical engineering that I believe the Five Rivers won't be capable of attaining for some time. You can do an ethanol extraction of opium (and I'm sure the Five Rivers are more than capable of distillation) to gain a more concentrated product, but the the process of separating out all the opiate alkaloids is a much harder deal, and what you get will be a mix of all the opiates - not only morphine, but codeine, hydrocodone etc.
The different opiates were not isolated until the later part of the 19th century, and medicinal mixtures used opium instead of any isolated opiates. This is one of the processes by which morphine can be extracted, to give an example of the chemistry involved:
I can see them making a more concentrated form of opium through an ethanol extraction, a product that'd be of medicinal use, but the isolation of the opiate alkaloids seems a ways off into the future. What's interesting is that if the Five Rivers were so interested in experimenting with pharmacologically useful plants, they might go after kratom as well, and probably extract the kratom alkaloids like mitragynine. Mitragynine might be a useful drug like opium, by packing the same analgesic punch without the sedation and lethargy of opium, it would work as something prescribed for day use or for those who don't react well to sedating drugs.
Kratom extracts and flake opium would be very valuable to the medical market.
I suppose the market can be as big as the quantity the Nuttana can produce and move. The obvious way to create new markets for kratom would be to sell it around in as many commercial ports as the Nuttana can reach. The product itself should have a widespread appeal amongst most classes, rich aristocrats or poor labourers, and the Nuttana can discover where the drug is marketable through small-scale exports to begin with, then look into expanding export markets by controlling supply and demand, giving the international market for kratom a foundations from which to mature such that it can support a similarly mature industry.
The difference is that kunduri would last for a much shorter while than kratom, and would lack the analgesic and slight euphoric effects. More kratom can become sedating, it operates on the opioid receptors after all; low doses activate only the receptors that are more stimulating, while higher doses will activate all opioid receptors, even the ones that produce more sedating effects. But generally speaking, kratom lasts between 3 - 6 hours, while nicotine lasts 5 - 10 minutes at most. Your average person wouldn't need as much kratom as they would kunduri if they're looking for an energy boost to charge through a day of hard labour, or what have you, and may prove to hold more value for the price.
Both are psychologically addicting, but kratom develops a more dangerous physical dependence similar to other opioids, although it's by most accounts a lot slower to develop than with opium alkaloids. That could very well translate into a captive consumer base.
It could be possible that with the Nuttana making kratom into a major consumer good a lot earlier ITTL, the motive for banning kratom would come about a lot earlier as well, but I think that serious bans in large markets will take a while to occur, like late 19th or early 20th century, and by that time such prohibition can be well enforced, too.
I'll reply to the rest of Jared's post later, but I would like to bring to attention these collection of ecological maps for Australia that seem very useful, especially for figuring out how far agriculture in TTL Aururia can spread. We were discussing if the Nuttana can colonise some parts of Northern Aururia, and I think they can establish some farming and pastures, there are limits by moisture availability and the growing seasons are shorter, but there are possibilities. Maybe Indian crops and farming techniques?
http://maps.eatlas.org.au/list.html
http://www.fao.org/ag/agp/agpc/doc/counprof/australia/australia.htm
EDIT: I had a sudden thought that I wanted to put in... If there are Plirites who believe in a person's agency to forge their own destiny - and through the rank order of their choices achieve their cosmic judgement - wouldn't they be averse to things like horoscopes and prediction of future in general? I wonder how that will affect their interactions with the Indian religions and such when they ascribe to stochasticity instead of predictability.
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I think we're talking past each other here. I'm describing how Plirites who hold to a view of there being only one timeline rationalise things. You're describing possible views of rationalising things if they accept multiple timelines. Certainly, if they're trying to explain multiple timelines, what you're describing makes sense.
Certainly, the Plirite idea of the soul is closer to the Hindu concept of atman or the Jain concept of jiva than a Christian concept of the soul.
As with all such things, the interpretation varies between Plirite schools, but fundamentally they have the idea of a soul being the core identity that has followed its own non-linear path of development. They usually draw a distinction between what in modern terminology could perhaps best be compared to temperament and memories. (Neither word means exactly what it does in the modern sense, of course, but this is about the closest). Temperament is, as it were, the underlying personality, the essence, the core of their identity and their interaction with the world. Memories are the particular experiences which a person has encountered and remembered. Memories are usually held not to be availble during incarnations, though some schools have ideas of accessing particular memories to assist in insight. Memories may (depending on the school) be available between physical incarnations. Temperament can develop over time, thanks to insight and so forth, but does not change quickly.
The best case for opium growers would be a market of about ~3 million people (at the lowest population ebb). This is assuming an open market in the Five Rivers and a substantial smuggling market amongst the Yadji and Atjuntja. Not a negligible market, given the ongoing higher proportion of non-farming specialists in their population, but small beer compared to China was in OTL.
Medicinal opiates, though, could give access to much larger export markets in a whole host of countries.
On further reading, I think that the extraction of morphine can be accomplished by the Five Rivers by 1750, probably earlier. Not 100% pure morphine, but enough to be extremely valuable as a medicinal preparation. Their chemistry is in some respects more advanced than European chemistry by this stage, although not in all aspects. This particularly applies to chemicals used in dye-making and aromatics (perfumes, incense etc) which were Five Rivers specialties even before European contact, and they have been avid readers of European processes ever since. Their use of chemicals in dyes and mordants is particularly advanced, for reasons which I'll be exploring in more detail in one of the upcoming posts, but in brief because Aururian dye plants are actually capable of producing a wide range of colours from the same plant due to natural variation, and the experimentation in trying to make consistent colours led to extensive developments in chemistry.
In terms of morphine, in OTL the first extraction of reasonably pure morphine came quite early in the nineteenth century. Three different chemists got close, though Sertürner was the first one to get it right in about 1804 or 1805. The process which Sertürner discovered is one which is well within the capabilities of Five Rivers chemists, using chemicals which they have been using for centuries. All it needs is lime (calcium hydroxide) or any other chemical which produces calcium ions in solution, ammonium chloride, boiling water, and filtration of some kind (woven cloth will do). Boil opium extract, add lime, and the calcium reacts with the calcium to form water-soluble calcium morphenate. A little codeine is carried over (it's slightly water soluble too). Filter out the insoluble products (including the other alkaloids) with a cloth filter, let the solution cool, and add some ammonium chloride. In an hour or two a precipitate of (mostly) morphine is produced, though with smaller amounts of codeine.
This is well within the chemistry of the Five Rivers. Lime has been used since ancient times, and their dye-makers have been producing ammonium chloride (from fermented urine) as a dying agent and mordant for centuries too. Five Rivers chemists may well have learned of the other European method of producing ammonium chloride (from distillation of ox horn), but even without that, they can still produce it.
This leads to a mostly morphine product, with small percentages of codeine, but which even together would work very well as a medicinal extract. Other ways of producing morphine would probably be beyond the chemistry of the Five Rivers, but this process is perfectly feasible, I think.
The Five Rivers would certainly be able to produce flake opium even if the above process I've described is beyond their reach.
That makes a lot of sense.
In OTL, pituri (=kunduri) was noted as a stimulant which could keep people going for hours without food or water when travelling. This may be due to their way of chewing it with wood ash which released the alkaloids slowly over time. Or it may be the effect of other alkaloids besides nicotine (there were others in there). Kratom is probably stronger overall, but even kunduri can be a useful stimulant.
I'm having trouble accessing the full maps at the moment, but I see from the second link that they confirm that fertilisers would be the biggest problems in raising crops. Another significant problem remains rainfall variability across years, particularly in northern Australia. I don't think that Indian crops and farming techniques would be particularly helpful, though some breeds of Indian cattle probably would be useful for fertiliser.
This is a good catch. Fortune-telling, horoscopes and suchlike have been notably absent from eastern Aururian societies. (They are present in the west, but that comes from a different cultural base). Gunnagalic mythology in general places little value on fortune-telling, and Plirism tends to be quite hostile to it. This will have consequences when interacting not just with Indian religion, but also some of the traditional fortune-telling of Chinese culture, and for that matter Western astrology (though the latter is of course separate to Christianity).
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I was more describing a problem that emerges with atemporal reincarnation; that different incarnations of an individual can follow different life history which can indeed affect who gets born, implying that there are possibilities of people who could've been born but weren't.
The one timeline thing can't really square with free will in choices, I feel, and the above thing remains a problem.
Does the soul develop its essence of memories during the course of it occupying a "shell" as part of an incarnation, or is that essence an intrinsic quantity of the soul itself that's not readily accessible by the shell's consciousness, but is there regardless and accumulates and develops through its course of reincarnations?
Either way goes with the multiple timeline philosophy because if a soul-shell gestalt can consist of souls that have drastically different histories, then it stands to reason that the gestalt will develop a different combination of temperament and memories, or start with a different combination per incarnation of the same shell with different souls, plus all the implications of either possibility on the development of different life histories of any given person (no matter how skewed the concept of "personhood" gets considering all that).
That would also depend on how much of the local demand for opium as a recreational drug is satisfied by illicit secret plantations within the Yadji or Atjuntja territories.
After all, this is in an era long before states had the capacity to declare out a total ban on drug production, trade, and consumption, and see it through in its enforcement on the microcosmic level. I bet opium growers could get away with a lot even right under the noses of the authorities.
I can accept that the Five Rivers can figure out the specifics of the chemistry, even a little earlier than it took the West IOTL. They could even invent things like diethyl ether before a European does, which serves as a very useful medical anesthetic and an excellent organic solvent that could greatly augment the alkaloid isolation process.
I was also thinking about kratom alkaloids, and I realized that some kratom alkaloids - if the Five Rivers discovered them and how to isolate them - can end up a lot more useful and valuable than morphine. While the main alkaloid in kratom leaf is mitragynine, which by itself is a little weaker than morphine in terms of analgesic effect (but lacks some deadly side effects such as respiratory depression), and can be a useful medical drug in the same capacity as codeine is used today, while being a stronger analgesic than codeine to boot, there's an alkaloid "7-hydroxymitragynine" that's about 7-10 times stronger than morphine and presents lesser side effects, like mitragynine does.
It's a very small proportion of the kratom dried leaf alkaloid profile, but I can imagine that if the Nuttana are developing kratom as a commercial crop that they'll eventually breed varieties with higher alkaloid contents than usual, and perhaps with hired Five Rivers chemical and pharmacological expertise, they would discover the existence of 7-hydroxymitragynine, and no doubt someone will want to isolate it and put it to use as a medical drug.
It would be quite interesting if ITTL one of the primary analgesic drugs worldwide turns out to be a kratom alkaloid rather than just the same family of opiates as per IOTL.
EDIT: The discovery and isolation of 7-hydroxymitragynine, I should mention, would be quite a major medical and pharmaceutical breakthrough. IOTL, the first opioids that were stronger than morphine and weren't simply more dangerous and more addictive delivery systems for morphine (i.e. heroin) were synthetically derived, all discovered in the 20th century when chemistry was advanced enough. 7-hydroxymitragynine is an opioid that's quite poweful and a plant alkaloid. It need not be synthetically derived.
Chewing tobacco, and I guess pituri, would indeed release the nicotine slowly over time, but the convenience of just having to drink a tea or chew and swallow a few leaves in one go would beat having to keep a quid of kunduri in the mouth for the whole whike. Kratom can suppress hunger similar to pituri or tobacco, too. I can imagine that people might even take both drugs together, following up a dose of kratom tea / dried leaf powder / chew with smoked or chewed kunduri. It is said that opioids and nicotine have synergistic effects, and having taken kratom beforehand would mean that you can enjoy the kunduri for itself since you're not relying on it for the stimulant effect.
We can discuss this more at length when you can take a better look at the maps, but with the idea of Indian crops what I was thinking about was the idea that some parts of India do have some of the erratic rainfall patterns and varying soil qualities as Northern Australia, though I'll have to look into this more closeley.
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Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
I have spent the past month gradually reading through this TL- I can see that it is as amazing as everyone says it is! I learned a lot, which is not always the case with AH.
Looking forward to the continuation of the Hunter's story.
Looking forward to the continuation of the Hunter's story.
Aozhouhuaren
Banned
Was eating some fried chicken, seasoned with Lemon Myrtle, Pepperberry and Saltbush, and it got me to wondering if you had any plans for the humble brushturkey. Perhaps you already have mentioned them and I missed the info, it is a large TL after all.
From the looks of it, the pros are their size, their abundance and their large geographic range. The cons are that they can be rather aggressive and territorial and destructive to crops.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_brushturkey
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-17/five-reasons-to-love-brush-turkeys/7199724?pfmredir=sm
From the looks of it, the pros are their size, their abundance and their large geographic range. The cons are that they can be rather aggressive and territorial and destructive to crops.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_brushturkey
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-17/five-reasons-to-love-brush-turkeys/7199724?pfmredir=sm
Aozhouhuaren
Banned
Oh and by the way, also thought I'd share some good news in regards to one of the birthplaces of Aururian Civilisation.
http://www.australiangeographic.com...10154273197313339&adbpl=fb&adbpr=100614418338
Ancient aboriginal settlement one step closer to World Heritage listing
http://www.australiangeographic.com...10154273197313339&adbpl=fb&adbpr=100614418338
Ancient aboriginal settlement one step closer to World Heritage listing
Glad you like it.I have spent the past month gradually reading through this TL- I can see that it is as amazing as everyone says it is! I learned a lot, which is not always the case with AH.
Coming... as soon as I can finish the writing of it. Finished 3 chapters so far, but the third chapter is only the first half of what was planned to be the second chapter, so I'm not sure whether it will end up being 7 or perhaps 8 chapters total.Looking forward to the continuation of the Hunter's story.
I've certainly looked at them. And sometimes looked at them in person when I'm writing - there's one which occasionally pops into the backyard, though I live a long way from any bushland. From memory, this was asked at some point in the discussion threads, though a while ago. I concluded that their nesting behaviour and social structure meant that they would be impractical to domesticate, particularly since while they are useful, don't really add anything to the "big domesticated bird" niche that emus don't already supply.Was eating some fried chicken, seasoned with Lemon Myrtle, Pepperberry and Saltbush, and it got me to wondering if you had any plans for the humble brushturkey. Perhaps you already have mentioned them and I missed the info, it is a large TL after all.
Ah, yes,that is good news. Lake Condah is an amazing place. (Which I need to visit someday, but I digress.)Oh and by the way, also thought I'd share some good news in regards to one of the birthplaces of Aururian Civilisation.
Ancient aboriginal settlement one step closer to World Heritage listing