Think this is confusing? You should check out the Natchez Social Hierarchy system some time!
Just imagine kitjigal combined with Egyptian Pharoh hierarchy combined with a four-tier India-style caste system ("Suns" (royal/divine), "Nobles", "Honored", and (I shit thee not) "Stinkards") where higher tiers must marry "below their station", yet over time by various rules higher-tier families are "demoted" to a lower tier in order to maintain the balance in numbers.
Hmm. I think that's the best example I've heard yet of needing to be born into a society to understand it...
Sounds good so far, and I do like the colors thing. The question I have relates to the emu: will they be domesticated at some point, perhaps as a response to their increasing scarcity in the wild?
They will be domesticated eventually, yes, but the original site of domestication won't be along the Murray. Domesticated emus will spread there from elsewhere.
Also, would the development of agriculture and the resulting changes to the biological landscape have any long-term effects on the climate of Australia? In particular, would it change the situation with respect to water?
The net effect of the development of agriculture on the climate is going to be small. Not zero, but not large. This is because there's going to be effects pulling in both directions. On the one hand, the farmers are clearing land and cutting down trees. On the other hand, they plant more trees as parts of their crops, and their creation of wetlands along the Murray actually marginally increases rainfall due to evaporation.
In terms of the biological landscape, well, there will be changes. Various animals will go locally extinct (or completely extinct, depending on the size of their home range) due to human activity. Some tree species will become much more widespread due to human planting, for instance, while others will be cleared from large areas.
Fantastic (I love the descriptions of the food most people just leave things like that out of the TLs. It is the little details that make a TL that much more real), one question have you ever eaten Beefsteak fungus (Fistulina hepatica)? What does it taste like?
I've never eaten beefsteak fungus. It's quite hard to find in Australia, if it's cultivated at all nowadays. Apparently it's still eaten in France and a couple of other places, but I didn't find any on the menu when I was there. All I know about the taste is what's found on Polonopedia: it has a sour, slightly acidic taste.
Great TL!!! Excellent descriptions!!! I'm sure you must have done a lot of research for this.
There's just something I'd like to point out, and it's related to the notion of originality, or the appearence of new ideas or innovations.
Many pople see the formation of a civilization as a process involving several "steps": 1) agriculture & domestication of animals; 2) formation of villages; 3) pottery; 4) formation of cities; 5) metallurgy; 6) hierarchization of societies; 6) writting , etc. Events haven't always taken place in this order, of course, but all this has occured again and again in different times and places (enough times to establish a patron, some would argue). Some would go even further and say: when one step is accomplished, new needs appear in a society; and thus, and innoivation appears in response to this more complex needs, which in turn create new needs, making the society advance even further.
The question of how civilization developed is certainly an interesting one, and while we have a few details about how they developed, there's plenty of questions which remain. For instance, are all of these required by an incipient civilization? As you point out, they don't always happen in the same order, if they happen at all. Pottery has been independently invented on multiple occasions, several of which predate the development of agriculture, for instance. Hierarchical societies appeared even in societies without agriculture (including in Australia). So it's a fascinating question whether all of them are required, and also whether all of those steps will automatically develop.
They might give us this example: A hierarchical society, for example, needs greater means of social control, a necessity which encourages the appearence of something like writting (in other societies writting may be a response to the needs posed by a greater and complex trade network).
I'd partially agree with that statement, with a couple of qualifiers. Some needs do seem to produce solutions relatively quickly, and solutions are developed. Other "needs" seem to be much more contingent. For instance, the need for storage of goods is almost universal, and pottery showed up all over the place due to independent invention. On the other hand, wheels were invented on two or at most three occasions.
The other qualifier is that sometimes a solution which arises which is "good enough" to fill a basic need, but which might not be the best solution. FOr example, the need for record keeping
in some form seems to be integral to complex civilizations, and record-keeping has arisen on multiple occasions in most complex civilizations. I can't think offhand of any of the major civilizations which lacked some form of record keeping once they'd been around for a couple of thousand years. But the solutions varied widely. True writing seems to have been the best solution, and it was invented at least three times. But other civilizations came up with methods which were "good enough", such as the quipu used by the Andean civilizations.
Yet all this underestimates the role play by originality. If we analyse the civilizations that have existed throught history, we'll see that the "needs" haven't necessary been solved in the simplest way, IF they had been solved at all. This happened either because: NOBODY came up with an idea that would easily fullfill that social need; OR somebody came up with that idea, but the society was too conservative to accept it.
That certainly happens with some ideas. Social conservatism crops up in a variety of civilizations, or just plain "no one came up with the idea." To pick just one example, there's nothing about man-portable mortars which couldn't have been built with technology in the era of the American Civil War (and maybe even earlier), and yet no-one made them work properly until WW1.
On the other hand, there is a strong argument that a lot of ideas were developed simply because they were obvious based on previous developments in knowledge or technology. There are an astonishing number of ideas in science which have been independently invented at around the same time by two or even three people, working in different countries or even different continents. It's as though once enough other knowledge has accumulated, the necessary insight becomes obvious.
Take New Worlds Civilizations. There are many explanations for why they were less advanced that Old-World ones. It has been discussed countless of time in this site. Of all the reasons that explain this relative "primitiveness" of New World civilization, I think one of the most important was isolation: from both the old world civilization and between each other new world civilization centers.
Isolation from the Old World certainly meant that they were cut off from some other sources of ideas, particularly the products of cultural exchange. Still, there were a lot of other factors at play, particularly the later development of agriculture. And also the lower overall population, particularly the lower urban population, which meant that there were simply fewer potential geniuses around to come up with ideas (and who lived somewhere that they might be able to implement their ideas, too).
The Classical Mayan (II AD-VIII A.D.), for example, were a very complex society, with agriculture, a writting system, a highly sofisticated numerical system, a very advanced calendar, etc. Yet they never came up with the idea of metallurgy. Maybe it was because there weren't many metals around. Possible. But isn't it strange that nobody in THE ENTIRE Messsoamerica, not even in Tehotihuacan came up with that idea? But when metal working arrived to Mesoamerica from the South, the Yucatecans (the descentants of those classical Mayans) didn't had any problem in adopting that tech.
It's possible that the native copper deposits weren't of a form where people would stumble across metallurgy, but where once they'd learned what to look for, then they could find suitable deposits. The thing is that copper working was independently invented on so many occasions (even in pre-Columbian North America), that I suspect that there was probably a barrier which meant that Mesoamericans couldn't come up with it.
Take the Andean civilization: complex irrigational technics, a highly developped agriculture, domesticcated plants and animals (even pack animals!), hierarchical societies, advanced metalurgy (they were already working with bronce when the Spanish arrived)...and YET no writting system. Yes, I know about the quippus; but, as good as these may as a means for social control, they are certainly not the best way to transmit orders from part of the kindom to the other, or to codify royal edicts, or to preserve the names of monarchs.
Quipu were
a solution to the problem of record-keeping, though. The question is whether having found one solution meant that potential innovators who may have come up with writing found that they couldn't get any new system developed. This could be either because they focused their efforts on improving the use of quipu, or that there was an entrenched social class who had a vested interest in the use of quipu, and thus no other system of writing was pursued.
Why didn't they adopt a writting system? Maybe no one came up with the idea; maybe the social need for such a system wasn't that great that couldn't be fullfilled by a system like quippus one; or maybe somebody came up with such an idea, but was rejected for religious reasons (one of the Spansih chronicles, Montesinos, pretended that was what happened).
Aside from the possibilities I mentioned above, or the ones you mentioned, there's another possibility. All independently-invented writing systems which we know of were preceded by proto-writing systems (for a few centuries at least, sometimes for over a millennium). Quipu might not be better than a full writing system, but they were probably better than any proto-writing system, so this may well have snuffed out any potential development of a writing system.
In any case, I find quite likely that had the Andean peoples KNOWN other peoples had writting system they would have developped their own. We know, for example, thet, although the Egyptian writting system is completely differewnt from the Sumerian one, it's way older than that system. Which makes as wonder if the news of such a system couln't have inspired Ancient Egytians to developp their own. We do know at least that many of the old world innovantion appeared only once in once place, and from there they expanded.
I agree that the Andean peoples would probably have been inspired to develop their own writing system if they came into contact with a fully-fledged writing system. In the case of the Egyptians, though, it appears that writing, at least, was independently invented. Their proto-writing system went back to at least as far as the proto-writing amongst Sumerians. Writing is thought to have arisen independently in four areas. (Egypt, Mesopotamia, China and Mesoamerica.) Other things may have been invented only once, but writing wasn't one of them.
The Egyptians didn't domesticaded horses, nor they invented charriots. They didn't invented the technics neccesary to work iron tools. All these things were invented ONCE, IN ONE PLACE of the old world (not precisely in the same place), and from THERE they diffused to different parts of the old world. Existing civilizations adopted these ideas, sometimes improving them, sometinmes using them as inspirations for new inventions. If VIII Century B.C. Egypt had lived permanently isolated, it wouldn't have had charriots pulled by horses, nor iron. It might not even have had a functional writting system, IF their system was in fact inspired by the Sumerian one.
Mm, perhaps. Chariots certainly seem to have been invented only once and spread, but then they were dependent on the domestication of the horse. The horse was an example of a harder animal to domesticate than, say, cattle, and I'm not even sure that there were wild horses in Egypt to domesticate.
Iron working, on the other hand, has been independently invented at least twice, possibly three times. Iron working arose separately at both ends of Eurasia. Chinese and Western iron working techniques were wholly different, to the point where if one was inspired by the other, they should have had more in common. It's also possible, although by no means certain, that iron working was developed independently in West Africa. (The earliest examples of iron working there seem to be dated before they could have spread from Nubia and across the Sahel, although there's still considerable dispute on that point.)
So it looks like some innovations were quite possibly one-offs - chariots and horses - but others were not - iron working, writing, pottery.
It’s easy to say, for example: hey, Mesoamericans had wheels in toys, they could have invented wheelbarrows! But the notion of a wheelbarrow isn’t that simple. The old world had charts since the IIIrd Millenium AD, but only developped wheelbarrows in the V century BC. So while it’s still concivable that Mesoamericans could have invented wheelbarrows, and that they could have been adopted in Mesoamericans societies, it’s not neccesary the most likely. (At least we know they didn’t IOTL).
I suspect that with the particular example of wheelbarrows, there wasn't a natural progression of technology. Going straight from wheeled toy to wheelbarrow is rather a large leap. From what we know of wheelbarrows, they first developed amongst people who were already familiar with wheeled carts and the like.
So, this is the thing: I can't help to think that if civilization occurs only in Australia, and only in a small paert of Australia, basic innovations, as simple as they me be, might not ever come into being. Although they may seem simple, nobody might come with the idea, or, if someone comes up with, the society might reject it. The smaller the civilized area is, the less conected from other civilised center it is, the fewer the chances of new ideas appearing. Theoretically, a small agricultural civilization "could" have invented copper metalurgy, a pictographic system, sails and many more things. But, taking into account the experience of New world civilization centers (isolated from each other by both geograpghy and by the lackk of mounted nomads who could take advances from one center to the other rather quickly), it's a given, nor it's neccessary the most likely outcome.
Well, a lot of that depends on what gets considered basic innovations. While there's certainly room for argument about what technologies are considered basics of civilization, a rough list might be as follows: agriculture, irrigation, ceramics, metallurgy (at least to copper and bronze stage), writing, weaving, and at least one domesticated animal species.
Looking at that list, I note that the Sumerians had every single item on it. So, more or less independently, did China. (Agriculture may have spread from the Fertile Crescent, or developed independently.) Egypt is more ambiguous; bronze showed up there around the same time it did in Mesopotamia, but they had their own preferences in metallurgy, so did they borrow metallurgy or develop it independently? The Indus Valley civilization is another ambiguous case; they're close enough geographically that they may have borrowed some ideas from the Mesopotamians... yet if they did, why was their proto-writing system so different? Andean civilizations had every item on that list except for writing (and they did have a form of record keeping). Mesoamerica had all of them except metallurgy.
So, to me, it looks like it's perfectly possible for a culture to get at least as far as the Bronze Age on its own, and pick up pretty much every invention on that list. The Sumerians did it. The Chinese did it. The Egyptians may have done it. The Incas came close - they had everything except writing, and even then, they did have record keeping. This leaves Mesoamerica as the odd one out - they were missing metallurgy. Which is an interesting conundrum. Why did Mesoamerica miss out on metallurgy when copper working showed up in so many other places? (In some cases, copper working was developed even by people who didn't yet have agriculture - the Old Copper Complex of Michigan and Wisconsin, for instance.)
All in all, I suspect that the isolation of New World civilizations played a part, but still, a form of record keeping appears to be pretty much universal, and metallurgy almost so.
Still, this is AH, so anything can happen, if it's whithin the realm of possibility...as is everything in this TL (I mean, you've even studied the genetics involved behind the possibility of the appearence of a domesticable plant like the red yam!!!). And nothing in this TL seems impossible nor unjustified. It could perfectly have happened, given the Pod. That's the great thing about AH: we can chose from all the possible outcomes of a Pod, the ones we find more interesting.
I've tried to choose consequences of the PoD which are both plausible and interesting. In the general technological development of the Gunnagal civilization, I've based it more or less on what the Sumerians did, with a couple of modifiers. The Sumerians had domesticated animals and relied on irrigation for watering their fields. The Gunnagal lack domesticated animals (apart from ducks and dogs), and use irrigation for other purposes.
If this was any other TL, I wouldn't have post this. But this is such a great one, so realistic, with so much reaserch involved, that I found it a good occasion to post this notion: progress towards civilization is not neccesarly automatic. You still need someone to come up with a new idea, and you need the society to be willing to accept that idea. This is easier when the choice is either to accept it or being surpassed by neighbours who have either invented or already adopted that idea, and harder if that circunstances don't exist.
I agree that there's a lot of things which *Australian civilization is simply not going to come up with. Isolation will play a large part in that. However, they do have a few things going for them which will help them to make some advances.
Firstly, while they are isolated from the rest of the world, they are by no means united. *Australian civilization is going to spread over the southern half of the continent by pretty early. This is an area half the size of Europe. Lots of cultures and political entities will develop over that area. So there's still going to be competition between cultures, which will encourage more take-up of innovations.
Secondly, the *Australian population is going to be reasonably high, and it will also have a comparatively high percentage of the population who are in non-agricultural lifestyles (due to perennial agriculture). I'm still working out the full population figures, but it looks like the agricultural package will allow a total population on the continent of between five to eight million people. Of that population, over a million people will be living non-agricultural lifestyles (urban, in either small villages or cities). In comparison to the population of other areas which developed technology, that's a
lot of people who are in a position to be more inventive and/or to adopt new innovations.
Thirdly, the Gunnagal have a head start on some of the comparable New World cultures. They start developing urban cultures between 2500 to 2000 BC. That's behind Mesopotamia, Egypt and China, but well ahead of Mesoamerica (1500 to 1250 BC) and the main early Andean civilization, the Chavin (900 BC) [1]. This gives the Gunnagal more time to develop various innovations.
So, all in all, I agree that there are going to be technologies in a lot of areas which *Australian civilization simply isn't going to come up with. But I think that they could be reasonably well-advanced in some areas, and I think it's entirely reasonable that they develop every one of the civilization fundamentals which I listed upthread.
Cheers,
Jared
[1] Norte Chico culture in Peru predates the Chavin by quite a long way, but for whatever reason, urban culture underwent a large regression after Norte Chico. Urban civilization started again with the Chavin, and there was a large time gap in between - nearly a millenium.
