Thafonic civilisation
Thafon, or Thafis, was an ancient harbour city and the surrounding culture in the southwest of the Vostau peninsula, described in historical documents as “at the mouth of the Vizon river”. Sources from all across the Mediargic bronze trade route mention tin from Thafon as a major import, being one of few places naturally blessed with tin reserves and with easy access to it. The name appears to have fallen out of usage as foreign influence crept into the Vostau peninsula, though several cities familiar with myths of Thafonic wealth have attempted to co-opt its name through history. Archaeological findings have brought about a more rounded view of Thafon, including details of its surrounding tributaries and city-state allies, and have discovered thousands of fragments of text written in the Thafonic language. Thafon kept detailed records of its tributary relations, known to Thafonologists (archaeologists and specialists in Thafonic history) as the ‘Thafonic Patriarchy’.
Thafon was known best for its metal reserves, obviously for the reserves of tin in the region, but also for the presence of silver, copper and gold. At its height, some contemporary sources refer to a city “plated in silver”. While likely hyperbole, the amount of silver jewellery and artefacts found in archaeological sites around Thafon lends credence to the idea of a fabulously wealthy city state and surrounding lands. The lack of iron reserves, however, meant that by the beginning of the iron age, though not directly affected by the Mediargic bronze age collapse, Thafon slowly faded into obscurity.
Location
The precise location of Thafon was hotly debated by historians during the period after Thafon’s gradual decline up until the discovery of the Thafon archaeological complex. One account refers to “ancient cliffs of sandstone containing riches aplenty within” - there are no sandstone cliffs in eastern Vostau. Contemporaneous sources cited Thafon as located “at the mouth of the Vizon river”, though which river actually was known as the Vizon was almost as contested. With the archaeological discoveries of Thafon’s city complex occurring in the 1950s, much of the confusion, and a great number of historical errors, were cleared up. One example of a village named Thafon, a tiny fishing village and minor tourist attraction on a small river that had made its own historical claim to fame in being the same location as the ancient city, actually sued the archaeologists for "making false claims of the ancient city of Thafon". However, with the vast amount of ancient Thafonic architecture, language, jewellery and new historical documentation, there is no longer any reasonable doubt as to the location.
Archaeological discoveries
The discoveries, first published by $PERSON in 1956, were initiated by the discovery of a cache of Thafonic-style silver jewellery by a riverside. The effects of the Thafonic civilisation in other portions of southwestern Vostau were already known to a certain extent, and Thafonic jewellery had been unearthed in many portions of the region already, though fewer than might have been expected in the area where Thafon was actually discovered. This may have been due to the fact that a higher percentage of the population were interred far from the city, hinting at some of the cultural customs of the Thafonic people. The 1955 unearthing found a portion of the walls of the city, alongside arrows believed to have been Ygrosian in origin. A further excavation in 1956 found a portion of a ‘river temple’, confirming it to be Thafon itself from the inscriptions inside the temple. Investigations continued, finding examples of jewellery from as far afield as southern Alharu. Coinage from far-flung portions of the Bronze Age world was discovered in a treasury building in 1964, and 1972 found a mint containing stone moulds for the gold and silver coins, as well as further examples of Thafonic coinage dating from the 8th Century BCE.
Artefacts and foreign coinage proved that Thafon was both an important port for the transport of goods through the Bronze Age trade routes, but that it was also one of the prime sources of tin in the ancient world. Research also confirmed a fact that many archaeologists assumed prior to the unearthing - that the Thafonic people did not possess writing in any great capacity until around the 15th Century BCE, with Thafonic civilisation continuing from roughly then until the end of the Bronze Age and the subsequent takeover by the Gauli in the 6th Century BCE.
History
Little is known about Thafon prior to the 25th Century BCE, though it is known that the settlement of Thafon may well have existed back to the 5th Millennium BCE or further, albeit in a much smaller and less urban form than its later history. The settlement, known for its major reserves of tin, drew some attention from passing bronze age traders, but the Thafonic people seemingly had little interest in trade until c. 2450 BCE, when the first trade record, detailing a trip made by a Mediargic bronze trader to the "grand new tin port at the nexus of North and South". The city of Thafon seemed to expand slowly over the next millennium until 1400 BCE, when a major influx of trade resulting from a war elsewhere in the Mediargic injected massive amounts of gold and literature into Thafon.
Thafon grew from that point, learning to write in their own language rather than using a different trading language in written communications, as some traders had begun to do. Soon enough, at least in that region of the Mediargic Sea, Thafonic became somewhat of a lingua franca. Trade continued until the beginning of the Iron Age, when the complex trade routes that made up the Mediargic Bronze Trade were no longer needed, and so Thafon began its decline in around 1000 BCE. It would take another 400 years for Thafon to decline fully, however, since many of the important resources transported between Alharu and Argis would still be transported through Thafon, though Thafon no longer served as a primary producer of any highly sought-after resources in Argis. By the year 700 BCE, the Gauli tribes that had arisen and taken over further to the east now lay on Thafon's doorstep, and while early peaceful trade negotiations between the Gauli and the Thafonic cultures existed, the city of Thafon had been completely destroyed by the year 540 BCE, most likely by the Gauli, and the Thafonic and Gauli languages merged into a Thafo-Gauli language known as Scylha, before finally being absorbed into the Calrese linguistic sphere.
Religion
What data exists of the Thafonic religion supports the idea of it having been polytheistic, with a pantheon of deities who manifested themselves in forms the Thafonic people attributed to natural events. Of particular note were the father and mother deities, Tekes, the father deity, associated with the moon, and Bokessa, the mother deity, associated with the sun, and two other deities, Vis, associated with life and rivers, and Ges, associated with death and drought. Despite the Thafonic religion’s association of the sun with femininity, Thafonic culture and customs were highly patriarchal. The sole exception to all of this was for a brief period in the 8th Century BCE when the Cult of Bokessa took over the temples of Thafon and made strides towards greater equality of the sexes.
Thafonic people associated the gods of life and death with certain superstitions. For example, they held a belief that death must be dealt with away from a river, else bad fortune would befall those who drank from its waters. This results in mausoleums, sick-houses and slaughterhouses being far away from rivers. Thafonic people involved themselves in ritual cleanliness, with public baths and heavily trafficked rivers, and especially tended to wash themselves after attending funerals or eating meat.
Several images of foreign gods have also been found in Thafon, though little to no evidence of religious struggle against these foreign faiths exists.
Language
The Thafonic language is an extinct pre-Calrese language once spoken in the Thafonic cultural sphere. The oldest known indigenous texts of Vostau, written in the 15th Century BCE, are written in Thafonic using an adopted script with semi-syllabic qualities. Some Vostauc linguists suggest that some of the Thafonic language might remain as a substrate in particular forms of modern $ELMORIC language, though it is likely that, if it even exists, it would have been diluted by the presence of Gauli, Calrese and Qelhoshi.
Politics
City Politics
The city of Thafon is believed to have been operated as a quasi-monarchy throughout much of its history. Though a monarch did exist, it is believed that the method used in selecting the successor to said monarch made Thafon operate more akin to a classical dictatorship, with selected officials serving for life. Thafonic monarchs are generally sorted into two categories by Thafonologists - 'rote monarchs', who were generally one of a few major families within the city who rotated the monarchy between them, and 'roll monarchs', who were selected from a roll of candidates by some kind of succession council. The intricacies of Thafonic city politics are not always known, but by identifying the king-lists available as sources, one can determine for most cases which kings were which.
Patriarchy
Thafonic patriarchy is the term used by Thafonologists to refer to the complex systems of relationships between Thafon, her tributaries and other associated or allied cities and tribes within the Thafonic cultural sphere. The term 'patriarchy' refers to the manner in which Thafonic records detail their relations - not in terms of cities and tributes, but as a form of familial bond. Terms such as 'uncle', 'father', 'son', 'nephew' and 'grandson' are used to refer to different kinds of relationships in the cultural sphere, though are not always completely understood.
The term 'father' appears to always refer to the city of Thafon when it is used, but not all tributaries used the term 'father'. A possible explanation for the term is as used by Thafonic-oriented tribes who swore as tributaries to Thafon for the promise of economic or technological gain. An example of the term being used is in a notice dated to c. 700 BCE, addressed to the Gauli tribe known as Galdi from an unknown city state;
Look what you were promised by your father, o Galdi,
The term 'son' does not always get used in relation to the term 'father'. It is a far more commonly attributed term, and one which seems to imply a temporal aspect to any relationship. A 'son' in the Thafonic cultural sphere can refer to a city with a fairly one-sided relationship with any other, like reparations after a war. If the defence treaty is mutual, the relation appears to change to 'cousin'. 'Brother' is reserved for cities with a long-standing close relationship. If one is an 'uncle', then they are considered older and more powerful than the respective 'nephew' state, for example;
Alert, uncle! Your nephew is in peril!
The term 'grandfather' and 'grandson' appear to refer to nested relationships, and is almost always used in an intercessory manner, such as in this missive between two cities in the cultural sphere;
Will you speak to my grandfather on my behalf? He does not know the harvest is ready, or that my brother wishes to reap it.
A smattering of other lesser-used terms existed within the Thafonic cultural sphere, but these main ones are most understood by Thafonologists.