Saukanians

Saukanians

Saukani
Total population
27,000,000 (2020)
Languages
Saukanian
Religion
Predominantly Saukanian polytheism Christian and Muslim minorities

The Saukanians or Saukana are a diverse people native to Saukania and small, ancient communities in neighbouring countries. They are among the oldest continuously identified peoples in the world, with their language and identity going back to the Bronze Age. The Saukanians comprise a number of distinct and independent peoples, which nevertheless conceive of and agree upon their shared identity as Saukanians owing to their common use of the Saukanian languages, majority adherence of their traditional religion, and practice of the same (though regionally varied) customs and laws.

Their history goes back to the Bronze Age, when nomadic and pastoralist invaders from beyond the northern deserts occupied the fertile plains by the Laxad river and the foothills of the Ghuran Mountains, founding city-states noted for their fierce independence and warlike nature. Having settled, Saukania has remained populated and ruled by Saukanians for the rest of its history, with brief interruptions of foreign rule or influence. They remain a people characterized by their stubbornness and hesitancy to co-operate. United for the first time in the 19th century into their modern Confederation, their cultural influence of independence and autonomy prevails, with the constituent political entities and communities of the Confederation exercising a great deal of authority.

They are easily the largest ethnic group when taken collectively, though none of the Saukanian peoples holds an outright majority. By many Saukanologists and other observers, the Saukanians are traditionally divided into a number of relatively internally homogeneous cultural groups: Lower Laxadites, Central Laxadites, Upper Laxadites, Lower Rhonaites, Upper Rhonaites, Southern and Northern Ghuranian Lowlanders, Southern and Northern Ghuranian Highlanders, Southern Nomads, Central Nomads, and Northern Nomads. While all these categories share many things in common, they are in various ways different from each other. The categories have been criticised as at once overly simplistic and complicated, as internal variety from city-state to city-state or even village to village is well noted.

The Saukanians are an agrarian society, practicing agriculture and pastoralism in many traditional ways, while the urban centres are the core of industry. About half of the total population is urbanized and slowly growing. They are quite a young population, with high though declining fertility rates.

History

Origins and early history

Proto-Saukanians first arrived in Saukania c. 3300 BC, and in a series of migratory waves lasting a millennium, dominated or replaced the already present Bronze Age population. These invasions saw the settlement of Saukanian-speaking peoples along the Laxad river, which had supported agricultural communities for thousands of years, as well as further south along the coast of the Argan Sea and southwest in the foothills and highlands of the Ghuran Mountains. Many Saukanians embraced farming, or settled as rulers over an indigenous agricultural population that was subsequently 'Saukanized'. Others retained their nomadic-pastoral traditions, living in and around the desert and arid grasslands less suitable for cultivation to graze their cattle, sheep, and goats. Properly speaking, the Saukanian ethnogenesis is considered to be the fusion of the Proto-Saukanian-speaking pastoralists and the indigenous agricultural inhabitants.

Though their separation across a significant distance and different modes of economy produced local variety, the Lukenean civilization developed along the Laxad river from source to mouth from c. 1750 BC. Named for the site of Luken, near the village of the same name in the Central Laxad Region, this civilization was an advanced and sophisticated material culture leaving a large volume of pottery, art, and other remains across many sites. Though not a politically united civilization, already divided into rival city-states and townships, there was a strong unity in artistic expression and cultural outlook. Simultaneous cultures thrived in the Southern Ghuran Mountains, though these were less sophisticated than those cities in the North, which were part of or significantly influenced by the Laxadite Lukenean culture.

The collapse of this culture remains very much a mystery, but may have involved wars against the nomadic Saukanians from the Hendelar Desert and other harsh regions. Conflict between settled and nomadic Saukanians would remain a feature of their history right up to the modern period.

The Bronze Age Saukanians proved themselves a militaristic, warlike people. Weaponry is abundant in Lukenean and pre-Lukenean sites, with axes, swords, daggers, spearheads, composite bows, and war chariots all having been unearthed. From their earliest days they had formed themselves into stratified social orders, with city-states dominated by a hereditary warrior elite under a king or city-lord, supported by his companion class. Evidence of a middle class of artisans, landowners, and levy soldiers emerges in this period as well, though this would take greater shape in the subsequent ages, as the infrequent Lukenean inscriptions largely differentiate between a binary of the warrior elite and everyone else. It can be inferred that the farming population may have been called to arms for raiding expeditions or larger war efforts at certain times of the year to seize control of satellite towns and villages, obtain plunder, or force a rival state into some system of vassalage.

Raiding and river piracy were well-established customs at this time. Piracy along the Laxad and Rhona rivers is mentioned repeatedly in the limited available inscriptions, particularly from Acha and Dathan. Land-based banditry and raiding could be undertaken by settled populations either in the Laxadite plains or in the Ghuran Mountains, or by the nomads migrating with their herds from pasture to pasture. Settled and nomadic populations both frequently came into contact with neighbouring populations and regions, sometimes as traders or migrants, but just as often if not more as hostile aggressors.

Classical period

TBA

Middle Ages

TBA

Early modern period

TBA

Modern period

TBA

Contemporary period

TBA

Definition and identity

TBA

Culture

Language

TBA

Religion

TBA

Arts

TBA

Symbols

TBA

Naming conventions

TBA

Riverfaring

The Laxad and Rhona rivers of Saukania have long been the lifeblood of Saukanian civilization. Those cities and communities that dwell on its banks or watered plains are known as Laxadites and Rhonaites respectively. Navigable rivers for much of their course, these riparian Saukanians have developed a curious niche as riverfarers in a desert, and have for millennia used the waterways of the desert as a highway of trade, communication, and war. The Laxad empties into the Argan Sea, an inland body of water that is the receptacle of much of the Saukanian drainage area. Piracy was common in the Laxad and Rhona all throughout recorded history, though it has been largely eliminated in the last century.

In modern times, these rivers still serve as a highway of trade, and ships with engines naturally prove more capable at pushing upstream than pre-modern vessels.

The rivers of the Ghuran mountain valleys and foothills that do not join the Laxad are only partially navigable in stretches, limiting the importance of these waterways beyond their use in irrigation. The inhabitants of the Ghuranian high and lowlands are less familiar with water navigation than the dwellers of the Laxad and Rhona.

Nomadism

Approximately 2 million people still live a nomadic lifestyle in Saukania. This includes semi-nomads, who have permanent yet not-continuously occupied dwellings, where they grow crops in alternate seasons to animal pasture. The true nomads have no fixed residence, migrating seasonally from pasture to pasture. Typically nomadic groups will travel to the same sites every year, and every group has a recognised pasture area. Times of drought or other hardship can sometimes lead to competition for available grazing, and violence between nomadic communities.

The nomads often see themselves as keeping to the Old Way, though in truth they are as varied between themselves as they are from their settled cousins. Little of the earlier history of nomadic groups is known, as they are generally illiterate and their oral histories comprise part of the wider Saukanian mythology, making it difficult to tell what is fact or folklore. Nevertheless it is well known that these groups descend essentially in an unbroken line from the original Proto-Saukanian nomadic pastoralists who arrived in or invaded Old Saukania over the 3rd millennium BC, and that they have continued that traditional lifestyle of movement ever since, though typically within the confines of Saukanian cultural influence. Nomadic groups have at times throughout history launched incursions or invasions into neighbouring, non-Saukanian lands, either to raid and plunder or seeking new pastures for their herds.

More often than not, relations between the nomads and the villages they frequent in and around the deserts are cordial. Trade is common between the two, exchanging goods the others produce for what they cannot make themselves. Manure from the nomadic herds are often sought as fertiliser by farmers, and so it is quite common for nomads to graze their herds in non-farmland nearby to the villages. Tensions however can and do flare up and may result in violence in times of economic or environmental hardship, or as the result of real or perceived insults and offences between the two groups. Northern nomads in particular are stereotyped and feared for a reputation for kidnapping women and girls, and are historically less diplomatic than nomads from central or southern Saukania.

The nomadic groups have representation in the Confederation, and are free to follow their own laws in their own communities, but are obligated to respect the law of the land in any settlement they arrive at. Simultaneously, anyone who enters the camp of a nomadic community is deemed consenting to abide by their laws and customs. In the last century it is thought that nearly half a million nomads have abandoned their way of life and settled down, either as individuals or groups.

Society

TBA

Physical appearance and genetics

A phenotypical study from 2002 assessing hair and eye colour of the Saukanian people showed that the self-reported frequencies according to hair and eye colour categories was as follows: 217 individuals – hair colour, 34 blond, 62 dark blond/light brown, 68 dark brown, 23 brown red/auburn and 30 had black hair; eye colour, 86 with blue, 21 with green, and 110 had brown eye colour. Curly hair is quite common.

In general the Saukanians are a tall people, with an average male height of 5 feet 11 inches, and an average female height of 5 feet 3 1⁄2 inches. Heights vary however between different populations of Saukania, such as region, settled or nomadic lifestyle, and even class, making the mean average of questionable reliability in an insightful assessment. In addition to being tall, Saukanians are also typically quite lean. This is especially true for the nomads and rural settled people, whose more active lifestyle of movement, herding, and farm work burns calories. Obesity is uncommon. The height disparity between males and females is also variable, though on average quite high, due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

In skin tone Saukanians vary from light to bronzed, and generally have a warm complexion. As in most populations, Saukanian females are lighter than males, further exacerbated in many communities by men engaging in fieldwork and other outdoor activity, with women keeping more to housework and indoor activity.

Along with eye and hair colour, these differences are thought likely due to variations in genetic ancestry from the indigenous Pre-Saukanian agriculturalists and the pastoralist Proto-Saukanians. DNA studies have revealed a wide variety in autosomal DNA heritage among modern Saukanians, with some having close to 50-50 ancestry and others having majority Pre-Saukanian ancestry. Saukanian nomads have the highest overall ancient pastoralist ancestry. The overwhelming majority of modern Saukanian Y-DNA haplogroups originate from the ancient pastoral invader communities, as indigenous male lines were largely replaced. Saukanian mitochondrial DNA lineages are far more varied, indicating interbreeding between males of the pastoral invaders and females of the indigenous agriculturalists. Polygyny among the Proto-Saukanian elite may have driven bands of males to seek wives in foreign lands, either by peaceful intermarriage or violence. Many Saukanologists believe this constituted the first of the migratory waves, with the secondary and tertiary waves bringing a greater number of Saukanian females and complete family units, bringing further mixing to an already hybridized pool.