Saukanians
Saukani | |
|---|---|
| Total population | |
| 27,000,000 (2020) | |
| Languages | |
| Saukanian | |
| Religion | |
| Predominantly Saukanian polytheism Christian and Muslim minorities |
The Saukanians are a people and civilization native to Saukania, a land and polity in northwest Thrismari. They are an ancient people, with their language and identity going back to the Bronze Age. Saukanians are comprised of a number of distinct and independent peoples, with the majority organised into confederal city-nations and a minority living as nomads. They have long been considered a crude people by their neighbours, viewed as barbaric and warlike.
Saukanian history goes back to the Bronze Age, when their chariot-driving ancestors 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. 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 20th 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.
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 to city 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.
Name
History
Origins and early history
The origin of the Proto-Saukanians is unclear, save for their arrival from a northeasterly direction. Beginning around 2200 BC, communities of Proto-Saukanians began migrating into the lands around the Laxad river. Armed with war chariots and sophisticated bronze weaponry, they were able to take advantage of the local situation of collapse and decay brought about by major climate change, causing the desert to expand and land to become drier. Numerous Proto-Saukanian tribes and warbands were able to conquer the middle Laxad, before spreading up- and down-river simultaneously over the following centuries. By the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, they had reached and conquered the foothills of the Ghuran mountains, and many Saukanian tribes had begun to abandon nomadic lifestyles in favour of settling the abandoned urban sites of the previous inhabitants.
1450 - 900 BC is considered the timescale of much of Saukanian mythology, though thematic elements suggest older origins.
Classical period
In the 9th century BC, the Saukanians began their classical history, known as the Proto-Epic period. Wielding iron weapons and tools, the 'black metal' as it was locally known, powerful city-kingdoms were forged by the Saukanians along both banks of the Laxad, the Rhona, the rivers of the southwest, and the northern shore of the Argan Sea. A handful of these, possessing larger populations and more warriors, quickly became dominant over their neighbours, and set themselves up as the capitals of 'nations' ruling indirectly over neighbouring cities. Many Saukanians continued to remain nomadic, though their influence was checked by the increasingly sophisticated and warlike iron kingdoms, whose chariot-borne warrior aristocracy proved itself more than a match for the desert hordes in direct combat. The nomads quickly adapted, and different groups offered their services as mercenaries or caravan guards, or enriched themselves through hit-and-run attacks on villages and outlying towns.
Literacy from the Proto-Epic period is limited, but rises in the Epic period itself. This later phase of the Saukanian classical era, beginning 550 BC, is named for the written recording of oral epics and legends, which are the dominant forms of literature until 400 BC, when administrative, economic, and military sources become more abundant. From 150 BC, the kingdom of Turshor rose to prominence in southern Saukania, from its heartland on the coast of the Argan Sea. Having overcome its primary rival Kula in a series of wars, it was able to force many rival cities along the lower Laxad and near the Ghuran Mountains into vassalage. Indirect hegemony over all of Saukania was established in 85 BC, when Ithor plar Nushte, the king of Turshor, defeated Khodanean king Tarxi plar Beder at the Battle of Gola. The Turshor Hegemony lasted until 102 AD, when an alliance of Acha, Khodan, and Mardasar defeated Turshor in the field at Ladath, resulting in a number of its vassals rising up in rebellion.
No new hegemony was established by the kingdoms, however, as a new wave of drying conditions saw drought, famine, and disease reduce the populations of all major Saukanian states, enabling the rise of a coalition of nomadic powers.
Middle Ages
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Early modern period
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Modern period
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Contemporary period
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Definition and identity
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Culture
Language
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Religion
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Arts
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Symbols
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Naming conventions
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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.