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Thafis, was an ancient harbour city and the surrounding culture in the southwest of the Vostau peninsula, described in historical documents as “at the mouth of the Vizon river”.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 Thafonists (archaeologists and specialists in Thafonic history) as ‘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 ___ 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.
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 indigenous 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 ___ language, though it is likely that, if it even exists, it would have been diluted by the presence of Gauli, Calrese and Qelhoshi.