This is what I associate with Orlanthi and Bronze Age (although it, too, has ships)

[Sir_Godspeed]

37 minutes ago, Lord High Munchkin said:

Actually the original Europeans were black skinned, oddly with straight dark hair and blue eyes - a colour combination that no longer exists anywhere.

Dark-skinned, I believe. There's some uncertainty on just how dark it was. Several documentaries chose to portray it as looking akin to sub-Saharan people (which is entirely possible, but not verified, afaik) - which caused a bit of a turd storm in certain parts of the Internet, because... *sigh* some people identify overly much with their skin genes.

[Julian Lord]

7 hours ago, Lord High Munchkin said:

Actually the original Europeans were black skinned, oddly with straight dark hair and blue eyes - a colour combination that no longer exists anywhere.

No -- I grew up partly in the Baleares and inland Catalonia, and those people, who still exist, are not blacks. They're a lot duskier and shorter than other Europeans, most of whom today are of more mixed stock, and increasingly so.

It's surprisingly hard to find pictures of the old European type on these interwebs, but they are short in stature, slight of frame, have hairier skin, and their skin colour varies between a darker suntanned look and a rich, deep, dark, but glowing olive. Those "blacks" with skin tones that light are actually mixed-race. The few remaining pockets of their presence in Europe are swiftly disappearing through mixed marriages. Here's one within the range, and take note that he's tanned : 

A few girls in schools I attended in southern Europe had some quite stunningly dark suntans in the summer beach weather !!

[Joerg]

16 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

I've always envisioned 1st and 2nd Age southern Maniria to have a very Mediterranean climate, at least 'til the goddess rolled over and it all sank into the depths.

This depends on the relative strengths of the Neliomi vs the Solkathi influence.

The original Solkathi invasion was an offshoot of the hot river Sshorg(a) (which then became Aroka/Oslir(a)). Subsequent defeats and the four seas sacrifice to create the Raging Sea that was broken by Orlanth weakened those original currents. Nowadays, we have a Solkathi current which is a child (i.e. fed by) the northern of the two eastern-originating doom currents running into Magasta's Pool, carrying water which already has shared some heat with the East Isles currents coming down from Kahar's Sea and further east counter-currents to Sramak's River, offering only moderate warming effects. The cooling effect of Neliomi carrying off some cold from the Glacier is probably significant enough to be carried overland along with the ocean and glacier winds, pushing warmer and gentler winds eastward to Kethaela. The Tanier river valley might benefit from some "Valind's winds were stopped up here" mythical effect that replaces a rather common disproportional warming of winds sinking down beyond the Nidan mountains. The original cities under Neliomi influence likely were somewhat less pleasant.

With the Mislari offering a second such barrier, the further east you go in Maniria the more pleasant temperatures will become.

 

16 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

But IMG, some of the more southerly parts of Sartar, and coastal Esrolia, and parts of Heortland have such climate and (varying) vegetation.

Coastal Esrolia only happens on the Choralinthor Bay, with the chain of Veskarthan's children actually shielding off Solkathi influences.Tidal influx into the Choralinthor would carry some Rozgali water (i.e. at least gulf stream warm water, which doesn't say that much in winter Biscaya terms) into the bay, but the incoming tides are really slow, and the Esrolian rivers combined with the Sartarite ones since Belintar re-directed the River into the Lyk(s)os bring probably as much continental water as the returning tide carries Rozgali water.

That said, Neolithic and Bronze Age Central Europe in all likelihood had temperatures well above what it has experienced in all but the most recent recorded history. Even Imperial Roman age glaciation of the Alps in certain places was down to levels similar as we have reached in recent years, as some finds of mining sites in high glacier valleys have shown where 50 years ago there had only been ice.

 

16 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

Greg anyway described the inhabitants of these regions as being generally olive- or darker skinned, with handsome black or darker or red or rare blonde hair and black, blue, or green eyes --

Which he derived from their runic ancestry rather than from rather recent anthropology (more recent than Greg's first public statements on the fact, which made some waves on the Glorantha Yahoogroup at the time), with a number of (Real World) unavailable tones of skin tossed in especially on the western and sea-related ancestry.

Solar guys with golden hair (not quite the white blond of archetypical Scandinavians or hydrogen peroxide) and well-tanned skin even as their winter default (unlike most Europeans prior to wide-spread availability of cheap tourist flights and solarium tan). Probably immune to sun-burn, too, unless transgressing somehow.

Storm people with orange skin tones (not entirely unheard of in the real world, unfortunately) or dusty brown skin tones, like soil or dust blown into the air. Pretty much like typical Pashtun skin coloration on the swarthier end.

Earth folk with even darker brown skin, possibly lightened to more gray by a green input from divine ancestry, are more than half of the Theyalan ancestry.

Blue skin tones may come both from Sea Rune influnces (Helerites, Waertagi bastards among Pelaskites) and from divine Storm (where blue can be an alternative for orange, however opposed these two colors are on our real world color scheme) and Sky Ancestry. While the blue color of the sky is commonly associated with Lorian, given the bluish white color of Ze-Metal (tin) it merely may have undone the unnatural gold of the Sun Dome obscuring the hotter plasma of the sky from which Storm descended.

Another factor might be ancestry through Kero Fin to Larnste (often depicted in celestial light blue) and Gata (deep brown when not bright green).

 

16 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

that is probably not at all coincidentally a very good description of the original Europeans prior to the arrival of the pale-skinned green/blue -eyed red/blonde -haired types that came in and changed most of everything towards about 1000-800 BC.

I am not really convinced. While the Ötztal ice mummy has few if any genetic descendants in modern European populations, there hasn't been any indication that he was particularly dark-skinned in any of the reports or reconstructions I have seen, and while ice mummification might alter skin appearance as much as other known methods, I would expect that specimen to be available for measurements of melantonin or melantonin-metabolites as those measurements can be done spectroscopically without destroying anything.

 

16 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

The RW "Latino" types are most like the original Europeans, and closest to how Greg described the Theyalan peoples of Dragon Pass and closest regions of southern Genertela. Though to be fair, so are the very pale-skinned, blue-eyed, black-haired Welsh. The so-called "celts", red/auburn-haired pale freckle-skinned pale-eyed and tall, are with the Finns and Scandivavians and Ukrainians the most like the later arrivals (though of course the Finns with typical national character refusal of general expectation are, after the Basques, the population with the second highest national average of Neanderthal DNA).

The Neanderthal admixture most likely occurred on the fringes of Neanderthal expansion into the Middle East (ironically giving at least some truth to some of the "proto-Aryan" hypotheses fielded by numerous local identity-pride movements, although certainly not the one they were looking for).

Last thing I heard was that the blue-eyed mutation quite likely was a single point event that then spread - in somewhat recessive inheritance - through a wider population. If the Neanderthals did have it, they might have injected it into a portion of the modern human genome...

Another interesting factoid to throw into this: the red-haired phenotype was also typical for both the Phoenicians (who might have had Sea People admixture) and King David (i.e. even pre-Philistine settlement Hebrews if there is substance to the sons of Jacob claims of descendance for the House of David) long before the Celtic (La Tene-era) migrations, i.e. common around the Mediterranean before the Migration era admixture of central and northern European (Germanic and Celtic) genome. Most of the Mediterranean spoke Semitic languages to begin with, with Maltese being one of the few survivors and Hellenic later superimposed on many of these. The Etruscans and their kin on Lemnos (and presumably Asia Minor) didn't speak an Indo-European language, either:

Haplogroup mapping has become a trend only in the last few years, and connecting that to ancient DNA has been available for only a little longer. The currently commercially available ancestry kits look at very select groups of markers, and their statistic weight analysis of these is at times rather pseudo-scientific.

Y-chromosome admixture and subsequent propagation doesn't necessarily have to reflect permanent settlement - the same result can result from regular raids with limited capacity to carry off slave women. There is a village in France where the genome of the local population shows direct consequences of the draw at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, with significant Hunnish admixture to the local genome, in all likelihood to there having been something like a field hospital and regeneration camp of Huns after the battle (never mind that the Huns only were a minority of their own troops fielded at that battle, with goths probably outnumbering them on their own side, not even counting the opposite side).

 

Male explorers going somewhere new and taking a local wife has always been a normal occurrance, maybe not as well-romanticized as in the ancestry of the population of Pitcairn, but e.g. trappers in North America going native and in the longer run contributing their genome to the Native American communities was rather common. A good portion of the Cherokee nation ethnocidally displaced in the 19th century probably had claim to European ancestors, and some African ones, too - indentured immigrants set free after they had served their term, seeking their luck further west than the crown-controlled lands. Being able to obtain European goods without much suspicion, they would have been rather wealthy in that respect in their adoptive communities, and hence have had a greater chance to propagate their ancestry.

In Glorantha, this is epitomized among others in the Downland Migration which resulted in the Dureving tribes. While there is some initial talk about the sisters of Orlanth at Dini, a lot of wife-collecting appears to have occurred after taking in Orane (and presumably lots of in-laws). What started out as a Burtae community at the foot of the Celestial Palace where all the mixed offspring of the Powers and some of the Elements (mainly Storm and Sky) went wedded itself to the Earth-dominated (but variously admixed) local population of Ernaldela.

The Dureving migration is a parallel to the distribution of the (no longer used in current archaeology) Battle Axe culture (nowadays named Corded Ware culture after the ceramics they left behind). While associated with cattle breeding and possibly oxen-drawn carts, it wasn't a horse breeders' migration, however. Chariots appear to be present already before the Vingkotling era, which added rider culture elements among at least some of the Vingkotling groups, including the dominant one in eastern Dragon Pass and northern Heortland (Ulanin).

The Vingkotling Age is the last major age of assimilating other cultures by including them in the tribes. Later cross-cultural demigod ruler marriages didn't manage to integrate those other cultures as well into the nation (as shown e.g. by the difficulties with the Telmori and Grazers in Sartarite and Tarshite history). The Second Council magical interbreeding mostly affected the lost civilization of Theyalan Dorastor, and hardly the Heortling and other Orlanthi tribes in Council lands. I blame the limited range of the undisturbed Pseudocosmic Egg for enabling that prior to the God Project. In a similar way, the species of the Wyrms may have sprung from this egg, too.

Most recently, Lunar admixture may have brought a new wave of interbreeding to the Pelorian Orlanthi (including some formerly Heortling populations), with the Lunars themselves being a wild mix of Pelorian natives married to the demigod lineage descended from Teelo Estara.

[Joerg]

11 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Dark-skinned, I believe. There's some uncertainty on just how dark it was. Several documentaries chose to portray it as looking akin to sub-Saharan people (which is entirely possible, but not verified, afaik) - which caused a bit of a turd storm in certain parts of the Internet, because... *sigh* some people identify overly much with their skin genes.

There is also the problem that melanin levels (a measurable quantity) expressed by individuals are hard to correlate to traceable genetic and selection criteria. I have no idea whether the dark skin of e.g. Bantu and Khoisan populations are regulated by the same genes, and whether that of Tebu and Tuareg groups is related.

The utterly outdated and un-scientific concept of race that still dominates US politics and bureaucracy is as much an anachronism as is Sharia law or similar fundamentalist and literalist community rules (often accompanied by adjectives like "orthodox") although it is at most a century older than the USA themselves, and to a significant extent carried by more recent immigrant groups who brought their own pocket orthodox religious rules having been purged (aka ethnocidally displaced) from Europe. Compared to that, the Islamic treatment of skin coloration or similar phenotype differences is outright liberal and something the Western world should have adopted long ago.

 

I wonder how much Gloranthan tan changes with varying exposure to the sun due to annual cycles, with day length variations world-wide on par with those of Copenhagen or Anchorage. How pale (Inara-like) do Heortlings become in winter? Are only certain pigments affected? Could there be others (e.g. orange ones) with a contrary cycle (suppressed by exposure to sun-light)?

 

The numerous skin colorations found in Glorantha suggest that pigmentation has more than one major component (unlike melantonin and its slight variation in red-haired folk in the real world). Runes alone don't explain e.g. both blue and orange skin pigmentation in people strong in Storm ancestry. It almost makes me wonder why there are no recorded human palominos on Glorantha.

[Akhôrahil]

1 minute ago, Joerg said:

The numerous skin colorations found in Glorantha suggest that pigmentation has more than one major component (unlike melantonin and its slight variation in red-haired folk in the real world). Runes alone don't explain e.g. both blue and orange skin pigmentation in people strong in Storm ancestry. It almost makes me wonder why there are no recorded human palominos on Glorantha.

Naturally striped or otherwise patterned peoples would also be interesting. Could easily imagine this for certain types of Hsunchen.

[Julian Lord]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

This depends on the relative strengths of the Neliomi vs the Solkathi influence.

You're right that these currents form a significant element, but what's changed mostly for the new coastal Maniria since the goddess rolled over is that it's now squarely under the influence of the Heler rains, whereas the original situation in Time in the Dawn Council era and later provided a more balanced climate -- and anyway, it's probably incorrect to suppose Hero Wars era climate weirdness in and around Dragon Pass and Peloria as being typical. One should remember that the Heler Rains are centred in heartland Maniria, and do not blow in from ocean currents, but rather they proceed from out of the Middle Air above that region of Genertela.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Coastal Esrolia only happens on the Choralinthor Bay, with the chain of Veskarthan's children actually shielding off Solkathi influences.Tidal influx into the Choralinthor would carry some Rozgali water (i.e. at least gulf stream warm water, which doesn't say that much in winter Biscaya terms) into the bay, but the incoming tides are really slow, and the Esrolian rivers combined with the Sartarite ones since Belintar re-directed the River into the Lyk(s)os bring probably as much continental water as the returning tide carries Rozgali water.

That said, Neolithic and Bronze Age Central Europe in all likelihood had temperatures well above what it has experienced in all but the most recent recorded history. Even Imperial Roman age glaciation of the Alps in certain places was down to levels similar as we have reached in recent years, as some finds of mining sites in high glacier valleys have shown where 50 years ago there had only been ice.

The evaporation of the Mediterranean waters from sunshine significantly exceeds the import of water from the European, Middle East, and African rivers, and it only maintains its volume through constant inflow via the Gibraltan Isthmus to the Atlantic -- The Choralinthor Bay is the only Gloranthan equivalent to this RW oceanography, and it occurs to me (as an aside to the Elmal and Heler discussion on the other thread) that it's a struggle in RW physics well paralleled in the Mythic struggle between Elmal and Heler Between Esrolia and southern Sartar and Dragon Pass.

It's true OTOH that 1st and 2nd Age coastal Maniria was possibly a bit more like the currently sunken subcoastal areas of the Black Sea before the Isthmus of Corinth broke, and flooded it to its current extent.

Your point about non-existent in RW Gloranthan skin and hair colourations is excellent, but my own point was instead about existing RW equivalents to one of those more unusual types. NOT to suggest that Gloranthan human ethnicities needed always to be grounded in RW ones, which simply isn't the case.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

I am not really convinced. While the Ötztal ice mummy

That guy is a very extreme genetic outlier -- 40% Neanderthal DNA in a single individual well outside the accepted prehistorical range of Neanderthal presence belongs to the realm of dubious hypothesis alone to try and explain it.

But within Historical times and/or close enough, the Greeks and Italians in particular were "early adopters" of cosmopolitanism.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

The Vingkotling Age is the last major age of assimilating other cultures by including them in the tribes.

Until the Lunar Empire's attempts at cultural hegemony and the Hero Wars, yes.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

The utterly outdated and un-scientific concept of race that still dominates US politics and bureaucracy is as much an anachronism as is Sharia law or similar fundamentalist and literalist community rules (often accompanied by adjectives like "orthodox")

I'm not sure what that has to do with Glorantha, where "outdated" concepts are the norm.

And I'm really quite honestly surprised that your lengthy and deep experience of the various Gloranthan literary metaphors seems not to have helped you as much as possible with these sorts of RW ideologies.

But rather, there are in point of scientific fact, according to the most recent discoveries, about 15% of the African population having no Neanderthal DNA whatsoever (they're located mainly in eastern sub-saharan Africa), and in view of this scientific reality it's absurd to cling on to the 1970s ideology that race is simply a false concept. Of course, any actively racist conception of race is even more absurd, but you still cannot realistically denounce the concept itself as being "outdated and un-scientific". 

But really Joerg, it's not the idea of race that creates racism, it's the rubbish fake notion that those different to us must somehow be "inferior". Not so.

It's true anyway that the US in particular continues to struggle with the general and ongoing consequences of its segregationist and earlier even worse racial laws.

Orthodoxy as such is BTW deeply opposed to such ghastly and divisive philosophies.

----

Joerg, if you want to respond to the final part of this, please use PM -- let's not subject others in the Tribe to this nonsense.

[Joerg]

56 minutes ago, Julian Lord said:

You're right that these currents form a significant element, but what's changed mostly for the new coastal Maniria since the goddess rolled over is that it's now squarely under the influence of the Heler rains, whereas the original situation in Time in the Dawn Council era and later provided a more balanced climate -- and anyway, it's probably incorrect to suppose Hero Wars era climate weirdness in and around Dragon Pass and Peloria as being typical. One should remember that the Heler Rains are centred in heartland Maniria, and do not blow in from ocean currents, but rather they proceed from out of the Middle Air above that region of Genertela.

I was only commenting on air temperature, not on precipitation. Cloud formation from sea fog is probably observable in Glorantha, and there might be a myth about that, but there are other sources of atmospheric water. The Skyfall probably loses a lot of the Lorian waters branched off to fall down (although the celestial river continues, apparently undisturbed by the wound, which isn't allocated to the starry sky anyway). Stream and Creek are said to be fed the same way as the River in myth, with a lot less obvious rainfall at their headwaters on the mundane surface world.

56 minutes ago, Julian Lord said:

The evaporation of the Mediterranean waters from sunshine significantly exceeds the import of water from the European, Middle East, and African rivers, and it only maintains its volume through constant inflow via the Gibraltan Isthmus to the Atlantic -- The Choralinthor Bay is the only Gloranthan equivalent to this RW oceanography, and it occurs to me (as an aside to the Elmal and Heler discussion on the other thread) that it's a struggle in RW physics well paralleled in the Mythic struggle between Elmal and Heler Between Esrolia and southern Sartar and Dragon Pass.

Still, I would rather compare the Mirrorsea Bay to the Baltic in terms of freshwater/salt water exchange, or possibly the Black Sea. It combines two major and productive catchment area aestuaries in a rather small area, almost like the lagoon of Venice. The Choralinthor water should be borderline potable.

 

56 minutes ago, Julian Lord said:

(Ötztal ice mummy)

That guy is a very extreme genetic outlier -- 40% Neanderthal DNA in a single individual well outside the accepted prehistorical range of Neanderthal presence belongs to the realm of dubious hypothesis alone to try and explain it.

There might be other elements from 20000 years of Cromagnon adaptation and selection analogous to the selection that created the Neandertal race from the common African ancestor. I read the 40% claim for the first time.

I haven't seen any data on other chalcolithic DNA in comparison to our Neandertal cousins, either. The ice mummy offered near perfect preservation and none of the metabolizing and chemical degradation all the older stuff discovered through the Pääbo method suffered from.

[scott-martin]

24 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Still, I would rather compare the Mirrorsea Bay to the Baltic in terms of freshwater/salt water exchange, or possibly the Black Sea. It combines two major and productive catchment area aestuaries in a rather small area, almost like the lagoon of Venice. The Choralinthor water should be borderline potable.

Side question (aren't they all): does your Mirrorsea have amber or a similar unique trade commodity?

[Joerg]

1 minute ago, scott-martin said:

Side question (aren't they all): does your Mirrorsea have amber or a similar unique trade commodity?

Amber should be a possibility all around drowned Ernaldela - Worcha's parents did cover and smother lots of forest, and bleeding trees might have left sap to transform. The non-time of Godtime may allow less aging just as much as it may allow accelerated aging compared to the generations of named ancestors and kings passing through.

[Julian Lord]

32 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I read the 40% claim for the first time

I'll respond to your other points, including the very interesting PM, but one of the most stunning conclusions of recent research by the foremost expert in these things is that not just 20%, but 40% of the specifically Neanderthal DNA has survived into our present species. It's scattered around all over the place rather than being concentrated into certain individuals or ethnicities, but the old 19th and 20th Century idea that we just up and slaughtered them is definitively debunked.

We had children with them, and we are those children, except 15% of black Africans.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Julian Lord said:

I'll respond to your other points, including the very interesting PM, but one of the most stunning conclusions of recent research by the foremost expert in these things is that not just 20%, but 40% of the specifically Neanderthal DNA has survived into our present species. It's scattered around all over the place rather than being concentrated into certain individuals or ethnicities, but the old 19th and 20th Century idea that we just up and slaughtered them is definitively debunked.

Only those we didn't mate with... There is a great likelihood that pockets of the remnants of the western Neandertal population might have encountered some CroMagnon types, but not enough to make a significant further contribution to their gene pool.

A docu that I watched two or three months ago suggested that an explosive eruption of the bigger volcano next to the Vesuv some 45 k years ago might have smothered much of the European Neandertal population, reducing the already low genetic variety by culling most groups east of the Massif Central through sudden climate change and loss of their food sources. The remaining few thousand survivors west of that eruption suffered milder consequences, but might have fallen below sustainable genetic variety, and mostly too early for modern humans to step in and provide fresh genes for at least a hybrid population to survive. No evidence of such hybrids has been found this far west, only on the Balkans there has been DNA evidence for an individual with sapiens admixture a few generations back, IIRC. That, and ever more fluctuating climate making the habitat difficult for their dwindling hunt targets may have been the true cause for their disappearance, until the few coastal habitats failed due to inbreeding and malnutrition rather than acute starvation.

Less developed antecessor humans is something missing in Glorantha. We rather see the opposite, more perfect specimen degenerating into the modern forms or (slowly, as many of these are effectively unaging) dying out from failure to breed true through the cataclysms that diminished their numbers. The only indication of such folk is found in Kralorela, where the Wild Man needs to be tamed by Allgiver to father the first civilized human, Aptanace. (Unless you count the Vadrudi horde... including Orlanth and Humakt in their early days.) We do get modern humans in Paleo-, Meso- and Neolithic cultures, but no populations of physically variant body types except for various pygmy populations.

Gloranthan lesser giants are sometimes presented with features we'd expect in earlier hominids, but their magical nature and size takes them apart from humanity.

1 hour ago, Julian Lord said:

We had children with them, and we are those children, except 15% of black Africans.

That (and the admixture of Denisovan DNA to certain Pacific and Australian populations) I did know, but the statement that the Ötzi individual would have had that much Neandertal DNA was absolutely new to me.

The number of just 15% of African natives being free of Neandertal DNA is suprisingly low - I hadn't expected Arab descendants to spread that widely into the population, across that many tribal borders. Semitic-based native languages are found all the way down to the Bantu-settled parts of Kenya and the populations speaking them might have been in genetic exchange with the Middle East along the Nile, but West African admixture probably was a lot more recent and less pervasive. Ok, sailors being sailors, there would have been some exchange, but rarely south of Mauretania prior to the Portuguese expeditions.

 

[scott-martin]

Just now, Joerg said:

Less developed antecessor humans is something missing in Glorantha.

I think it was Rilke who called the man rune a historical compromise between hsunchen and mostali. I would love more tribal origin myths or at least a rich sense of where "warerans" begin and everyone else (maybe including "theyalans") leave off . . . not in terms of idealized genetic "types" (yikes) but simply the stories people tell about where they came from and why their neighbors are different.

[Julian Lord]

24 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Less developed antecessor humans is something missing in Glorantha. We rather see the opposite, more perfect specimen degenerating into the modern forms

Glorantha cleaves to the Myth of the Golden Age of ancient perfection that all has devolved away from, rather than the modern Myth of Progress whereby we are all of us advancing towards some future state of Perfection.

27 minutes ago, Joerg said:

the number of just 15% of African natives being free of Neandertal DNA is suprisingly low - I hadn't expected Arab descendants to spread that widely into the population, across that many tribal borders.

Yes, it's very surprisingly low, but it's in the black African populations, not just the obviously mixed Mediterranean and South African ones, who have the more typically expected % of the Neanderthal. And it's just not Arab descent, the 15% without the genes are quite locally located in sub-Saharan eastern Black Africa -- Zulus BTW have about as much Neanderthal DNA as Europeans typically do.

[M Helsdon]

29 minutes ago, Julian Lord said:

And it's just not Arab descent, the 15% without the genes are quite locally located in sub-Saharan eastern Black Africa -- Zulus BTW have about as much Neanderthal DNA as Europeans typically do.

Utterly irrelevant to Glorantha, but there are indications of unknown hominids in the DNA of sub-Saharan Africans who lack Neanderthal DNA. The simple fact is that who is/was human has a much wider definition than is often supposed, with the branching tree of our evolutionary history often recombining, and even then, our 'racial differences' are more due to isolated pockets at times of severe human dieback, than ancestral mixing with relatives. There's even indications that our ancestors and those of chimpanzees interbred for a long time before total speciation occurred.

In much the same way, the Man Rune in Glorantha defines much more than just human.

Edited March 19, 2019 by M Helsdon

[Sir_Godspeed]

Makes me wonder wonder about the origins of Grandfather Mortal. On the one hand, I suspect he's an after-the-fact anthropomorphization - but on the other hand, from a theistic view, he also acted as a conscious entity, sharing his form with those he came across, in some way or other.

[Joerg]

6 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

Glorantha cleaves to the Myth of the Golden Age of ancient perfection that all has devolved away from, rather than the modern Myth of Progress whereby we are all of us advancing towards some future state of Perfection.

Except that there is one such notion, where the Daxdarius epic copies the hidden mythical reference to meeting the Wild Man in the Gilgamesh epic with befriending the hairy Wild Man. You might of couse say it is all Freudian or Jungian play with archetypes, but IMO myth isn't just play with archetypes, but quite often a factual memory of historical events, too.

The different cousin married back into the tribe, and its children remaining a productive and procreating part of the tribe, is a powerful and empowering story. Gloranthan tribalism is both less exclusive of people because of different appearance and more exclusive because of "not one of us" even down at clan level where even some of the wives' birth clans can become hostile "not us".

6 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

Yes, it's very surprisingly low, but it's in the black African populations, not just the obviously mixed Mediterranean and South African ones, who have the more typically expected % of the Neanderthal. And it's just not Arab descent, the 15% without the genes are quite locally located in sub-Saharan eastern Black Africa -- Zulus BTW have about as much Neanderthal DNA as Europeans typically do.

There's of course the possibility that the group that crossed the Sahara around 200 000 years before the Toba explosion and established itself in Europe left some folk behind in Africa.

The Bantu tribes outside of west Africa have quite the migration history behind them, with the Zulu among those who migrated the farthest. I wonder what kind of myths that accumulated.

[Joerg]

4 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Makes me wonder wonder about the origins of Grandfather Mortal. On the one hand, I suspect he's an after-the-fact anthropomorphization - but on the other hand, from a theistic view, he also acted as a conscious entity, sharing his form with those he came across, in some way or other.

The Kralori myth of Wild Man and Allgiver doesn't make his instinctive mating with whichever he met very much of a conscious act. It took his meeting with Allgiver and the more implicated mating rites to get her attention to awaken that ihnerent but undiscovered potential for consciousness. His first son with Allgiver, Aptanace the Sage, then was the prototype of the conscious and civiized person. Not the bromance of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, but The Beauty and The Beast with a hefty dose of hands on sex.

Grandfather Mortal is fairly universal. Grandmother Mortal is not - more than half the Grandfather Mortal myths have him find goddesses, or even The Goddess, as his mate. His gift of future mortality to his children establishes paternity as mythical precedent, and opens the way to patriarchal society. In the West, his descendants even face the choice of the children of Luthien.

Malkion of the West, reincarnating in ever more devolved states, like Malkion the Founder who gets born from two deities, Aerlit and Warera, and goes on to marry other goddesses to spawn the tribes and the archetypes of Brithini ancestry, is weirdly non-humanist in that way. Not quite the Prometheus creation of mankind (although Eurmal Friend of Men carries a lot of that Promethean story), but there is a story of defiance to the Gods even if those Gods are also said to be former kin of the Archetypes prior to their Devolution.

Of the devolved Archetypes, only Zzabur makes it to the Dawn alive. There is Duke Horal, another son of Malkion the Founder who is not a Caste archetype but more a tribal leader with Talar rank, but that character doesn't appear to carry the burden of the Third Action prototype Other that plagues the physical Zzabur and explains his hybris. The arrival of Time may have separated the physical Zzabur from unity with his un-Devolved self, and may account for his all too human mistakes shortly after the Dawn, leading to his (apparently first) experience of regret of his divisive actions (all of this in the unpublished Hrestol's Saga, not much of a novel (or perhaps better: romance), but quite a load of myth when combined with the double set of origin myths in Revealed Mythology). (And rather than facing the Fifth Action of Malkion, both the Seshnegi and the Brithini lament the arrival of Gether, God of Death (of Old Age), rather than Humct Wielder of Death through hostile interaction. No idea how much Eurmal Friend of Men is involved in this.)

Even stranger the Doraddi version, with Dorad the first of the drinkers to lay down his physical existence to provide the first medicine plants to his lineage. Mainstream Pamaltelan myth is brimming with Death from the start - Bolongo's assassination of Earthmaker, and Dorad's funeral. While there is a sword associated with Death (the Red Sword of Tolat), it isn't Death itself as it is for the Theists.

[scott-martin]

29 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The arrival of Time may have separated the physical Zzabur from unity with his un-Devolved self

Thank God for small victories even if the large ones are elusive. EDIT one day we'll see all zzaburs separated from unity with their physical existence.

 

Edited March 20, 2019 by scott-martin

[Sir_Godspeed]

10 hours ago, Joerg said:

Malkion of the West, reincarnating in ever more devolved states, like Malkion the Founder who gets born from two deities, Aerlit and Warera, and goes on to marry other goddesses to spawn the tribes and the archetypes of Brithini ancestry, is weirdly non-humanist in that way. Not quite the Prometheus creation of mankind (although Eurmal Friend of Men carries a lot of that Promethean story), but there is a story of defiance to the Gods even if those Gods are also said to be former kin of the Archetypes prior to their Devolution.

The whole story of Malkion - as pseudo-Gnostic emanation from the All, or demigod prophet - always makes me uncertain about which story emerged first, which one is a refinement for philosophical purposes (the emanationist/devolution one seems a lot like this), or cultural integration into a theist worldview after the collapse of Zerendel and the Western Diaspora in the Darkness (the divine-ancestry Malkion sounds a lot like that - how Greeks would take abstract concepts and put them into divine family trees).

Both may be true, of course. Different perspectives. Emphasis on different functions. And there are several more out there, clearly.