It's not Ansongo merchants wanting bad Nok land, it's mostly farmers that for one reason or another have lost their land and are migrating to other areas. The Nok land is salvageable, it just isn't under their own current land practices. The Mande and Songhai (predominantly Songhai) that come into the region have sufficient numbers to avoid being immediately absorbed into the declining Nok population and using plows to break up the dirt, they are able to farm the land. Because of this, they're able to establish a kind of preeminence among the Nok as their aristocracy by intermarrying with the local upper class. So when the Ansongo traders come looking for trade prospects, they're going to want to deal with the Songhai and Mandinka people, leading to a lot of merchants from the area having Songhai and Mande ancestry.
In the Shade of the Baobabs
- Thread starter leopard9
- Start date
It's not Ansongo merchants wanting bad Nok land, it's mostly farmers that for one reason or another have lost their land and are migrating to other areas. The Nok land is salvageable, it just isn't under their own current land practices. The Mande and Songhai (predominantly Songhai) that come into the region have sufficient numbers to avoid being immediately absorbed into the declining Nok population and using plows to break up the dirt, they are able to farm the land. Because of this, they're able to establish a kind of preeminence among the Nok as their aristocracy by intermarrying with the local upper class. So when the Ansongo traders come looking for trade prospects, they're going to want to deal with the Songhai and Mandinka people, leading to a lot of merchants from the area having Songhai and Mande ancestry.
Just want to let you guys know, I'm in the midst of midterms in college and a difficult Mediterranean passage for the TL, so the next update is going to be sometime next week. I really should've invested more time in my outline than what I did...
. Sorry for the lack of updates everyone.
. Sorry for the lack of updates everyone.Tenets of the Two God Path
An page from an early Demotic transcript of the Tome.
“The Father showed us how to grow the trees and plants of the earth, but it is the Mother who taught us to read.”
There are Two Gods that have created the entire world, the Father and the Mother. Just as it takes both a male and female to create a child, it takes the Father and the Mother combining their knowledge to create humanity. The Two Gods are equal to each other though the Father is considered to be stronger. While priests disagree over all the specific domains of the Two Gods, there are several concepts that are widely agreed upon.
The Father is the masculine God of Creation. His domain is over urban centers, agriculture, war and peace, metalworking, water, plant life, the stars including the sun, lightning, and fatherhood.
The Mother is the feminine God of Creation. Her domain is over rural areas, the heavenly bodies including the earth and moon, medicine, wildlife, fire, wind, and motherhood. She is revered for teaching humans how to read and write.
Both of the Gods collectively control knowledge, love, fertility, justice, life, death, and the afterlife.
The Two Gods are opposed by an immensely powerful spirit named Aye. Originally a helper spirit created by the Gods to observe Creation, he eventually began to covet all that the Gods had made and strove to replace the Gods and rule over all of the world ruthlessly as a "king of kings". He lead a rebellion against the Father and the Mother for control over Creation and he, along with his legions of followers battled the Father for half a year before being defeated and cast down into Sheol. As punishment, the Gods stripped the rebellious spirits of their authority, leaving them only with the ability to corrupt, to pervert the desires of man and cause illness and death. The Father cast them down into Sheol and the Mother sealed them there. When the Father finally cast them into Sheol, the heavens opened up and rain poured down as a symbol of His power and triumph.
Humanity is described in the Tome as “the loveliest jewel in the Father and Mother’s creation”.
All one needs to do in order to be saved is acknowledge the existence and supremacy of the Father and the Mother. Should they do this, when they die, they will be taken to Heaven where both the Creation Gods reside and they will live in perfect health and harmony forever. Heaven is vast and endless, with many dimensions. They will be able to intercede on behalf of their descendants as well without being tied to the number of children they have or if they are remembered by their family.
Those who refuse to worship the Father and the Mother will be shut out from Heaven and their souls will cease to exist when they die. But the Father and the Mother are merciful, they can even will a soul back into existence if they wish.
Among other things, the religion emphasizes the harmony of the family and the need for husbands and wives to respect and truly care for each other. It strictly forbids the killing of children, for every child is a gift from the Gods. It also forbids human sacrifice, calling it “a foul stench”.
Iconography for the religion is as follows:
Two statues of a strong and healthy bearded man and woman of similar age. They are represented from the ages of early 30s to their early 60s.
The most popular representation is that of younger people in their early 30s. It is taboo to represent the Father and the Mother as children or elderly people.
Interlocking symbols such as an interlocking rectangle.
Two statues, one male and one female holding hands.
Central holidays include:
The day that The Father and Mother finished creating the Earth.
The day that The Father and Mother created humanity.
The day that the Father fought with Aye and banished him to Sheol.
The start of the rainy season(s) as a reminder of the benevolence of the Father and the Mother.
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Meanwhile in the Mediterranean
172 BC-80 BC
172 BC-80 BC
When Egypt and Seleucid Persia signed a peace treaty to respect their holdings in the Levant, there was a certain tension between the two empires. Both suspected the other of one day breaking the peace to reconquer lost land but the treaty did introduce a new dynamic to the eastern Mediterranean. Both sides were initially skeptical that the peace would hold but Ankhamis’ actions of inward reformation dispelled the worst of Persia’s fears. With the Levant border secured, the Seleucids turned westward and starting in 172 BC, waged a series of campaigns against Macedon, weakening their position in Asia Minor and using diplomacy and force to spread Persian influence in the peninsula. By 165 BC, the Seleucids controlled the entire southern coast of Asia Minor and Macedon clung only to the western coast of the peninsula.
Encouraged by their success against the Macedonians in Asia Minor, the Seleucids prepared for the next assault to drive them from the peninsula and eventually conquer the Grecian homeland. In time, Antiochus IV planned to invade the Nile Valley to reunite Alexander’s empire and then perhaps extend it past its original bounds further down the Nile to bring the land of Kush under his sway. During this time, the Persians feared a counterattack by the Macedonians or perhaps eventual war with a resurgent Roman Republic or Egyptian Empire, but discord came from the east. Taking advantage of the Seleucids' concentration of forces in the western part of its empire and preoccupation with defeating the Macedonians, Mithridates I enlarged the borders of Parthia to the east, south and west from 163 to 148 BC, conquering the region of Mesopotamia. Losing such a densely populated and productive region would prove to be a fatal blow to the Seleucid dynasty, though it would be several more decades before this became apparent and over a century before their end came.
By 80 BC, Carthage was the undisputed master of the Western Mediterranean. Trade with the Sahel was immensely profitable and gold, and to a lesser extent slaves, flowed into the city-state and its surrounding territory. Though Carthage rarely attempted to integrate the surrounding people into its empire, it was able to buy their loyalty with their wealth, giving them considerable influence over the locality in Hispania and the Libyan chiefs. With the gold from the trans-Saharan trade, Carthage was able to routinely pacify the Numidian Berbers and maintain a larger mercenary Berber presence in their cavalry. Over time, the Berber people had managed to unify into two loosely organized kingdoms that were intent on expanding in the Atlas Mountains: the eastern kingdom of Massylii, which was loosely allied with Carthage and the western state of Masaesyli, which was nominally so. Though they shared significant ancestry with the people of Carthage, both Carthage and Massylii and Masaeslyi regarded the other as more stranger than kinsman, due to the Phoenician roots that so influenced Carthaginian society. Because of this, though the two Barbary kingdoms would war against each other, there was a great sense of kinship between the two states that would later trouble the Punics to no end. Carthage could not easily expand into the interior of the mountains due to the Berber presence and while relations were currently warm, that had more to do with Sahelian gold than the renewed diplomatic overtures by Carthage. As was discovered during the aftermath of the Mercenary War and the Second Punic War, the Berbers were more than willing to turn on Carthage if its position seemed weak.
Always looking to for new trading opportunities, the Carthaginians focused on expanding abroad by turning the Western Mediterranean into a Punic lake. Intrepid diplomats and merchants established alliances with the local Gauls of the region and established trading towns on the southern coast. During this time, after initial hostilities, the Greek town of Massilia became a vassal of Carthage and was obligated to serve as a port for Punic ships that were used for general transportation of people, goods and war supplies. In later years, it would become a fortified military base to serve as a bulwark against Romans and any hostile Gaulish and Germanic peoples looking to plunder the riches of the Mediterranean.
By 80 BC, Carthage solidly controlled the coastal region of the Atlas Mountains, nearly the whole of Hispania and the entire southern coast of Gaul as well as the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily. As the trade with the Mandinka polities expanded, Carthage grew wealthier and Egypt saw a potential ally in Carthage. Carthage was interested in keeping the Mediterranean, especially the section west of Sicily out of Greek domination and Egypt was intent on remaining independent from Persia.
Meanwhile Egypt was observing the expansion of Carthage in the west and the Seleucids in the east with increased trepidation. Persia’s actions against the Macedonian empire stoked fears of an ambitious Persian campaign to conquer Egypt and thus unite the rest of the Dead Greek’s empire. And while Carthage and Persia had little history of cooperation, the pharaoh Merenre (158 BC-90 BC) was primarily concerned with the increased indirect limiting of Egypt’s sphere of influence and eventual encirclement. Egypt saw a perfect opportunity to destabilize Persia through the Parthians. They covertly supplied the fledgling empire with powerful weapons and taught Parthian forces battle formations proven to be effective against Seleucid forces to ensure Persia was too preoccupied with fighting draining wars against the Parthians to consider invading Egypt.
To counter against greater Punic financial influence against its eastern borders, Egypt increased its own ties with the most powerful of the Libyan chiefs through intermarriage and periodic military expeditions to the “desolate coast” to aid allies in order to reinforce its bonds and power in the region. While Egypt later formed a pact of mutual defense with Carthage against Persia, it began to build up its own navy and reinforced its military base located just south of the city of Abiad, formerly known as Balagrae. For its part, Carthage was far more preoccupied with establishing and maintaining its trade network that connected the Mediterranean with the Niger River.
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twovultures
Donor
This post should have gone with the "Overview of the Nile Civilization" post on Page 1 but I didn't really think of it until now...
Eh, that's why we post here-to get the opinions of people who do know their stuff
. Interesting bit with the dualist religion. I take it that the living can pray for the heathen dead to be saved from oblivion?
Eh, that's why we post here-to get the opinions of people who do know their stuff
Interesting bit with the dualist religion. I take it that the living can pray for the heathen dead to be saved from oblivion?
Yeah, the living can help the dead and the dead can help the living. I considered going for a "Hell" but I wanted to go in a different direction. I'm also wondering about the degree of assimilation that the Two God Path would exert on other religions. Would the Father and Mother outright replace other pagan gods or would you see a slow accumulation of the abilities of the main male pagan god and his female consort until while they might go by the name of say "Osiris" and "Isis", they would be virtually identical to the Two Gods of Creation?
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twovultures
Donor
Difficult to say. I can't think of any dualist religion that had two cooperating gods.
As the adversary-like figure you mentioned earlier grows in influence, the religion will have a cause to fight unbelievers-"Oh, the Olympians/Asgardians/Ennead are just lies of the adversary!" It will also have further cause if the religion becomes more hierarchical, with priests guarding their power against 'outsiders' by accusing them of idolatry. At its start, however, the religion could be very assimilationist. This could help it survive, by co-opting local cults.
Völkerwanderungs
She drew closer to him. “So your people have always dwelt here, alongside the river?” “We have lived here for so very long, but the men of the forest were the first to call this jungle home. No, we came from the north.”
3000 BC – 900 AD
As the Carthaginians, Egyptians and Persians jockeyed for influence in the Mediterranean, Aksum warred with Meroe and spread into the Horn, and Ansongo conquered the Mandinka riverine states, two massive migrations reshaped the ethnic and linguistic maps of Africa and Europe. Around 3000 BC, a group of Niger-Nzere speakers in the bend of Africa around the Benue river valley and its adjacent grasslands began migrating into the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa. This great migration became known as the Bantu (literally “people”) expansion.
The Bantu expansion can best be understood as the result of the impact of three separate innovations that each drove the great movement of people, population growth, and cultural innovation. The exact reasons for their migration are unknown but it’s theorized that initial innovations in the agriculture of yams and oil palms created populations too large to be sustained in their current homeland. As populations grew and land became scarce, the Bantu spread to the east and south of their core territory. In those new lands they encountered hunter-gatherers related to the Khoi-Khoi and San peoples of southern Africa and in the dense jungles of the Nzere Nzadi Basin, they encountered diminutive people known in another time as “pygmies”. The greater numbers and size of the Bantu allowed them to quickly outnumber the people they contacted. Through intermarriage and marginalization, the indigenous inhabitants were replaced with the Bantu who now carried varying amounts of admixture from the original people of the land they now lived in. The Bantu expansion reached its southern limit approximately 400 AD when they settled along the banks of the Likwa River, the southernmost tributary of the Limpopo.
The impact of the Bantu expansion was immense. Before, most of Sub-Saharan Africa had spoken tongues in the same family as those of the Khoi-Khoi and San of southern Africa but now, Niger-Nzere effectively dominated the continent. Where there had once been a land sparsely populated by tawny hunter gatherers, there was now a realm of farmers, darker and taller than those they had absorbed. For most Bantu, the village or perhaps a collection of villages linked by real or fictive kinship was the highest level of social organization. These villages were governed by a group of chiefs that were in turn politically restrained by village elders.
The second innovation was ironworking. Ironworking most likely reached West Africa through the Great Desert by Berber herders and traders. Instead of transporting iron tools through the desert, Berbers would simply forge it at the point of sale. Eventually the local people learned the secrets of ironworking for themselves and from there, it spread through the continent due in no small part to the Bantu. The Bantu began using iron around 400 BC, which aided them in reshaping their new environments to better suit their lifestyles.
The third and last major innovation was the integration of the giant eland into the Bantu agricultural and cultural toolkit. Northwest Bantu contact with tamed giant elands is thought to have begun around 380 AD and the use of eland for meat, milk, fertilizer, hides, labor, and transportation had the same effect it had elsewhere of increased population and political centralization. The use of giant elands spread throughout Bantu populations until the practice reached the Nguni peoples around 800-900 AD.
Nowhere are the effects of giant eland taming more apparent than the central African jungles. Rainforests are generally a poor environment for humans to make a living: disease is rife, soils are poor and acidic, the seeming fertility of the jungle an efficient and interdependent ecological deception. But several factors were to combine that enabled the Nzere Nzadi Rainforest to defy the trend and become the cradle to powerful kingdoms. Bananas and plantains had been introduced to Africa around the turn of the millennium by Austronesian settlers and had been making their way west for centuries. Highly productive, calorie dense, and able to thrive in year round wet conditions, the banana rapidly propagated through Africa, especially in the central region of the continent. By around 350 AD, plantains were a staple in the diet of the Nzere Nzadi Bantus. But even more momentous changes were coming to the region. Near simultaneously people began cultivating West African rice and herding giant eland around 450 AD. It’s most likely they were both introduced to the region by migrants and merchants from the southern Nok kingdoms of the Niger delta.
While the West African breed of rice was not as productive as the Asian varieties, it was far more adaptable to environmental stress and change. It could tolerate infertile acidic soil and there were floating varieties perfectly suited for growing along the banks of the world’s deepest river. As time went on, the people of the region would experiment with differing rice breeds to create higher yielding varieties. As elsewhere, the elands could be used for transportation, agriculture, as well as a reliable form of meat and dairy products for infants and the rare adult still able to digest milk. Of great use to the Bantu was the fact that giant elands were primarily browsers, meaning that they could unwittingly mostly avoid the environmental damage of clearing land to create grazing grounds for animals such as cattle that never could tolerate the heat and disease of the jungle. They could also thrive in a climate and ecology where large domesticated animals with the exception of goats and dogs had uniformly failed.
Rice, bananas and plantains, yams, goats, eland and oil palms…together these crops and animals encouraged the growth of populations far larger than what had previously been possible in the region. And with large sections of the Nzere Nzadi navigable, ever larger communities that would trade, marry and war with each other were a certainty. Of course the thick expansive rainforest made cavalry largely impractical and giant eland were largely used as pack animals in times of warfare.
Meanwhile the ethnic map of Europe was being remade. The Germanic people seem to have originated in southern Scandinavia and northern central Europe and began migrating to the south and west around 250 BC in search of more farmland. They were stopped from moving east by Roman settlements that were located along the western Balkan coast and in the peninsula’s interior.
As they migrated west, they encountered Celtic peoples that had been intermittently warring among themselves and with Rome for centuries. Weakened by the wars, the Celts were unable to stop the movement of the Germanics into and through their lands, resulting in many cases in a majority Celtic population with a Germanic upper class. By 150 BC, Germanics were at the Pyrenees, halted by a resurgent Carthage. This would be the southern border of their expansion for more than a century.
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twovultures
Donor
Ooh, Congolese civilizations, I love it! Any chance that they'll develop terra preta agriculture for deeper in the rainforest, or do iron tools and rice preclude that?
Also do you think they'll tame the brontosaurs and add them to the agricultural package? /s
Also do you think they'll tame the brontosaurs and add them to the agricultural package? /s
Maybe, if someone notices that places where ashes and other refuse are buried have unusually strong plant growth then terra preta can occur. But with goats and giant elands, applying manure to patches of land will readily occur and so people will be definitely deliberately enriching patches of land. As this continues, people will experiment about what will make the soil more fertile. Idk at the moment though. Honestly, the Congolese societies idea are in their infancy for me. I've got a few ideas about their society and the very general course they'll take. They've got a ways to go before they get to West African levels though.
What region would you like a map of? I have zero experience making a map but I'll do my best.
Also, this is random but I have to give a shout out to The Guns of the Monomotapa TL. It's 8 years old now but it, along with Nok Steel and Lion's Blood helped inspire this TL.
Only just discovered this gem of a timeline. This along with pkmatrix's Up from the Depths are now my two favourite timelines. A great effort, and I would love to see more. A map would be great, as well...
Keep up the great work!
Keep up the great work!
