Lands of Red and Gold #76: My Highland Home
This instalment represents the first half of what was meant to be a single post. Due to a few RL commitments, though, finishing this post has been delayed, so I'm posting the first half now. The second half will follow, hopefully in a week or so.
* * *
Aururia is the flattest and most low-lying continent in the world. It has few mountains, and most of those are hills in comparison to those on other continents, or even those on the failed continent whose highest regions rise above the waves to form Aotearoa.
Yet Aururia does have a few highland regions. The largest of these is the regions which another history will call the Monaro and Errinundra plateaus. Nestled below the highest peaks on the continent, these highlands are the source of the largest rivers in Aururia, the Nyalananga [Murray] and Matjidi [Murrumbidgee]. The height of these peaks catches enough rainfall and winter snowfall so that the Nyalananga and Matjidi, unlike many Aururian rivers, almost never run dry.
The reliability [1] of the Nyalananga meant that, over thousands of years, the dwellers alongside its banks were able to gradually domesticate one plant that they found there: the red yam. The slow, unconscious process of domestication meant that those lowland dwellers became semi-sedentary, and then in time they domesticated an entire package of crops. They became pioneering farmers. In time, their descendants would expand over much of the continent, bringing their crops and languages with them, and displacing the hunter-gatherers who formerly lived in those regions. Their crops would spread even further, to the south-west of Aururia, and to Aotearoa.
The highlands, though, were another matter. The key crop of lowland agriculture was the red yam. While that plant gave excellent yields in the lowlands, it required a long growing season for best results. It could tolerate snow cover during winter, but it needed a reasonably early melt in spring to start its growth. The altitude of the highlands meant that the early versions of red yams could not get reliably established there.
Despite several attempts, early Gunnagalic farmers could not maintain themselves in the highlands. Some migrants passed through the highlands to the low-lying coastal regions beyond, but they could not remain in the high country. For several centuries after farming was spreading across lowland Aururia, the highlands remained the preserve of hunter-gatherers who spoke other languages: Nguril and Kaoma.
Farming came late to the highlands, and largely through a stroke of chance. The red yam was the earliest and most important root crop in the lowlands, but it was not the only one they cultivated. Murnong is another staple Aururian root crop, whose above ground growth looks like a dandelion, but which produces edible tubers. The plant is more tolerant of cold than red yams, and there is an alpine-adapted subspecies of wild murnong which already grew in the highlands. In the upper Matjidi valley, a chance cross-breeding between a domesticated lowland murnong and a wild upland murnong produced a new strain of murnong, one which was suitable for farming even in the highlands.
The spread of upland murnong was slow; after all, it did not form a complete agricultural package. But cultivation of murnong allowed the highland dwellers to become hunter-gardeners, with food storage letting them support an increased population. Cold-adapted versions of cornnarts [wattles] followed over the next couple of centuries, together with several supplementary crops such as scrub nettles for leaves and fibre, and different strains of flax which yielded either large edible seeds or fibre. With these, the Nguril and Kaoma had adequate crops to become mostly sedentary farmers. Eventually, a cold-adapted version of the red yam was added to their farming package, but this happened a couple of centuries after the highlanders were already farmers.
However, while the Nguril and Kaoma had taken up farming, their agriculture was never as productive as that of the lowlands. The red yam had been adapted to a shorter growing season, but at the cost of a smaller tuber. The most important staple remained the lower-yielding murnong. The soils of the uplands were poorer, too. Farmers they were, but bountiful farmers they were not; they continued to gather more in the way of wild foods than lowlanders. Agricultural surpluses were smaller, and the population density was always less than in the Five Rivers lowlands.
The character of agriculture led to vastly different societies for highlands and lowlands. In the lowlands, large agricultural surpluses were combined with convenient riverine transport networks. The agricultural surpluses allowed a significant proportion of the lowland population to be non-farming specialists, while the ease of moving food by water allowed those specialists to live in several large cities and towns.
In the highlands, not only were agricultural surpluses smaller, they were less reliable from year to year. Without water transport or any beasts of burden other than dogs, moving food around was slow and expensive, and famines more common. The highlanders thus did not dwell in cities or large towns. They built some small villages where they met seasonally for markets and other commerce, and where a few specialists lived, such as smiths, leatherworkers and the like. But even those specialists would continue their activities from farms as often as not. Those agricultural surpluses which did exist were converted into caches of food held in dispersed locations to protect against crop failures or bushfires. Or, after states emerged in the lowlands, as protection against invasion.
For invasion from the lowlands was a common feature of highland life. Though it must be said that in turn, the hill men did plenty of raiding of their own into the lowlands. The states based along the Nyalananga and Matjidi often sent armies into the highlands. The names of those states sometimes changed – the Classical great cities of Gundabingee, Weenaratta and Garrkimang; the Imperial power of Watjubaga; the post-Imperial states of Yigutji and Gutjanal – but the drive into the highlands never seemed to end.
Yet while lowlanders could send armies into the highlands, converting that effort into a successful invasion was another matter. The highlands had no waterways to send food for an invading army, and what the highlands called roads were nothing but muddy tracks. Nor was there much in the way of real targets to conquer. The highlanders tended to scatter rather than come to pitched battle. Deploying troops into the few small towns was easy enough, but keeping them there for long was nothing but an invitation to starvation when food ran out. Tracking down the caches of food was challenging; the hill men concealed both caches and themselves well.
Invasion of the highlands was further complicated by the different timing of the seasons. The main campaigning season for lowland armies was during the winter. Then, the main root crops had died back to the ground, with their tubers harvested and replanted for the following year. The next harvest, of early-flowering cornnarts, would not begin until late spring. Winter was when food supplies were at their largest and the greatest part of the population could be spared from agricultural duties and levied into armies. But this was the time when snow covered the highlands, making an invasion foolhardy. Any would-be invaders had to wait until late spring, or better yet summer, when they had more reduced manpower and lower supplies of food to bring with them to the highlands.
Time and again, invading armies came to the same conclusion: easy to burn a few towns and farms, declare victory, and then head home; almost impossible to effect a lasting conquest.
* * *
The closest any lowlanders came to conquering the highlands was during the height of the Watjubaga Empire, under the First Speakers. After many previous failures, in the mid-eighth century the imperial armies succeeded in imposing a degree of control over the highlands. In keeping with imperial practice, this largely consisted of demanding tribute from local leaders. Such tribute would be regularly if grudgingly paid when imperial power was strong. But whenever the imperial power weakened due to rebellion, war, civil strife or simply a poor First Speaker, tribute payments ceased quickly, as the local leaders who had been paying tribute either led a revolt or lost their lives to revolts they could not stop. A fresh invasion would be required each time, beginning the difficult process over again. After about a century of intermittent control of the highlands, the imperial armies were pushed out in a rebellion in 887 AD, and they would never again have a lasting presence in the highlands.
The final lapse of imperial control over the highlands ushered in an era of the hill-men’s favourite pastime: raiding. This was an art form which the highlanders had practised long before the Empire appeared, but which was now encouraged because even the limited imperial rule had given the hill-men a taste for many of the goods available in the lowlands. Acquiring these goods through commerce was difficult for the highlanders. Their only significant export goods were the sweet peppers which grew better in the highlands than in the lowlands, and there were never enough of these to buy everything that the hill-men wanted. Instead, the highlanders often turned to a more ancient form of commerce, that known as “you get what you grab”.
The art of raiding was well-suited to the highlanders’ social structure, since this form of artistry was one which they practised on themselves as much as on the lowlanders. For the hill-men had some sense of commonality, in that they viewed themselves as separate from the lowlanders, but that did not make them friends. The hill-men gladly raided each other as much as they raided the lowlands.
Highland life was one of frequent raids, or at least the possibility of such raids. This led to a culture where all able-bodied men were expected to carry weapons and know how to use them, and who mostly had experience in carrying out raids or defending against them. This meant that in proportion to their population, the highlanders could mobilise much larger fighting forces than lowlanders, and do so at short notice. And most of those men [2] would be veterans.
Of course, the highlanders could not mobilise such forces for long. The demands of upland agriculture meant that most workers were needed in the fields for much of the year. But as with the lowlands, there was a campaigning season. In the lowlands, this season fell during winter. In the highlands, it was summer. For highland agriculture, early-flowering cornnarts were harvested in late November and early December, and the next harvest of late-flowering cornnarts did not begin until the end of February or early March.
This left a summer campaigning season where the hill-men could mobilise and go raiding. They usually took advantage of that opportunity. The highlanders could not sustain a long-term invasion of the highlands, but they could and did make many raids.
* * *
Culturally and for the most part genetically, the hill-men are descendants of the old Nguril and Kaoma-speaking hunter-gatherers who slowly took up farming during the era when Gunnagalic speakers were expanding across the continents. As speakers of non-Gunnagalic languages, they are in a distinct minority; only four such languages survived within the region which later history would call Gunnagalia.
The Nguril language, spoken mostly in the northern half of the highlands, is distantly related to the Bungudjimay language, whose speakers live a third of a continent away along the eastern coast. The Kaoma language, spoken mostly in the southern half of the highlands, is a linguistic isolate. No related languages survive; presumably they were swallowed during the Gunnagalic expansion. A couple of later linguists will claim that they find evidence of a Kaoma-related language as a substrate in the Wangalo language in the neighbouring eastern lowlands around Yuin-Bika [Bega, NSW], but those linguists will usually be dismissed as cranks.
Socially, the hill-men were long divided into a complex system of lineages and kinship groupings. These were viewed as being part of shared descent from famous named ancestors (some almost certainly mythical), and sometimes were linked to political leadership, but mostly dictated rules around intermarriage. Men from one lineage were forbidden to seek out wives from the same lineage, but could to choose from a set of other acceptable lineages. Usually on marriage a wife was considered to adopt her husband’s lineage, but there were provisions for some occasions where a husband would adopt the wife’s lineage, such as occasions when a leader of repute had only daughters.
Individual lineages were also considered part of larger kinship groupings, for which the Nguril and Kaoma names are usually translated as “tribes”. There were five of these groupings. Intermarriage was usually only permitted between lineages of the same tribe, although there were a few special exceptions where particular lineages had for some historical reason or other [3] allowed intermarriage with one or two lineages from other tribes. The main reason why the distinction between Nguril and Kaoma languages was preserved was because the two largest tribes were predominantly Nguril speakers, while the remaining three tribes were mostly Kaoma speakers, and intermarriage between them was so restricted that they remained linguistically separate (and mostly genetically, too).
In the late fourteenth century, the hill-men experienced their greatest social change since the end of imperial influence. In that era, the new Yadji Empire was emerging from its feudal predecessor, the Empire of the Lake. That empire had an old military caste, the briyuna, who were being forcibly retired from service by the new Yadji Regents [Emperors]. Many of them accepted that retirement, but some refused to give up their old ethos, and fled instead. Most of those exiles ended up in the highlands, where they became part of the hill-men.
The briyuna brought with them their own code of appropriate behaviour for warriors. Their ethos had also included the expectation that a briyuna would be literate, and they brought that view with them to the highlands. More importantly from the highlanders’ perspective, they also brought with them much better knowledge of iron-working, armour and weapons than the hill-men possessed on their own.
The briyuna integrated into highland society reasonably well. The intermarriage prohibitions of the highlands mostly applied to their own lineages; lowlanders were outside those lineages, and while there were few examples of intermarriage with lowlanders, they were not forbidden. Many of the briyuna found local wives. Even where they did not, their ethos still lived on via the hill-men they taught.
With the briyuna influence, the hill-men were still raiders, but they now viewed raiding as being as much for glory and honour as for plunder. The hill-men gradually adopted stricter codes of how a warrior should behave while raiding, although the strictest aspects of those codes applied to raids on other highlanders; the view of which codes applied to lowlanders was much looser. Thanks to briyuna influence, the hill-men also acquired a dislike of the Yadji realm, and they gradually increased their raids into imperial territory.
Some of the effects of briyuna influence were more symbolic. In their old realm, they adopted a system of banners to mark their allegiance, and as a rallying point in battle. While the hill-men did not adopt banners in the same way – they were of less use in the sort of raids the highlanders preferred – they did adopt a code of symbols for their men, to represent leader and lineage, modelled on the symbols of the old briyuna banners.
Politically, the government of the highlands has not changed that much even with the integration of the briyuna. The hill-men are mostly organised at the level of a village or small region controlled by a “chief”, or respected warleader. Most of the followers of a chief will be of the same lineage, although there are many examples of chiefs who have followers from many lineages, and even sometimes from different tribes.
Given the ever-shifting risks and endemic raiding of the highlands, a successful chief is one who has obtained the most glory in leading raids, and in protecting against raids on his own people. With the briyuna ethos gradually permeating the highland psyche, a leader is also viewed as one who behaves appropriately as a warrior, at least when dealing with other highlanders.
Swift indeed is the fate of a leader who fails in raids or becomes perceived as weak. This is an ancient tradition; even during imperial times, a leader who had been forced to concede tribute to the Empire would quickly lose his life if a revolt began and he did not join it. If a chief falls, new chiefs will quickly emerge to replace those who have lost power and life.
The highlands have no enduring political organisation above the level of chief. Sometimes more powerful chiefs manage to impose a level of control on neighbouring chiefs, whether through sheer prestige, or collaboration if lowlander attacks grow more threatening. Such control rarely lasts beyond the lifetime of a given chief, however; the power of a chief relies so much on personal prestige that it seldom transfers to a successor.
So far, this state of affairs has continued even after the first contact with the Raw Men. The highlanders cared very little for the events in distant Atjuntja lands, even where they heard of them. The gradual expansion of trade with the Raw Men likewise meant little to people who traditionally conducted commerce at the point of a dagger. The plagues spread even to the highlands, but while these were devastating, for some plagues the death toll was lower due to the lower population density in the highlands. The plagues have not yet meant that the highlands have reached the point of social breakdown.
With the growing trade links with Raw Men companies, and the outbreak of the Proxy Wars, highland society may soon change.
* * *
[1] Always a relative term when describing Aururian waterways.
[2] Or mostly men, anyway. Highlander women are often familiar enough with weapons to defend themselves on raids, but it is extremely rare for them to be permitted to “take up arms”, i.e. to be called to take part on a raid.
[3] Usually where a successful warleader had a bastard child with a mistress of another lineage, and still viewed that child as kin, and so arranged a deal where the warleader’s own lineage recognised intermarriage with the other given lineage.
* * *
Thoughts?
