Make the most unusual culture you can even imagine.

Those are pictograms, many pictures there and yes, you could read them as some sort of horror comics of some sort.

They are freely available as PDFs on Many Free Digital Libraries.
Trying to vainly interpret pictograms without understanding Classical Nahuatl and attempting to interpret the context of the accompanying pictures is hardly the same as understanding the actual content of a codex. You didn't even link to any of the codices or provide the names of the ones you are talking about, I can only assume you have no intent on actually backing up your claims or proving you know more about Mesoamerica than some exceedingly crude stereotypes.
 

Vuu

Banned
Shang dynasty China also engaged in widespread human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. If ancient China could abandon these practices, why couldn't Mesoamerica?

It probably took time - America wasn't populated nearly as long as anywhere else
 

Dolan

Banned
@9 Fanged Hummingbird Well, it seems that you never knew about World Digital Library.

Well, must I point the location one by one?

Anyway, let's back to the topic, shall we? A culture that regularly engage in Cannibalism is indeed highly unusual, doubly so when they are also advanced urban culture instead of some jungle dwelling tribes.
 

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I'd like you to present valid reputation of BOTH the Spanish reports AND The Aztec's and Maya's own Codices about how they sacrifice ten thousands of people regularly

Are you sure the "tens of thousands" of sacrificial victims aren't an exaggeration? We know multiple older civilizations (such as the Assyrians and the Anglo-Saxons) exaggerated the number of people they killed.
 
@9 Fanged Hummingbird Well, it seems that you never knew about World Digital Library.

Well, must I point the location one by one?

Anyway, let's back to the topic, shall we? A culture that regularly engage in Cannibalism is indeed highly unusual, doubly so when they are also advanced urban culture instead of some jungle dwelling tribes.
World Digital Library is not a codex, describe the exact codex you are speaking of. And that picture does not seem to show mass cannibalism let alone prove mass cannibalism was an actual thing. Besides which context changes a lot, you might as well be arguing that the Victorians regularly engaged in cannibalism what with turning Egyptian mummies into medicine.
 

Dolan

Banned
World Digital Library is not a codex, describe the exact codex you are speaking of. And that picture does not seem to show mass cannibalism let alone prove mass cannibalism was an actual thing. Besides which context changes a lot, you might as well be arguing that the Victorians regularly engaged in cannibalism what with turning Egyptian mummies into medicine.
look, this topic is about the most UNUSUAL culture, and I just point out about Mesoamerican Cannibalism.

I'll ask my professor about the exact papers about Archeologic finding of Mesoamerican Human Bone analysis, and the Regular occurrences of human bite marks there.

I admit I was studying the Radioactive Dating methods as my Master's Degree, not Archeology.
 
Trying to avoid ASB territory.

An industrial revolution started either in Iceland or the Kingdom of Hawaii (these are where I'm starting, feel free to add other territories) where the thermal vents from Volcanos are are the "waterwheels" providing power.

Until things like coal and oil are exploited, we have superpowers based in in volcano rich areas.

Something Animistic managing to be more universal and hence becoming the dominant form of religious beliefs. Think Universal Shinto.
 
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_universal.

A Culture that break one of listed cultural universal would be unusual.

Mhh, let's see:

Males on average travel greater distances over lifetime

Maybe, a culture where trade is seen as women's thing because men tend to be stronger and thus should stay at home working at the farm. However then they should be mostly peacefull as war tends to be a man's thing. Or otherwise men should take their wife's with them as campfollowers when they go to war. (I presume it then must be unmarried women who trade.)
EDIT: Or a draft-animallless society where the military elite are a bunch of semi-nomadic polygamists who always take their wifes with them when campaigning, so they can carry their husbands' armor (to avoid the warriors ending up exhausted before the battle as their armor is that heavy). Which can't be done by slaves because of some religious taboo.

Husband older than wife on average

Simple, a culture where in order to avoid deaths in childbirth woman are only allowed to marry when they are atleast 20 years old, whilst men are encouraged to marry as early as possible.
EDIT: Or if you pick a narrow definition of marriage, a society where young women are supposed to be the mistresses or lovers of old-men and later marry young men might work.
 
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Shang dynasty China also engaged in widespread human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. If ancient China could abandon these practices, why couldn't Mesoamerica?

Human sacrifice is intrinsic to Mesoamerican religion. As in, "the world will end if it stops" intrinsic. It would require a big shift to change this.

However, IIRC, there was only one Mesoamerican people that didn't practice human sacrifice.
 
It should also be noted that the Aztec Triple Alliance was a tributary network, not a proper imperial state like the Incas were; the primary motivation for tributaries turning on them and aiding the conquistadores was almost certainly simple dislike of paying tribute. The flower wars, from what I've read, were highly ritualized and were basically set up by priests to ensure that everybody had enough prisoners to sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca or Huitzilopochtli or whoever to make sure the rains came during a nasty drought that hit southern and central Mexico during the 15th and 16th centuries.

On the topic of the OP, I'd be interested to see a sort of polyandrous society like Tibet traditionally had being taken up by neighboring cultures. Perhaps a stronger imperial Tibet starts to influence Turkic and Tangut states in central Asia and Xinjiang, the same way the Khitans started to pick up Chinese customs among the upper classes when they were under the Great Liao? So you have the polyandry and female property ownership in place in Western Xia or something like that, probably with a heavily derived Buddhist sect as the main religion, and that spreads to the other nomad khanates bit by bit.

Not terribly likely, but I find the idea of a society where second and third daughters of important nobles try to seduce/steal/murder their way into their older sisters' harems kinda amusing. There would probably, as with the Great Liao, be some degree of disparity between the upper and lower classes, with the lower classes running things in more traditional steppe nomad fashion. Given sufficient time I wonder if that could lead to class-based cultural divergence.

Or what about a polygnandrous society? Something that would make inheritance very difficult given pre-modern understanding of heredity and technological availability, but something where each man and woman could have multiple spouses ranked according to their social status, so guy #1 could have wives 1, 2, and 3, but wife 1 is also married to guys #2 and 3, who have their own relationships to the side with a system of inheritance for each kid. Is that even possible? I'm not sure if such a society could even develop naturally. Maybe a radically derived form of Australian aboriginal kinship systems in a much more densely populated, genetically diverse society?
 
  • Aquatic nomads in parts of the South Pacific where individual islands are too small to sustain a permanent population.
  • Eskimo pirates
  • Nuclear space Mormons
  • Alternate predatory animals drive a tribal culture to be nocturnal.
 
Maybe somethings from this thread could be used:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/simple-technological-improvements-for-the-bronze-age.464635

Imagine a Bronze Age civilization with massive wind and water powered manufactories which mass-produce bronze cannons.

Some other random ideas:

A monarchic empire where it is customary that post-menstrual sisters/aunts/etc of the emperor are made governors of far away provinces with their children held hostage in the capital. This is based on the idea that being members of the royal family they are loyal to the empire and it’s ruling dynasty, whilst with all their kids away from them and no ability to make new ones there is no risk of them declaring themselves independent in order to start a new dynasty.

A culture where the men take their wives with them to the battlefield, not to fight the enemy (but I can see them firing missiles at the enemy when the armies haven’t yet engaged in close combat). But to, when the armies meet eachother, stand behind the last ranks and point their knifes at the men in front of them to encourage bravery in any hesitators by giving them some pinpricks. Should any man try to flee against orders the women are supposed to stab him to death, something which they do with enthusiasm considering their fate should the enemy win.
This ensures it takes more courage to flee then to continue fighting so they never lose any battles by routing when victory is still possible. (I’m actually surprised no one ever tried this considering history is filled with people who aren’t the nicest to defeated enemies.)

Lastly an empire wherein the entire top level of the government (except the emperor himself ofcourse) consists out of slaves:
Slave officers are in charge of the army. However the common soldiers consist out of freemen to prevent the officers of having enough influence to pull a janissaries and become a hereditary parasitical caste.
The highest bureaucrats are also slaves, females at that (to make it even more unusual), under the assumption it would be a waste of muscle power to give men desk functions. They are allowed to marry freemen on the condition they are of low birth (the reason the top level of the bureaucracy consists out of slaves in the first place was to stop the nepotism, corruption and rivalries of the nobility to ruin everything) and take care of any children (the emperor doesn’t want his administratrices to waste their time raising kids).
The palace guard also exists out of female slaves (a previous emperor was paranoid of the freemen who were his previous guard sleeping with his wives).
Meanwhile the emperor’s favourite wife and his mother (both also technically slaves) are scheming against eachother for who gets to be the power behind the throne.
Some poor peasant families do their best to train their sons in fighting and educate their daughters as best as they can, so they can sell them to the emperor when they are twelve (that is the age the slaves official education starts). However as the entrance examinations are so strict that but very few get through most people don’t think it worth the effort.

I suppose that it would be rather fun to see how a society as misogynist as the ancient Athenians would react to an empire who is all three.

Or what about a polygnandrous society? Something that would make inheritance very difficult given pre-modern understanding of heredity and technological availability, but something where each man and woman could have multiple spouses ranked according to their social status, so guy #1 could have wives 1, 2, and 3, but wife 1 is also married to guys #2 and 3, who have their own relationships to the side with a system of inheritance for each kid. Is that even possible? I'm not sure if such a society could even develop naturally. Maybe a radically derived form of Australian aboriginal kinship systems in a much more densely populated, genetically diverse society?

That vaguely reminds me of an idea I once came opun and thought maybe use if I joined another collaborative fantasy setting: A monarchy with an enatic succession system where in order to avoid succession wars the crown princess traditionally marries the two or three best generals (who all get to keep their previous wives). If a succession war still happens the losing princesses end up as shared slave concubines of the kings with their children adopted by the queen, providing her with more options for diplomatic marriages or possible heirs to declare first in the line to the throne. A system which later gets expanded by giving the daughters of generals who get executed and princesses who got enslaved for ending up as the losing side in a succession war to the crown princess and her husbands.

Though I haven't got the faintest idea how such a thing could evolve. Well except maybe in a kingdom where in order to keep their generals loyal the kings give out their daughters in marriage to them. Which eventually ends up backfiring: whenever a king dies all his sons-in-law proclaim their wife the new monarch and start to slaughter eachother, and the king's sons. After a few generations the royal couple decide to prevent all this bloodshed by marrying their favourite daughters with the three biggest contenders and pre-emptivilly disinheriting their sons. Some centuries later everyone forgets about that and claims it is because in order to be capable of inheriting the throne one needs to matrilineally descend from some goddess or something.
 
I’m not sure how you get even crazier than giant carpocalypse battles, fetish leather and weird tattoos and piercings.

Wow, I thought this was going into "weird syncretisms and unlikely cultures" instead of horsefucking.
AHEM
To distract from the whole Aztec thing I present, GOTHIC MONGOLS!
In a TL where instead of settling in Crimea the eastern Goths keep moving until they reach the mongols and exchange over time ideas, culture and religion (AKA weird Tengri Gothic Christian)
After about 400 years the Goths have created small cites with there only goal is to provide supplies to the now majority nomadic Mongol Gothic mix.

This is in my opinion somewhat ASB
 
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