Ancient history of Kiravia

The ancient history of Kiravia encompasses the earliest phase of Kiravian history proper, from the appearance of the earliest written source material to the beginning of the classical period.

Bronze Preclassic (2700 BC - 2193 BC)

Cultural Foundations

Bronze Age Kiravia is conventionally subdivided into two cultural complexes: the Coastal Bronze Culture (or "Coscivian Bronze") and the Inland Bronze Cultures (or "Urom Bronze"). Pre-metallurgical Stone Age cultures persisted in large pockets of the interior for much longer than on the coasts.

Coastal Bronze

The Coastal Bronze Culture, much like the Coastal Megalithic that preceded it, was characterised by coastwise transmission belts of economic and cultural exchange resulting in a high degree of cultural similarity between coastal communities from Farravonia to South Kirav, the Baylands, Læredan, the Kaviska Baylands, Ilánova, and Kempek, even extending overseas to Suderavia and Coscivian peneënclaves on the Levantine mainland. This is evidenced by the frequent use of stone in defencive architecture, the construction of cliff castles and domestic architecture, characterised by polygonal houses. The construction of artificial island dwellings (crannog), begun during the Megalithic, became more sophisticated and widespread during the Bronze Age. Trade contacts circumscribed the entire island continent and extended as far as modern-day Faneria, Fiannria, Covina, and perhaps even Eusa. The Bronze Age was characterised by distinct regional centres of metal production, linked by regular maritime trade. The main centres were in what are now Suderavia, Harma, upper Kaviska, Læredan, Temuria, and Merav. Items associated with this culture are often found in hoards or deposited in ritual areas, typically in watery contexts such as rivers, lakes and bogs, likely indicating influence from the freshwater-centred religious practices of the Fenni. The cultural complex includes various items such as socketed and double-ring bronze axes, sometimes buried in large hoards in Venèra and Metrea. Military equipment such as lunate spearheads, V-notched shields and a variety of bronze swords, including carp-tongue swords, are usually found buried in lakes and rivers or on rocky outcrops. Elite feasting equipment such as spits, kettles and meat hooks have also been found from Temuria to historic Kaltëdan.

A crannock in Enscirya (modern reconstruction)

Samuel T. Koch attributes the origins of the consolidated Coscivian ethno-linguistic (rather than merely religious) complex to this period. This theory is supported by William Cundiffe, who argues that the Coscivian (that is, Transkiravian) language family developed as an coastwise lingua franca before spreading into the interior. With their adoption of this Coscivian koiné, coastal communities acquired new skills for their production and ritual knowledge about their proper treatment of the dead after deposition. These changes are indicative of processes related to language change.

Political development

The transition from tribal to state societies took place gradually in Kiravia, with state institutions being layered on top of organic, primarily kinship-based social structures. What historical literature sometimes refers to as “states” during Deep History are in most cases better described as chiefdoms, or as large tribal polities undergoing gradual stratification and proto-institutionalisation of their leadership. From the Lawful Commonwealth on thro' the First Empire, tribes remained the primary form of Coscivian social organisation, even in urban centres, as reflected in the political systems of Coscivian empires and city states, the latter of which functioned not as independent and impersonal states in the strict sense, but rather as institutions to represent and balance the interests of kinship-based corporate groups.

Sometime between 1200 BC and 700 BC, tribes in Upper Kirav began to domesticate reindeer, beginning a transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to pastoralism in the lands south of the Ximantav Range that would eventually spread northward over the mountains.