User:Kir/Bandsox

Prehistory and Peopling of Great Kirav

“ According to all known laws of anthropology, there is no way that Great Kirav should ever have been settled. The odds of modern man a) reaching and b) surviving in Great Kirav during the time periods currently deemed reasonable by the scholarly community, much less prospering there to the degree now believed, are beyond astronomical and require a suspension of disbelief too great for most Occidental scientists to even approach the topic. Kiravia, of course, exists anyway, because Kiravians don't care what Menquoi think is impossible. ” — B. Kinoflixin, Towards Ethnohistory - An Interdisciplinary Approach to Boreal Prehistory

The distant past of Great Kirav is steeped in mythology and remains obscure. Archæological evidence suggest that the region may have been inhabited by modern man as early as 22,000 years ago, and subsequently beset with multiple waves of migration that have left enduring genetic, archæological, and cultural imprints on the island continent. The bulk of the genetic heritage of Kiravian peoples is attributable to an Ice Age migration from Levantia made possible by lower sea levels and dense floes of pack ice, with later contributions from the Ʒ-Q transoceanic migration and the still-unaccounted for progenitors of Haplogroup Ȼ.

Unravelling the truth of Kiravian prehistory and dark history is complicated by Coscivian culture's schizo-sacramentalist conception of reality (which does not clearly distinguish between what Occidental cultures would regard as the symbolic and the real) and its unique approach to time (which is often reflected in non-linear narratives and the confounding expression of temporal processes in spatial or virtual terms). This article will present the best current scientific understandings of Kiravian prehistory, contextualised by Kiravian traditional narratives and the research of dark philologists.

Pre-Human Times

[Dino lore]

Much of Great Kirav's plant biodiversity dates from clades attested from the Carboniferous through Permian periods.

Rattusfukus; [Retarded Plesiosaur national dino here]

[Yeti and Samsquanch]

Earliest Homonids

During the late 20th century AD, palæontologists unearthed skeletal remains of archæic humans present in Great Kirav during the middle Pleistocene, which were eventually concluded to represent two distinct species. The more anatomically archæic of the two, Homo vetus montanus, appear to have been sluggish, shuffling creatures; dull but hardy tundra-dwellers with a robust physique and limited cognitive and linguistic capabilities compared to the more anatomically "modern" H. darudensis. Although direct evidence is lacking, most palæontologists find it probable that both species were more hirsute than modern man, with ample body hair aiding their survival in the glaciated conditions of Pleistocene Kirav.

Homo vetus montanus

Homo darudensis

First Humans - Ice Bridges from Demomap

Examples of the "Demomappic" flint and bone toolmaking style found at Upper Palæolithic strata in both Great Kirav and Boreal Levantia

The present accepted consensus regarding the colonisation of Great Kirav by Homo sapiens sapiens maintains that the island continent was first peopled by a founder population of marine mammal hunters originating from the north-central Levantine mainland who migrated across pack ice in pursuit of prey until eventually reaching pockets of unglaciated land (now likely submerged) along the ancient southern and southwestern shores of Great Kirav. This theory is colloquially known as the "iceberg-hopping thesis" (Coscivian: xistoīoribakursa). This migration is believed to have occurred sometime between 19,500 BC and 18,500 BC, though the lower bound of this window is not definite and the upper bound could be as late as the first abrupt rise in global sea levels around 18,000-17,500 BC.

Dark historians generally identify the homeland of the Ice Age Levantine migrants with the mythological concept of Demomap. Although variously interpretable from the oral traditions of Coscivian and Urom communities as a place, time, or abstract state of being, Kapuśitic and Cuomo-Passaic-speaking peoples present Demomap as the intermediate location of their ancestors between their emergence from the Shadow Realm and their arrival in Kam, interpretable either as the physical world at large or Great Kirav specifically. As such, the hypothesised pre-migration prehistory of the proto-Kiravians is known as the 'Demomappic Period'. The proto-Kiravians of the Demomappic Period are associated with a particular lithic technique (examples of which are portrayed here) with examples known from both Ilánova and finds in Kubagne, Yonderre and [LOCATION], Caergwynn, cited as the strongest archæological evidence of the iceberg-hopping hypothesis. During the Demomappic Period, the proto-Kiravians are currently believed to have interacted economically and reproductively with the Packer Culture of the Vandarch Basin but remained culturally distinct therefrom.

Deep Prehistory

Primitive Period - Cold and also Dark

The era of human habitation of Great Kirav from initial migration to the the commencement of the last glacial retreat around the middle of the 12th millennium BC, a range of roughly seven thousand years, is known as the Primitive Period, and is largely synonymous with the Kiravian Palæolithic. The human population of Great Kirav during this era is presumed to have been extremely sparse. Some studies from the 1980s-90s AD suggested that the Archæo-Cronan and Archæo-Levantine founder populations may have numbered as few as 70 and 100 people respectively. More recent works accept figures higher up in the hundreds or even low thousands as plausible, with the caveat that the vast majority of migrants' genetic lineages became extinct during the Primitive Period and are not ancestral to modern Kiravians. Whatever its size, almost the entirety of this population would have lived on lands that are now submerged, severely limiting what can be gleaned about this earliest phase of Kiravian prehistory from archæological remains. As such, almost nothing is known about this period from modern science, and almost all that is comes from a handful of excavations in Ilánova and South Kirav.

Environmental conditions during the Primitive Period are believed to have been exceedingly harsh. The island continent was almost entirely glaciated during this time, and prehistoric Kiravian populations would have clung to its habitable coastal fringes, eking out a marginal living from hunting, gathering, and fishing.

Members of the Ardmen Gentemen's Antiquarian Society attempting to reënact the "iceberg-hopping" migration thesis in 1906 AD. Due to improper outfitting and poor knowledge of ocean currents, the entire expedition died three days after departing from Lyukquar.

Convoīon Culture

The next archæological culture to develop out of the Demomappic, appearing by 17,600 BC, was the Convoīon Culture, known from a handful of sites in Ilánova. Convoīon exhibits a much more diversified toolmaking repertoire, utilising a wider range of materials than the stone-prone Demomappic to include hematite, worked animal bones, and other naturally-occuring substances. The dramatically more sophisticated tool inventories found at so few dig sites suggests a society much more advanced in its economy and comfortable in its surroundings than its Demomappic predecessors, migrating less frequently and availing themselves of more thitherto untapped food sources. The Convoīon Culture appears to have employed more specialized hunting, fishing, and collecting techniques, in contrast to the post-migration Demomappic generalist hunters. It is also the Convoīon culture that left the first unambiguous examples of rock art in Kiravia.

Society I (ca. 12,500 BC - ca. 9600 BC) - We Live in This

Come the Late Ice Age, glacial retreat and gradual warming of the climate allowed Kiravians to break out from their highly constrained High Ice Age mode of production, enabling population growth and the formation of societies beyond the scale of primitive bands.

This is a time of dramatic (but mostly good) change for Kiravians, whose material culture advanced considerably into what is known as the Lower Kiravian Epipalæolithic or the Society I Culture in response to major environmental shifts, beginning with a second abrupt rise in sea levels around 12,475 BC. This rise in sea levels effected the submersal of what were presumably the most heavily populated coastal areas of Kirav, but the glacial retreat responsible for it also opened up more inland areas to ecological colonisation and subsequent human habitation.

During the Late Ice Age, the continental ice sheet that had previously covered most of the continent contracted to the island continent's central basin, flaked by the Aterandic, Ximantav, and West Highlands ranges.

The people of the Society I culture formed somewhat larger social groups than their predecessors, and many communities lived as (at least seasonally-)sedentary food collectors, using markedly more sophisticated social organisation and lithic tools to extract sustenance from a wide variety of sources. Evidence of semi-permanent settlements and specialised tools disappears around the time of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, suggesting that the Society I culture collapsed under pressure from major environmental changes, reverting to a smaller-scale hunter-gatherer lifestyle for several centuries.

[The Glacier and its lasting psychic effects]

Pleistocene-Holocene Collapse

The Middle Kiravian Epipalæolithic or Gameritic Upheaval was a time of dramatic (and mostly bad) change for Kiravians.

Natural cataclysms and their secondary environmental effects, namely disease and the disruption of essential food sources, caused the collapse of Society I and the abandonment of its characteristic permanent settlements. Most dark historians are of the opinion that the psychological and cultural impact of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition was incredibly traumatic, leaving a lasting impact on the Kiravian worldview.

The perekop, an extinct giraffid hunted (probably to extinction) by primitive Kiravians

Society II (ca. 9300 BC - ca. 8000 BC)

A second period of technological progress began during the late 9th millennium BC, giving rise to the Society II culture, another pre-agricultural culture of sedentary food collectors. Society II communities were larger and more permanently settled than those of Society I, exhibiter better adaptations for survival in more inland areas, and may have practised primitive forms of horticulture at later stages. Society II appears to have collapsed abruptly around 8300 BC, for reasons still unknown. The period during which Society II emerged is known as the Kiravian Upper Epipalæolithic.

Some dark historians believe that the first incarnation of the Coscivian Empire, a tribal confederation referred to in modern texts as the Lawful Commonwealth, arose during the latter half of Society II. Others believe it arose during Society I, whereas Occidental scholars and Coscivians of a more scientific bent hold that the Lawful Commonwealth (if historical at all) could not have formed before the Neolithic consolidation of simple farming societies.

Using their arcane ability to divine fully-fledged visions of lost civilisations from examination of pottery shards, archæologists have theorised that Society II settlements exhibited a remarkably high degree of social stratification for a pre-agricultural society, perhaps even practising slavery.

Akai Collapse (ca. 8000 BC)

See also: Kiravo-Akhai Origins Conspiracy Theory

The Akai Collapse, by convention, marks the beginning of the end of Dark History and the beginning of the beginning of Deep History. This distinction is mainly of significance to dark philologists who place certain foundational events in Coscivian history, such as the formation of the Lawful Commonwealth at a much greater time depth than Occidental archæology permits, toward contemporaneity with Society I and/or Society II.

Near Prehistory (ca. 7000 BC - 2373 BC)

[Things get more real from here on.]

As the massive ice sheets that had covered the interior and northern coast of the island continent diminished and finally disappeared, prehistoric Kiravian tribes fanned out across the full breadth of Great Kiravia and gradually began to embrace sedentism a third time. This time, however, the exit from hunting and gathering would be made permanent by the discovery of agriculture in the form of the nutritious and delicious potato. The starchy tuber was first cultivated on the lower slopes of the south-western highlands between 7000 and 6000 BC. A separate farming culture centred on buckwheat cultivation and beekeeping emerged on the eastern coastal plain toward the end of that timespan.

At the dawn of agriculture, certain patterns of social organisation had already settled into prevailing norms across the island continent. Tribes, in the strict sense of the word, had replaced lower-level band societies in all but the most marginal and inhospitable locales. Kiravian tribes were structured according to segmentary lineages, most of which were already strictly patrilineal and patrilocal as all Coscivian peoples are today, though a minority (now conserved only in a few urom tribes) were matrilineal and/or matrilocal. At this stage it is presumed that all or most tribes permitted cross-cousin marriage, though the extent to which it may have been preferred (as in later stages of both Coscivian and urom societies) is not yet known. Due to the segmentary lineage reckoning of kinship, the demographic size of a typical Kiravian tribe during the early agricultural age is somewhat imprecise, but it can be estimated that the largest tribal orders of stable political (that is, military) significance claimed common descent no further back than five generations (to a single great-great-great-great-grandfather) and probably included between 1,000 and 3,000 people. However, the everyday lives of early agrarian Kiravians would have been lived largely within the confines of autonomous village communities within a larger tribe, with such villages comprising between 50 and 400 people. Among those communities who had adopted agriculture, communities were only semi-sedentary, practicing shifting cultivation of the slash-and-burn type, using fire to fertilise the mediocre soil covering most of the continent with the rich nutrients accumulated in its thick forest cover. As such, villages would periodically migrate within a localised ambit in search of virgin land as the cinder-enriched soils of one area were depleted. Stress on the land and the contraction of these ambits due to growing populations and the generational fission of villages is believed to have contributed to the period of heightened violence known as the Age of Blood.

Age of Blood

early agricultural Kiravians became embroiled in a state of endemic warfare, not unlike that which has been documented among other relatively high-density simple farming societies elsewhere.

Lawful Commonwealth

The geographic location of the nucleus of the Lawful Commonwealth is unknown and controversial. Virtually every macro-region of Great Kirav, along with Koskenkorva, has laid claim to the distinction.

Other Proto-States

The Age of Blood drew down as rates of endemic violence declined. Orthodox historians attribute this to the diffusion of norms that had proven advantageous to the Lawful Commonwealth outward beyond its direct sphere of influence, enabling the formation of other higher-order proto-states and the pacification of larger pockets of territory, as well as the gradual abandonment of ultraviolent practices by tribes outside of these proto-states. More critical historians question whether the Lawful Commonwealth was truly the originator of the Four Rites and Four Precepts, or merely one of many adoptor societies of constructive innovations that arose elsewhere.

Wanderer Migration (The D)

Noun Declension Tables (pic unrelated)

h

Form I - istuv
Case	Nonplural		Plural
Ergative	istuk		istuyak
Genitive	istul		istuyá
Indirect	istum		istuyam
Absolutives
Number	Nonplural		Plural
Aspect	Imperfect	Perfect	Imperfect	Perfect
Present	istuv	istuvi	istuya	istuyi
Past	istuve	istuvéi	istuyave	istuyavéi
Future	istuvo	istuvói	istuyavo	istuyavói
Jussive	istuvu	istuvúi	istuyavu	istuyavúi

Form II - rona
Case	Nonplural		Plural
Ergative	ronak		ronæk
Genitive	roná		ronæ
Indirect	ronam		ronám
Absolutives
Number	Nonplural		Plural
Aspect	Imperfect	Perfect	Imperfect	Perfect
Present	rona	ronavi	ronáv	ronávi
Past	ronave	ronavéi	ronáve	ronávéi
Future	ronavo	ronavói	ronávo	ronávói
Jussive	ronavu	ronavúi	ronávu	ronávúi

Form III - vālin
Case	Nonplural		Plural
Ergative	vālith		vālinyak
Genitive	vālisk		vāliskya
Indirect	vālint		vālintya
Absolutives
Number	Nonplural		Plural
Aspect	Imperfect	Perfect	Imperfect	Perfect
Present	vālin	vālini	vālinyav	vālinyavi
Past	vāline	vālinéi	vālinyave	vālinyavéi
Future	vālino	vālinói	vālinyavo	vālinyavói
Jussive	vālinu	vālinúi	vālinyavu	vālinyavúi

Form III - kenor
Case	Nonplural		Plural
Ergative	kenorth		kenoryak
Genitive	kenorsk		kenorskya
Indirect	kenord		kenordya
Absolutives
Number	Nonplural		Plural
Aspect	Imperfect	Perfect	Imperfect	Perfect
Present	kenor	kenorsti	kenoryav	kenoryavi
Past	kenorste	kenorstéi	kenoryave	kenoryavéi
Future	kenorsto	kenorstói	kenoryavo	kenoryavói
Jussive	kenorstu	kenorstúi	kenoryavu	kenoryavúi