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Prehistory of Great Kirav: Difference between revisions
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== First Humans - Ice Bridges from Demomap == | == Deep Prehistory == | ||
=== First Humans - Ice Bridges from Demomap === | |||
[[File:Solutrean tools 22000 17000 Crot du Charnier Solutre Pouilly Saone et Loire France.jpg|thumb|Examples of the "Demomappic" flint and bone toolmaking style found at Upper Palæolithic strata in both Great Kirav and Boreal Levantia]] | [[File:Solutrean tools 22000 17000 Crot du Charnier Solutre Pouilly Saone et Loire France.jpg|thumb|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 ''{{wp|Homo sapiens sapiens}}'' maintains that the island continent was first peopled by a founder population of {{wp|Marine mammal hunting|marine mammal hunters}} originating from the north-central Levantine mainland who migrated across {{wp|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. | The present accepted consensus regarding the colonisation of Great Kirav by ''{{wp|Homo sapiens sapiens}}'' maintains that the island continent was first peopled by a founder population of {{wp|Marine mammal hunting|marine mammal hunters}} originating from the north-central Levantine mainland who migrated across {{wp|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. | ||
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<br> | <br> | ||
=== Primitive Period - Cold and also Dark === | === Primitive Period - Cold and also Dark === | ||
[[File:PrimitiveKiravians.jpg|thumb|[[Corcoran Institution|Corcoran Museum of Natural History]] reconstruction of a Primitive Period band's cave dwelling]] | [[File:PrimitiveKiravians.jpg|thumb|[[Corcoran Institution|Corcoran Museum of Natural History]] reconstruction of a Primitive Period band's cave dwelling]] | ||
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== Near Prehistory (ca. 7000 BC - 3200 BC) == | == Near Prehistory (ca. 7000 BC - 3200 BC) == | ||
===Neolithic=== | ===Neolithic=== | ||
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 [[Passaïc Culture|separate farming culture]] centred on buckwheat cultivation and beekeeping emerged on the eastern coastal plain toward the end of that timespan. | ====Advent of Agriculture==== | ||
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. It is currently believed that the domestication of plants was first achieved in [[South Kirav]] between 7700 and 7500 BC, where wild ''{{wp|Echinochloa}} kiraviana'' was domesticated into a cereal crop now known as '''Kiravian millet''' and presently cultivated as a fodder crop. Due to its short growing season, drought-resistance, and general hardiness, Kiravian millet proved suitable for cultivation beyond the mild plains of South Kirav, and were found to be viable in a wide variety of environments further north and higher upland. The spread of primitive agricultural techniques across the southerly latitudes spurred several subsequent episodes of domestication, next in the form of the nutritious and delicious {{wp|potato}} and {{wp|arracacha|crisp potato}}. The starchy tuber was first cultivated on the lower slopes of the south-western highlands between 7000 and 6000 BC. A [[Passaïc Culture|separate farming culture]] centred on buckwheat cultivation and beekeeping emerged on the eastern coastal plain toward the end of that timespan. It is not yet definitively known when or where ''{{wp|Elymus}}'' grasses began to be grown by Neolithic Kiravians, but cultivation was well underway in the Elegian Valley by 6900 BC. | |||
The {{wp|Sus strozzi|Nearctic bearded boar}} was the first mammal to be domesticated in Kiravia,<ref>Genetic evidence shows that {{wp|dogs|canids}} accompanied the Ice Age pioneers over the ice and land bridges from Levantia.</ref> giving rise to the '''Old Kiravian hog''' that is partially ancestral to modern swine stocks in Kirav. While some sort of {{wp|commensal}} relationship between man and boar may have existed among sedentary food-collector communities during Society II, with swine feeding off tidally deposited shellfish and algæ supplemented by human food waste from {{wp|midden}}s, true domestication occurred in multiple locations shortly after sedentary agriculture took root. Domestication of {{wp|camelid}}s, yielding the '''''tinav''''', would take place in the Western Highlands much later, during the third millennium BC. | |||
====Early Neolithic Society==== | |||
[[File:Bucharest - The Thinker & The Sitting Woman of Cernavoda - white bg.jpg|thumb]] | [[File:Bucharest - The Thinker & The Sitting Woman of Cernavoda - white bg.jpg|thumb]] | ||
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 {{wp|segmentary lineage}}s, most of which were already strictly {{wp|patrilineal}} and {{wp|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 {{wp|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. By this point, prehistoric Kiravians were actively cultivating potato and crisp-potato, and keeping swine, yet there is little evidence of major forest clearance for agriculture. {{wp|Pollen analysis}} suggests mostly small-scale clearance to enlarge natural clearings in the primæval Kiravian forests. The short-term nature of the settlements suggested by a paucity of archæological remains of permanent structures comports with the lack of evidence for large-scale clearance, suggesting that during this period of Kiravian prehistory there were no communities large enough to require a large area of cleared cropland to satisfy their subsistence needs. It has been argued that the overall lack of houses points to a quite mobile society dominated by {{wp|shifting cultivation}}. Later, Prehistoric Kiravians developed of {{wp|slash-and-burn}} agriculture, using {{wp|Africa (Toto song)|fire}} in controlled burns 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. | 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 {{wp|segmentary lineage}}s, most of which were already strictly {{wp|patrilineal}} and {{wp|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 {{wp|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. By this point, prehistoric Kiravians were actively cultivating potato and crisp-potato, and keeping swine, yet there is little evidence of major forest clearance for agriculture. {{wp|Pollen analysis}} suggests mostly small-scale clearance to enlarge natural clearings in the primæval Kiravian forests. The short-term nature of the settlements suggested by a paucity of archæological remains of permanent structures comports with the lack of evidence for large-scale clearance, suggesting that during this period of Kiravian prehistory there were no communities large enough to require a large area of cleared cropland to satisfy their subsistence needs. It has been argued that the overall lack of houses points to a quite mobile society dominated by {{wp|shifting cultivation}}. Later, Prehistoric Kiravians developed of {{wp|slash-and-burn}} agriculture, using {{wp|Africa (Toto song)|fire}} in controlled burns 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. | ||
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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. Oral literary sources speak little about the causes of this phenomenon, but comparative studies of tribal societies with high rates of endemic warfare at similar stages of development and with economies similar in scale and mode of production to those which have been reconstructed for early agricultural Kiravia suggest that swine raids and swine theft were major drivers of conflict, was well as the abduction of women and the imperative to exact revenge for such transgressions. Ecological anthropologists theorise that stress on the land from intensive slash-and-burn cultivation and the contraction of tribal ambits due to growing populations and the generational fission of villages was a key driver of conflict. | 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. Oral literary sources speak little about the causes of this phenomenon, but comparative studies of tribal societies with high rates of endemic warfare at similar stages of development and with economies similar in scale and mode of production to those which have been reconstructed for early agricultural Kiravia suggest that swine raids and swine theft were major drivers of conflict, was well as the abduction of women and the imperative to exact revenge for such transgressions. Ecological anthropologists theorise that stress on the land from intensive slash-and-burn cultivation and the contraction of tribal ambits due to growing populations and the generational fission of villages was a key driver of conflict. | ||
=== | ===Neolithic Éorsa=== | ||
[[File:Old scatness 2.jpg|thumb|Social innovations on Éorsa (now [[Ilánova]]) allowed for more permanent Neolithic settlements to take root.]] | |||
Initially, the same conditions that prevailed on the Kiravian mainland (constant endemic warfare between small, tribal groups practising shifting cultivation) were also the case on the offshore island known classically as Éorsa and now more commonly called by its Gaelic-derived name, [[Ilánova]]. However, sometime around 6000 BC, developments took place on Ilánova that allowed its inhabitants to break the cycle of endemic violence that plagued the mainland and advance to a higher stage of social and technological capability. | Initially, the same conditions that prevailed on the Kiravian mainland (constant endemic warfare between small, tribal groups practising shifting cultivation) were also the case on the offshore island known classically as Éorsa and now more commonly called by its Gaelic-derived name, [[Ilánova]]. However, sometime around 6000 BC, developments took place on Ilánova that allowed its inhabitants to break the cycle of endemic violence that plagued the mainland and advance to a higher stage of social and technological capability. | ||
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Virtually every macro-region of Great Kirav, along with [[Koskenkorva]], has claimed for itself the distinction of having hosted the geographic nucleus of the [[Lawful Commonwealth]], but among those scholars who accept its historicity, the most commonly held position is that it was located on the island now known as [[Ilánova]]. | Virtually every macro-region of Great Kirav, along with [[Koskenkorva]], has claimed for itself the distinction of having hosted the geographic nucleus of the [[Lawful Commonwealth]], but among those scholars who accept its historicity, the most commonly held position is that it was located on the island now known as [[Ilánova]]. | ||
The rise of the Emperors, who imposed the Four Laws and Four Rites, forming a tribal confederacy capable of overwhelming any individual hostile tribe and also capable of maintaining peace and cohesion within itself, opened an exit from the Age of Blood for the tribes of Éorsa. The population growth brought on by decreased mortality from warfare enabled the Lawful Tribes to expand territorially into larger (though still thoroughly tribal) political-territorial units, and enhanced the military strength of the Commonwealth as a whole. | The rise of the [[Coscivian Emperor|Emperors]], who imposed the [[Four Laws and Four Rites]], forming a tribal confederacy capable of overwhelming any individual hostile tribe and also capable of maintaining peace and cohesion within itself, opened an exit from the Age of Blood for the tribes of Éorsa. The population growth brought on by decreased mortality from warfare enabled the Lawful Tribes to expand territorially into larger (though still thoroughly tribal) political-territorial units, and enhanced the military strength of the Commonwealth as a whole. Using the traditional narratives as a source, it would appear that the key military advantage ensuring the security of the Lawful Commonwealth was its primitive form of {{wp|collective security}}: Lawful tribes were safe from attack than Lawless tribes because they could rely upon neighbouring Lawful tribes for assistance in a simple threat environment wherein numerical superiority was sufficient to guarantee victory. The deterrent effect of collective security allowed the Lawful tribes to become more populous as they were spared the extremely high death rates from warfare that afflicted the Lawless tribes, providing additional fighting-age men that galvanised the deterrent effect. The Lawful Commonwealth would eventually include most of the tribal territories on Ilánova, and it is possible that some nearby areas of the Kiravian mainland (i.e. coastal [[Harma]]) may have somehow participated in or imitated its model. | ||
The peace brought on by the expansion of the Lawful Commonwealth allowed for the advancements of the High Neolithic to take pleace earlier on Éorsa than on the mainland, including the first stone settlements since the Society II culture and the intensive cultivation of {{wp|polyculture}}s with {{wp|crop rotation}}. | |||
It follows that the Lawful Commonwealth could only be defeated ''{{wp|Africa|in toto}}'' by an adversary if a countervailing tribal alliance was able to assemble more fighters, or if the Commonwealth itself became unable to maintain its own cohesion. The available sources from {{wp|oral literature}} maintain that the latter happened: After the death of the Emperor Akˣɛ, a struggle for succession ensued between five different claimants, each with the backing of different cohorts of tribal allies. The civil war - if it can be called that - resulting from this dispute is said to have ended inconclusively, with each faction diminished into a small splinter confederacy under the leadership of its preferred Emperor. There is no clear archæological evidence to confirm nor controvert this narrative. Tradition maintains - and later history would appear to confirm - that even after the splintering of the Lawful Commonwealth, members of the former Lawful Tribes "carried the Law with them to the edges of the Sea," taken to mean that they would go on to emigrate from Éorsa and establish new Lawful settlements along the coast of mainland Great Kirav and in Suderavia-Levantia. | |||
===== Back-Migrations Mainland Kirav and Levantia ===== | ===== Back-Migrations Mainland Kirav and Levantia ===== | ||
The maritime technology introduced to Kiravia by the Itaho-Atrassic invasion spread around and up the coasts | The maritime technology introduced to Kiravia by the Ʒ-Q Invasion (or Itaho-Atrassic invasion) spread fairly rapidly around and up the coasts of Great Kirav, with their adoption by littoral peoples continuing along the eastern seaboard and from there on to Éorsa. Here, these technologies enabled large-scale (by the standards of the era) outward migration from Éorsa in two direction: | ||
In the first direction, back toward the Kiravian mainland, Ʒ-Q nautical technology allowed at least two waves of back-migration, one which is believed to have carried the Trans-Kiravian language family, and another which is believed to have carried the Austro-Kiravian language family. Trans-Kiravian speakers also may have sailed northward to [[Koskenkorva]]. The landings of these Éorsan navigators are believed to correlate with centres of megalithic construction on the mainland ([[Prehistory_of_Great_Kirav#Megalithic_Coscivians|see below]]). | |||
In the second direction, toward northern [[Levantia]], Ʒ-Q nautical technology allowed for the resumption of contact between Kiravia and the lands from whence the Ice Age settler ancestors of Kiravians had originally come, quite likely for the first time since 18,500 BC. These back-migrations were directed mainly toward what is now western [[Faneria]], [[Covina]], [[Suderavia]], and (controversially) [[Wintergen]]. At least some of these back-migrations must post-date the establishment of the Lawful Commonwealth, because they carried the Four Laws and Four Precepts and the rudiments of the proto-ethnic Coscivian identity with them, beginning the history of the [[Mainland Coscivians]]. | |||
Back-migration is estimated to have begun around 6750 BC and continued to trickle on thereafter, transferring important agricultural breakthroughs such as and buckwheat cultivation to the mainland, as well as advanced apicultural techniques adapted to Boreal bee species. Many of the back-migrants may have left to flee the constant violence of the Age of Blood. With the arrival of the technologically sophisticated [[Fenni]] in the Vandarch 6000-5000 BC, regular trade was established between Great Kirav and the Mainland, and would later accelerate as the Fenni became well-established in the region and as the Age of Blood wound down in Great Kirav. | |||
=== High Neolithic === | === High Neolithic === | ||
The Age of Blood drew down as rates of endemic violence declined. Orthodox historians attribute this to the {{wp|Diffusion of innovations|diffusion of norms}} that had proven advantageous to the Lawful Commonwealth outward beyond its direct sphere of influence, even continuing after its demise, as the Great Law Chant states (see above), enabling the formation of other higher-order | The Age of Blood drew down as rates of endemic violence declined. Orthodox historians attribute this to the {{wp|Diffusion of innovations|diffusion of norms}} that had proven advantageous to the Lawful Commonwealth outward beyond its direct sphere of influence, even continuing after its demise, as the Great Law Chant states (see above), enabling the formation of other higher-order tribal confederacies and the pacification of larger pockets of territory, as well as the gradual abandonment of ultraviolent practices by tribes outside of these confederacies. 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. What ''is'' certain is that multiple neolithic polities would claim the legacy of the Lawful Commonwealth, adopting its foundational narratives to legitimise their own rule and absorbing its laws as part of their own culture and custom. | ||
The end of the Age of Blood allowed for the formation of more permanent settlements and larger-scale (though still thoroughly tribal) social organisation. Permanent settlements featuring stone structures reappeared in large numbers for the first time since Society II. | The end of the Age of Blood allowed for the formation of more permanent settlements and larger-scale (though still thoroughly tribal) social organisation. Permanent settlements featuring stone structures reappeared in large numbers for the first time since Society II. | ||
By this time, region of [[South Kirav]], cradle of the millet-growing, hog-rearing [[Voskresen culture]], had seen the rise of multi-crop agriculture as new crops and farming techniques diffused down into the region: Potato cultivation expanded southward down the Farravonian Central Valley via the Madar River, ''Elymus'' had spread down the Issyr, and honey-buckwheat agriculture had expanded southward across the eastern coastal plain. As crops grew more diverse and moved downstream, Neolithic Southern farmers increasingly needed to collaborate at a greater scale in order to manage their increasingly complex agriculture. This need for higher-order collaboration to facilitate water management and seasonal crop rotation predictably invited the consolidation of larger settlements and more complex modes of social organisation resting on a more elabourate social contract than had previously existed among simpler farming societies. This multi-crop agriculture extended the growing season, bolstered yields, and reduced the frequency and devastation of crop failures, eventually resulting in surpluses and a takeoff in population growth. | |||
=== Megalithic Societies === | === Megalithic Societies === | ||
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Sedentarism and proto-urbanisation allowed for burial practices and the understanding and practice of religion to become more developed. Earlier Kiravian burials were often marked with small stone cairns, but more permanent and sophisticated burial monuments than this would appear only in the latter half of the Kiravian neolithic in the form of standing stones and steles - some of these steles show traces of [[moon runes]] and other examples of {{wp|proto-writing}}. Monumental works would truly come into their own with the emergence of the cross-Kilikas megalithic culture, during which time more sophisticated societies - hypothesised to chiefly be chiefdoms in terms of political development rather than mere tribes or true states - were able to organise the labour- and time-intensive construction of massive stone monuments in service to their increasingly complex economic and religious needs. These centres of megalithic construction appeared in relatively qucik succession in the Baylands and adjacent portions of the South, and pockets further up the eastern and western seaboards, from which their approach to social organisation and construction would spread over successive centuries, leaving behind a widely distributed body of {{wp|menhir}}s, {{wp|dolmen}}s, {{wp|stone circle}}s, {{wp|kistvaen}}s {{wp|passage graves}}, {{wp|tumuli}}, and statues, as well as the remains of settlements. | Sedentarism and proto-urbanisation allowed for burial practices and the understanding and practice of religion to become more developed. Earlier Kiravian burials were often marked with small stone cairns, but more permanent and sophisticated burial monuments than this would appear only in the latter half of the Kiravian neolithic in the form of standing stones and steles - some of these steles show traces of [[moon runes]] and other examples of {{wp|proto-writing}}. Monumental works would truly come into their own with the emergence of the cross-Kilikas megalithic culture, during which time more sophisticated societies - hypothesised to chiefly be chiefdoms in terms of political development rather than mere tribes or true states - were able to organise the labour- and time-intensive construction of massive stone monuments in service to their increasingly complex economic and religious needs. These centres of megalithic construction appeared in relatively qucik succession in the Baylands and adjacent portions of the South, and pockets further up the eastern and western seaboards, from which their approach to social organisation and construction would spread over successive centuries, leaving behind a widely distributed body of {{wp|menhir}}s, {{wp|dolmen}}s, {{wp|stone circle}}s, {{wp|kistvaen}}s {{wp|passage graves}}, {{wp|tumuli}}, and statues, as well as the remains of settlements. | ||
Megalithic farming societies continued to depend upon potato and other root vegetables, buckwheat, honey, and swine (Nearctic boar) for the agricultural foundation of their diets, engaging also in extensive fishing, hunting, and foraging activities | Megalithic farming societies continued to depend upon potato and other root vegetables, Kiravian millet, buckwheat, ''Elymus'', honey, and swine (Nearctic boar) for the agricultural foundation of their diets, engaging also in extensive fishing, hunting, and foraging activities. | ||
====Megalithic Coscivians==== | ====Megalithic Coscivians==== | ||
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Importantly, the infusion of Itaho-Atrassic marine technology would facilitate back-migration from Éorsa to the Kiravian Mainland. It has been demonstrated that back-migrations from Éorsa sometime between 4500 BC and 3500 BC (though possibly earlier) were responsible for the spread of the Austro-Kiravian (Kuomo-Passaic + Kapushitic) languages to southern and western coastal Kirav on one hand and the spread of the Transkiravian languages to northeastern Kirav, Koskenkorva, and far northwestern Levantia on the other (see map). Indeed, back-migration to Levantia also continued during this process, carrying this nascent Coscivian identity to the existing Kiravian-descended communities of continental Levantia. There is every reason to believe that a common culture extended across the Macro-Koskenkorvan-speaking, megalith-builder cultures along this bicontinental maritime transmission belt. | Importantly, the infusion of Itaho-Atrassic marine technology would facilitate back-migration from Éorsa to the Kiravian Mainland. It has been demonstrated that back-migrations from Éorsa sometime between 4500 BC and 3500 BC (though possibly earlier) were responsible for the spread of the Austro-Kiravian (Kuomo-Passaic + Kapushitic) languages to southern and western coastal Kirav on one hand and the spread of the Transkiravian languages to northeastern Kirav, Koskenkorva, and far northwestern Levantia on the other (see map). Indeed, back-migration to Levantia also continued during this process, carrying this nascent Coscivian identity to the existing Kiravian-descended communities of continental Levantia. There is every reason to believe that a common culture extended across the Macro-Koskenkorvan-speaking, megalith-builder cultures along this bicontinental maritime transmission belt. | ||
====Old Adratic civilisation==== | |||
[[File:Dolmen Russia Kavkaz Jane 1.jpg|thumb|An Adratic dolmen]] | |||
A separate megalithic society, the Adratic, emerged in the inland Texta Valley around the same time as the proto-Coscivian megalith builders, though it would appear that the Adrates began megalithic construction independently of any contact with the coastal megalithic cultural centres. The old Adratic tongue is currently believed to have been a {{wp|language isolate}} ancestral to later Classical Adratic and Modern Adratic, the latter of which is still spoken by small populations today. There is an abundance of archæological evidence demonstrating that the Old Adrates were proto-Sarostivist devotees of the Divine Moon, like many other Kiravian peoples of this time, including the Megalithic Coscivians. Unlike the Coscivians, however, the Adrates did not observe the Rites and Precepts and had not restructured their ancestor worship around the Emperor. It is known from later Classical Adratic writings that the Adrates believed that they were creations of the Divine Moon and had previously lived on the Moon, and descended directly from the Moon to ''Kam'' (either Earth or specifically Great Kirav). | |||
====Other early civilisations==== | ====Other early civilisations==== | ||
Other, more isolated, pockets of relative civilisation would appear on the Mainland while Megalithic Coscivian civilisation made its inroads from the coasts. The ancestors of the [[Ethnic_groups_in_Kiravia#Demarești|Demarești]] | Other, more isolated, pockets of relative civilisation would appear on the Mainland while Megalithic Coscivian civilisation made its inroads from the coasts and Adratic civilisation arose in the Texta Valley. The ancestors of the [[Ethnic_groups_in_Kiravia#Demarești|Demarești]], for example, developed a parallel civilisation during this time, having independently emerged from the Age of Blood and apprised themselves of the social and technological advances necessary to produce large structures. | ||
* '''Proto-Demarest''' - Demarest did not construct megalithic edifices, preferring instead to employ {{wp|rammed earth}} in their construction efforts, but did achieve a comparable level of social complexity and stratification to the Megalithic Coscivians and the Adrates. | * '''Proto-Demarest''' - Demarest did not construct megalithic edifices, preferring instead to employ {{wp|rammed earth}} in their construction efforts, but did achieve a comparable level of social complexity and stratification to the Megalithic Coscivians and the Adrates. | ||
* ''' | * '''West Highlands Latter Neolithic''' - Potato-growing communities in the Western Highlands had lower rates of endemic warfare, likely thanks to geographic barriers that encouraged the formation of stable communities in protected valleys. Variance of microclimatic and other agriculturally-relevant environmental conditions across different parts of the mountainous landscape encouraged intercommunity {{wp|barter}} and allowed for the peaceful diffusion of pottery industries and lithic techniques across relatively long distances, forming an identifiable material culture. | ||
* '''[[Ethnic_groups_in_Kiravia#Caoi|Caoi]]''' - The isolated Caoi people of the Gypsum Plains had permanent stone settlements during the Coastwise Megalithic, remains of which are accessible for study outside of Restriction Zone 48, where the surviving modern Caoi colonies are located. | * '''[[Ethnic_groups_in_Kiravia#Caoi|Caoi]]''' - The isolated Caoi people of the Gypsum Plains had permanent stone settlements during the Coastwise Megalithic, remains of which are accessible for study outside of Restriction Zone 48, where the surviving modern Caoi colonies are located. | ||
=== Æneolithic === | === Æneolithic === | ||