Nowadays, the Mata people are highly technologically advanced interstellar travellers with space settlements, including planetary-based settlements and off-planet settlements.
The Mata Federation is a federal republic developed from the Mata Republic, the Mata Republic in turn was developed from the Kingdom of Five Towns(Mayato: Mogeten Semruthwed.
Geography of Matamre
Matamre has a rather extreme climate. winters have high winds and heavy snows, the average temperature of the mid winter is around -=15~−20 °C in the south and around -20~−25 °C in the north. Summers are wet and moderately warm with the average temperature around 25 °C in south and around 15 °C in north. The area's biome is characterized as Taiga and evergreen coniferous forests consisting of larch, yew, birch, maple, lilac, honeysuckle, and extensive low-lying swamp grasses. Higher elevations have spruce, fir, ash, lime, walnut and mountain tops have cedar and lichens. Bears, foxes, sables, hares, Siberian tigers, elks, grouse, and deer typical to the area.
Matamre is on the northeastern area of the largest continent of the 31st World, there are lots of plains, with a big river and several hills, and coastal areas in Matamre. Most of the Matamre area are covered with conifer forests, with some extreme north areas and the top of mountains covered with snow.
However, geologically, most parts of Matamre are not close to the borders of tectonic plates, so earthquakes are rare, and there are no major volcanoes in the area.
Physical Appearances
There are no physically East Asian looking people in the 31st World. The look of Mata people would resemble the mixture of Europeans and Siberian peoples of our world the most; also, Mata people look average, they are not known for physical attractiveness.
The average height of adult males of the Mata people is around 172cm, the average height of adult females of the Mata people is around 161cm.
Society
Lifestyle
In the past before the formation of the Kingdom of Five Towns that united all Mata peoples, Mata people were half-farmers and half-hunter-gatherers, the hunter-gatherers had summer and winter settlements consisting 3-5 households. In the late fall able-bodied Mata men would leave the villages to hunt for game in the surrounding hunting grounds whereas women would gather foods from the forests, they would move to winter settlements near rivers to survive the harsh snows and catch salmon spawning.
Farmers lived in the south areas of Matamre, they grew barley, wheat, and millet as their primary cereal crops in addition to hunting, they also raised animals like oxen, pigs, sheep, and horses. Compared to their hunter-gatherer counterparts, villages of farmers were permanent and larger, besides they had several city-states, which later united into the Kingdom of Five Towns under the leadership of Tlenvruk("war-bear").
After industrialization, most Mata people are factory workers and office workers, as most people in modern developed countries.
Clan
In the past, Mata people divided into clans(zlem in the Mayato language) united by marriage ties, a common derived deity, arranging marriages, and responsible for group dispute resolution. The clan is divided into several exogamous sub-clans. A clan would cooperate with other members on economic activities like hunting, fishing, farming, etc. when away from the village.
After the formation of the Kingdom of Five Towns, clans evolved into a basis of social stratification; and after the industrialization of the Mata Federation, the clan of a person became less and less important; however, clans never developed into a true surname system among Mata people.
Marriage
Mata people were endogamous within a clan, but exogamous with sub-clans, they didn't marry with the member of the same sub-clan, but they tended to marry with members of other sub-clans of the same clan. Mata marriage customs were very complicated and controlled by the clan, arranged marriage was common.
Before the formation of the Kingdom of Five Towns, polygyny occasionally occured among wealthier men, but after the formation of the Kingdom of Five Towns, the king banned all forms of polygamy, and Mata people became monogamous thereafter; arranged marriage was still prevalent during the times of Kingdom of Five Towns, the times of the Mata Republic and the earliest days of the Mata Federation, and arrange marriage only became rare after the industrialization of the Mata Federation.
Culture
Language
Mata people speak the Mayato language(called Mayato MK2 as my project), the basic word order is SOV. The Mayato language is highly-synthetic, it is predominantly head-marking and has polypersonal agreement, active alignment and noun incorporation, and is capable to express meanings that would be expressed with a whole sentence in other languages with a single word.
Art
The Mata people value most kinds of art, but they generally depreciate any cuteness-based art styles despite their liberal tendency, and there are no art styles similar to the Japanese anime style among the Mata people, arts based on cuteness are widely perceived as "immature" and "for children only".
Technology
The Mata people are highly technologically advanced and have wormhole-based interstellar travel technology, and they have colonialized many planets besides their home planet - the Earth of the 31st World. Ther civilization is probabaly a type II civilization or even type III civilization on the kardashev scale.
Religion
Mata people's traditional religion was based on animist beliefs, especially via shamanism. The animistic belief of the Mata people is called the Mata shamanism or the Mata animism. Mata people have a pantheon of supernatural spirits(Mayato: yom) that presided over the mountains, rivers, seas and sky, the distinction between gods(Mayato: fat) and supernatural spirits only arose after the formation of the Kingdom of Five Towns, and they have extensive folklore, songs, and mythos of how humans and the universe were created, and of how fantastic heroes, spirits and beasts battled with each other in ancient times. Due to the development of science and technology, some have become irreligious nowadays, though many still practice traditional beliefs. Fire is especially venerated. It is the symbol of the unity of the clan. Fire is considered a deity of their ancestors, protecting them from evil spirits and guarding their clan from harm. Traditionally, Mata people feed items to objects of veneration like fires, sea, etc., which are believed to have supernatural spirits dwelling in, in order to seek protection from the gods and spirits.
After the Mata people had their own country, their religion started to become more organized, but the animistic part of their religion never fade away.
Bear Festival
In the past, Shamans of Mata hunter-gatherers also presided over the Bear Festival, a traditional holiday celebrated during late winter. Bears were captured and raised in a corral for several years by local women, treating the bear like a child. The bear was considered a sacred earthly manifestation of Mata ancestors and the gods in bear form. During the Festival, the bear would be dressed in a specially made ceremonial costume. It would be offered a banquet to take back to the realm of gods to show benevolence upon the clans. After the banquet, the bear would be sacrificed and eaten in an elaborate religious ceremony. The bear's spirit returned to the gods of the mountain 'happily' and would then reward the Mata people with bountiful forests.
The farmers of the Mata people did not practise the Bear festival, and the bear festival became increasingly rare and eventually disappeared during the time of the Kingdom of Five Towns.
Values
In modern times, Mata people value freedom and equality a lot. Mata people generally distaste any philosophical view or political ideology that values stoicism or social stratification, most Mata people think that abstinence and stoicism are just a choice of lifestyle, valueing abstinence, including the abstinence of sex and alcohol, as a virtue is morally deplorable to most Mata people.
Knowledge is an important value of Mata people, they encourage people to pursue knowledge and to study anything systemically and deeply if they are willing to do so; however, on the other hand, Mata people despise discriminations in favor of smart or knowledgable people a lot, this is due to their general tendency to embrace freedom and equality.
Cuisine
Mata people enjoy well-made food of all kinds, they see eating as an enjoyment of life; however, most people eat canned pickled vegetables and fried doughs as snacks most of the time.
Meat plays a central role in traditional Mata cuisine, roasted meat of all kinds is often seen as a delicacy, and meat is the major food source of Mata people. Thanks to the advancement of technology, most meat nowadays is produced in laboratories with stem cells from animals, and generally, no animals are killed in meat production, and therefore there are virtually no moral controversies behind meat, and most Mata people who abstain from meat are for health reasons.
Recreational Activity
In modern times, Mata people values the balance of work and life a lot, and when they have time, they generally prefer outdoor activities including hiking, swimming, biking, etc.
Internet and computer games are something used only in workdays, and lacking outdoor activities is sometimes seen as a sign of having mental disorders.
Naming Tradition
Most Mata people have named formed with two or several roots, despite the prevalence of the clan system in the past, Mata people don't usually have surnames. Originally, the clan names once developed into a surname system among the elites of Mata people during the times of the Kingdom of Five Towns, and commoners were not allowed to have a surname during the time, but later the government of the Mata Republic abolished the use of surname, and the use of surnames never revived thereafter.