Mata People

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k1234567890y
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Mata People

Post by k1234567890y »

The Mata people are a human etnhic group originated from the Matamre area of the 31st World, an alternative Earth of our world. The Matamre area is the core area of the Mata Federation.

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.
Spoiler:
Many parts of the Mata people are based on the Nivkh people...sorry for the uncreativity...
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
почка
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Re: Mata People

Post by почка »

k1234567890y wrote: 04 Aug 2018 21:40
There are no physically East Asian looking people in the 31st World.
Please, don't be a racist, peoples of all ethnicity should be allowed to exist in all conworlds if human exists.
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elemtilas
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Re: Mata People

Post by elemtilas »

почка wrote: 12 Aug 2018 21:26
k1234567890y wrote: 04 Aug 2018 21:40
There are no physically East Asian looking people in the 31st World.
Please, don't be a racist, peoples of all ethnicity should be allowed to exist in all conworlds if human exists.
Why?

In what way is this "racist"? Unless you're trying to make a joke, this comes across as needlessly pc. It's her world. She can do what she likes in it!
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Re: Mata People

Post by sangi39 »

почка wrote: 12 Aug 2018 21:26
k1234567890y wrote: 04 Aug 2018 21:40
There are no physically East Asian looking people in the 31st World.
Please, don't be a racist, peoples of all ethnicity should be allowed to exist in all conworlds if human exists.
Being careful of flamewars... I'm sort of in the middle on this one.

Physical appearance amongst human populations, as far as I understand it, is determined by various factors from environmental pressures (amount of melanin A is selected for more frequently in environment X, while amount of melanin B is selected for more frequently in environment Y), sexual selection (oo, aren't those blue eyes exotic and sexy looking), to mutations that aren't selected against (one population might have wider noses because it's not worse than narrower noses).

There's nothing saying that there should be an "East Asian looking people" in any conworld, let alone members of any other race, although I'd expect there to be a reason why other groups do exist, although I suppose that would depend on the depth the author is intending to go in.

I wouldn't call it "racist" to say "there arent any East Asian looking people" in a conworld, as long as, of course, the author isn't excluding them out of any idea that they wouldn't be there "just because they shouldn't be there". In my mind, it would be perfectly acceptable to create a world consisting only of people with dark skin, as long as you could justify it according to what we understand in relation to the evolution of the human species, and by the same note it would be acceptable to create a world consisting only of people with light skin, as long as it could be justified (excluding, in both cases, the obvious idea of mass genocide, in which case maybe the author is racist, but then context, they could be saying the world they're creating is massively racist as a cautionary tale).

It's a fine line to tread, basically, so let's at least ask why Elemtilas chose to include this as part of their world rather than outright calling them a racist.
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
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That they all still believe in you.
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Re: Mata People

Post by DesEsseintes »

sangi39 wrote: 13 Aug 2018 02:39 It's a fine line to tread, basically, so let's at least ask why Elemtilas chose to include this as part of their world rather than outright calling them a racist.
This is k1234567890y’s conworld thread and not elemtilas’.
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Re: Mata People

Post by DesEsseintes »

почка wrote: 12 Aug 2018 21:26
k1234567890y wrote: 04 Aug 2018 21:40
There are no physically East Asian looking people in the 31st World.
Please, don't be a racist, peoples of all ethnicity should be allowed to exist in all conworlds if human exists.
I disagree. Nobody and nothing has a “right” to exist in any work of art.
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Re: Mata People

Post by sangi39 »

DesEsseintes wrote: 13 Aug 2018 03:10
sangi39 wrote: 13 Aug 2018 02:39 It's a fine line to tread, basically, so let's at least ask why Elemtilas chose to include this as part of their world rather than outright calling them a racist.
This is k1234567890y’s conworld thread and not elemtilas’.
Fudge monkeys! Sorry k1234567890y and Elemtilas for the confusion.
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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k1234567890y
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Re: Mata People

Post by k1234567890y »

well, let's keep moving:

Housing

Traditional Mata villages were located in river basins and seashores where food was readily available, particularly in the basins of rivers through which salmon went upstream. A village consisted basically of a paternal clan. The average number of families was four to seven, rarely reaching more than ten. In places where agriculture was available, the villages were slightly larger, but it was still rare for farming villages to contain more than ten families.

Traditional Mata houses were made of cogon grasses, bamboo grass, barks, etc. The length lay east to west or parallel to a river. A house was about seven meters by five with an entrance at the west end that also served as a storeroom. The house had three windows, A house had a fireplace near the entrance, family members sat around the fireplaces, and there was a platform for valuables in a house.

Outbuildings included separate toilet, a storehouse for food, a pen for keeping bears, and drying-racks for fish and wild plants.

Due to the effect of industrialization and modernization, most houses nowadays have a more complicated and familiar plan, with a living room, a study, a kitchen, a dining room, and several bedrooms and toilets(which is also used as a bathroom, Mata people do not separate the bathroom and the toilet), and are equipped with electronics, warer, gas, the internet, and furnitures familiar to modern people like tables, chairs, beds, refrigerators, televisions, computers, electric lamps, etc. It is said that the plan of modern houses originated from the houses of wealthy people during the time of the Kingdom of Five Towns. Due to the advent of technologies, robots have become a standard apparatus for most families to do houseworks.
Spoiler:
Image
Traditional Mata village houses would look similar to this. Photo taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... u_Cise.jpg

Image
Modern Mata houses would look similar to this. Photo taken from https://www.daft.ie/dublin/houses-for-s ... n-1713537/

Image
Another possible look for modern Mata houses. Photo taken from https://uncrate.com/simmerberg-house/
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Mata People

Post by k1234567890y »

The 31st World may be called Hannabeht(IPA: [hana'pɤxs] ), which is from the Culet word for "world"; or be called Anga(IPA: ['ɑŋɑ]) or Sambat(IPA: ['sɑmbɑt]), both of which are Mayato words for "world".

Culet was once a lingua franca of the Pig Bay area, The northshore of the Pig Bay area is the homeland of the Mata people; besides the Mata people, there are also the Culet-speaking Cu people living on the west coast of the Pig Bay, and the Sarawa people living on the big peninsula on the east coast of the Pig Bay.
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Mata People

Post by samsam »

When you say that mata people look like a mix of White and Siberian people, do you mean the Sibirid (Paleo-siberian) phenotype like Samoyeds,Uralids or Chukchi people or the Tungid one like Manchu ,Yakutian and Mongolian people?

http://humanphenotypes.net/basic/Sibirid.html

http://humanphenotypes.net/basic/Tungid.html
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k1234567890y
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Re: Mata People

Post by k1234567890y »

samsam wrote: 22 Nov 2018 20:27 When you say that mata people look like a mix of White and Siberian people, do you mean the Sibirid (Paleo-siberian) phenotype like Samoyeds,Uralids or Chukchi people or the Tungid one like Manchu ,Yakutian and Mongolian people?

http://humanphenotypes.net/basic/Sibirid.html

http://humanphenotypes.net/basic/Tungid.html
Sibirid, I think.
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Re: Mata People

Post by k1234567890y »

Image

The Geographic features of the Bay of Pigs area

Image

Major ethnic groups living around the Bay of Pigs area

I have no language for the Henn people yet, and I just got the idea when making the maps.
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Re: Mata People

Post by elemtilas »

k1234567890y wrote: 25 Nov 2018 18:31
Spoiler:
Image
The Geographic features of the Bay of Pigs area
Spoiler:
Image
Major ethnic groups living around the Bay of Pigs area

I have no language for the Henn people yet, and I just got the idea when making the maps.
Oo, maps! Nice!

How much and what kind of interaction is there between the ethnoi? I see that the Mata only have a very small access to the Bay: is this a matter of contention between them and the Henn & Sarawa in particular?
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Re: Mata People

Post by k1234567890y »

elemtilas wrote: 25 Nov 2018 20:19
k1234567890y wrote: 25 Nov 2018 18:31
Spoiler:
Image
The Geographic features of the Bay of Pigs area
Spoiler:
Image
Major ethnic groups living around the Bay of Pigs area

I have no language for the Henn people yet, and I just got the idea when making the maps.
Oo, maps! Nice!

How much and what kind of interaction is there between the ethnoi? I see that the Mata only have a very small access to the Bay: is this a matter of contention between them and the Henn & Sarawa in particular?
pretty intensive?

as for contention, no ideas yet, but maybe more or less; besides I might modify the amount of coastlines that the Mata people got in that area.

also Mata people has a very large stretch westards that is not shown here, but the Bay of Pigs area hosts the homeland of Mata people. The peoples shown in that map are all ethnically and linguistically related, despite the linguistic connection may not very obvious.

The name of the Bay of Pigs is a translation of the name. In languages of that area, the name for that bay are all different but all can be interpreted as "The Bay of Pigs".
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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