Damta: A collaborative world

[eldin raigmore]

A dating system? You mean like OKCupid?

[Nachtuil]

Haha. Ideally right? Website construction through conlanging :p

[brblues]

Here is a thing I've been working on. It is challenging to write about something without a specific vantage point.

I was thinking that an alternative dating system based on something like the first electric generator or the first time something was sent into orbit might also be a suitable year 0 or maybe we could have two systems of counting.

Link to language thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7005

Cool, I did have a look, and you inspired me to go ahead and post some of my own conlang for this world, as I have now realized if I don't want to wait till I have finished a reference grammar since such projects tend to never really be finished :D



That dating system sounds cool, but would have the drawback of having a fairly late year zero. For the earlier civillizations, that would result in very big (or small?) negative numbers whenever years are quoted. Two dating systems could make sense if we use consistent abbreviations!

[k1234567890y]

I based my map proposal on an old map of mine:



The blue area is the ocean, the white and grey areas are landmasses, with the grey areas signifying the area of major mountain ranges and highlands.

[brblues]

Thank you very much for taking the initiative and working on a map!

I would think the Oratsem peninsula where Nachtuil's Kodikeng dwell would be on the Southwest of the continent?

I've now made an attempt to come up with a term for the "era" of the first year 0 in my conlang, the founding of the mythical first city. In full, this would be expressed as follows:

/pɛs sigma-kusmɛ-ʔe-ʔe X lumɛka-kom he/
stone gather-CVB.SEQUENT-DS-PL X year-PL COP


“There are X years after the stone(s) gathered”
=> “It has been X years since the founding of the city”

The metaphor used for the founding is "stone gathering"; the verb"to gather" is used in the sequential converbal form, expressing that this event took place before the full verb of the clause. Also note that the plural of "year" is derived from /kom/ ="forest" - in this lang, plurals are formed by suffixing collective nouns, and "three years" is actually "a forest of three years". Which collective noun is chosen depends on the semantics of the noun.

If you guys are okay with using this based on my conlang as the dating system for the "older times", I would suggest simply abbreviating by "PS", as in "PS 1,200". You're of course free not to follow the conventions of my conlang and put "PS" after the year instead ;)

Would anybody like to determine the dating system for more modern years, as Nachtuil proposed possibly based on the first generator or something?

[Nachtuil]

Great work on the map! :D Thank you so much for putting that peninsula in! Would it be possible to add a handful of small island specks to the south west of it? :)

That dating system works for me. We could make it super convenient for ourselves and make it exactly x(or something) years later that the first electric generator/or space launch was done. Maybe have Before Generation and After Generation. BG and AG. So that AG 0 and BG 0 would be PS x.
I like the number like 12 000 for x but 10 000 or 15 000 would make the math easier.
We could just treat the founding of the first city as being pre-history with the city itself being fairly mythical and not necessarily an actual founding date. It's pretty reasonable compared to something like the Sumerian king list which has fantastic expanses of time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List
I think it'd give us ample amounts of room for play. What do you guys think?

I'm so glad I could motivate you to share your work! I definitely appreciate the phonetic simplicity. The redpulication plural idea is neat and I like the idea of it being older so that old plurals take on new meanings too. What does BLSL stand for?

[k1234567890y]

Great work on the map! :D Thank you so much for putting that peninsula in! Would it be possible to add a handful of small island specks to the south west of it? :)

feel free to add it (:

[Nachtuil]

Ok!

[brblues]

That dating system works for me. We could make it super convenient for ourselves and make it exactly x(or something) years later that the first electric generator/or space launch was done. Maybe have Before Generation and After Generation. BG and AG. So that AG 0 and BG 0 would be PS x.
I like the number like 12 000 for x but 10 000 or 15 000 would make the math easier.
[...]I think it'd give us ample amounts of room for play. What do you guys think?

I'd advocate for either 12,000 or 10,000! Shall we vote?

[...] What does BLSL stand for?

"Baseline secondlang" Because its my second conlang, and was intended to just be the baseline for later daughter families, which fits in quite well with a collabworld!

___

I think the next thing to look at on a plantery scale would be climate. I'm a complete noob to this, but would you guys mind if I try to play around with your map if it also involves asking others for advice? I think other users, like k1234567890y, would probably be better suited to try it out, but I wouldn't mind having a go myself too, even though I'm likely to give up as soon as I notice I have no idea what I'm doing ;)

[Nachtuil]

I'd advocate for either 12,000 or 10,000! Shall we vote?

"Baseline secondlang" Because its my second conlang, and was intended to just be the baseline for later daughter families, which fits in quite well with a collabworld!

___

I think the next thing to look at on a plantery scale would be climate. I'm a complete noob to this, but would you guys mind if I try to play around with your map if it also involves asking others for advice? I think other users, like k1234567890y, would probably be better suited to try it out, but I wouldn't mind having a go myself too, even though I'm likely to give up as soon as I notice I have no idea what I'm doing ;)

I am down for a vote though I could go either way. If I had to choose I'd say 12k but I think we need a third person to break the tie in favour of 10 k or 12 k :P

That's funny about BLSL then :P

I normally quite love making those kind of things (referring to climate maps). Maybe major wind patterns and ocean currents would be good.

[brblues]

I normally quite love making those kind of things (referring to climate maps). Maybe major wind patterns and ocean currents would be good.

I've already noticed I may be out of my depth here, as even when just projecting the map using https://www.maptoglobe.com/# , I was left a bit confused as the equator wasn't quite where I'd expect it to be, and the northern part of the continent stretched over the north pole. That might all depend on the map projection used though?

If you wanna go ahead with the climate, please do, I'd be relieved

[Nachtuil]

I can do something with climate if some point unless someone wants to take it on. I was thinking of having a rain shield effect along the central north south ridge so that the west side of the central continent with the bay is wetter and the east side is drier. I've updated the map too. I actually kind of like how it currently looks on the globe myself.



I also want to back Ky's suggestion of using Damta as a world name. [dampta]? Maybe [damʔta]? It seems as good as any other.

I'm still keen on the 12k date. I was reading about human pre history and it so happens that Jericho is thought to have been founded 12k years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_ ... prehistory (Also the domestication of goats haha). Not that it matters too much. I'll go with whatever most people want.

[brblues]

Just to be clear, whenever I referred to a 10k date, I meant 10,000BC i.e. 12,000 years ago ;)

Now that you mention goat: does "earthlike" entail that flora and fauna stay (largely) the same?

[Nachtuil]

Just to be clear, whenever I referred to a 10k date, I meant 10,000BC i.e. 12,000 years ago ;)

Now that you mention goat: does "earthlike" entail that flora and fauna stay (largely) the same?

Oh ok :P I guess that's when the 0 AG or whatever can be? hahah. I think you and I may be the only ones who care. I'll definitely always use the Since Founding date anyway. (as in both systems at the same time)

I think we should take the opportunity to be a bit creative but I imagine that similar ecological niches would arise and be filled with similar animals via convergent evolution and all that. :)


Edit: Updated map with lines.

[k1234567890y]

I have posted Classical Sitr in the conlang forum. The Sitr people is a group of people that has a persian-/central asian-esque culture, they live on the west coast of the temperate to sub-arctic area of the continent.

The Classical Sitr language is not the modern language, but the classical language of them, modern Sitr has undergone some phonological and grammatical change, although the SOV word order and the ergative alignment on nouns has remained the same.

[brblues]

I've made a table modelled on a table found in Mark Rosenfelder's "Planet Construction Kit" as a kind of cheat-sheet very roughly tracking historical developments all over Damta. On the left-hand side, there's the very rough developments in our timeline for an orientation; I copied those as well as the timescale straight from that book.

Then we have the founding of our mythical city, starting point for the dating system; I went with 10,000 BC, i.e. 12,000 years ago, here, but this can still be changed obviously. I then converted the years and made columns for each of us to enter some developments, not as a real source document where one would necessarily need to enter stuff, but just to have a rough outline. The only thing where I could pinpoint a point in time kind of (that is, assuming that our real-world modern era, and that of Damta, coincide exactly) was the founding of the Federation by Nachtuil's people, so I also entered that already.

I am not sure whether you would find that helpful, and if you do, whether there is a way to make that file accessible to everyone of us. I am fairly averse to using something like that Drobox on my computer as I got some sensitive files on here.

I was a bit confused about how exactly the Generator dating would work, so I for now just arbitrarily set the date at what would be 1750 in the real timeline (roughly same as it historically was), and counted before that as BG and after as AG. Let me know what you want to do with that!

[brblues]

Some info about the religion of my as yet unnamed people ("BLSL", the placeholder name for the conlang, also stands in as placeholder for the name of the people here):

The prevalent religion in the BLSL realm is referred to as /xiʔosaku/ and is split into two distinctive branches, which are considered to complement another: /kasa/ (“eternal language”, “language of the gods”) and “/xiʔosaheku/ (“the fact of being puzzling/mysterious”). All the faithful belong to only one of the branches, and marriages are only allowed between adherents of the opposing branches; children attending religious schools are allowed to choose their faith upon reaching puberty, with the possibility of switching later one single time. The choice is “locked in” upon marriage – or the decision to pursue a religious office. Which religious offices are available and the selection process for them depends on the branch.

[brblues]

Would you like to have horses or horse-like animals that can be ridden, or maybe just an animal that can be domesticated and used to pull carts, but for whatever reason not be ridden?

[Nachtuil]

That's an interesting question to consider. We could of course have both as on Earth but something like a horse I think would a huge impact on human locomotion culture and warfare until the modern era. If humans didn't have horses, do you think we would have bred another animal to fill the role? Maybe our planet could have dog or deer like like creatures that were bred into the role? I'd love to hear what others think about this.

[k1234567890y]

either is ok by me, and if we want something else instead of horses, I am thinking about domesticated duck billed dinosaurs as the substitute of horses