Soulspeaker Kurn is such a …lovely person, isn’t he?
In truth, in the ancient world, the idea of “all men are brothers” never quite existed. Coyote’s people, a nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe, has just met up with a raw new “civilization” — people who live in permanent houses made up mostly of stacked rocks — with property and ownership and a set of deities. To Coyote’s people, the idea that anyone owns land or that there’s a chief over all the spirits is incomprehensible. In their eyes, spirits are very powerful but they’re all equal.
Kinda hard to assimilate a large number of new people into a subsistence level society under the best of circumstances. Refugees tend to be treated as poor relations at best, driven off at worst (witness the aftermath of the Dust Bowl). Or else if there are enough of them they simply try and conquer somewhere better to live. I wonder if that’s what Greatmother Coyote has in mind, in a more assiduous fashion than direct attack. After all, if you can scare the inhabitants out of a perfectly prosperous region, nothing keeps you from staying there. Of course they will then run into the very conditions that caused the locals to adapt a sessile lifestyle; you don’t need to own your own resources until those that were freely available as you traveled your yearly circuit are now either gone or guarded by others who’ve picked up this pesky idea of ownership. (Not that THAT’S hard once you’ve learned what work farming and herding are…)
Soulspeaker Kurn is such a …lovely person, isn’t he?
In truth, in the ancient world, the idea of “all men are brothers” never quite existed. Coyote’s people, a nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe, has just met up with a raw new “civilization” — people who live in permanent houses made up mostly of stacked rocks — with property and ownership and a set of deities. To Coyote’s people, the idea that anyone owns land or that there’s a chief over all the spirits is incomprehensible. In their eyes, spirits are very powerful but they’re all equal.
Culture shock at its finest.
Kinda hard to assimilate a large number of new people into a subsistence level society under the best of circumstances. Refugees tend to be treated as poor relations at best, driven off at worst (witness the aftermath of the Dust Bowl). Or else if there are enough of them they simply try and conquer somewhere better to live. I wonder if that’s what Greatmother Coyote has in mind, in a more assiduous fashion than direct attack. After all, if you can scare the inhabitants out of a perfectly prosperous region, nothing keeps you from staying there. Of course they will then run into the very conditions that caused the locals to adapt a sessile lifestyle; you don’t need to own your own resources until those that were freely available as you traveled your yearly circuit are now either gone or guarded by others who’ve picked up this pesky idea of ownership. (Not that THAT’S hard once you’ve learned what work farming and herding are…)
Queep – further rumination on just what Greatmother Coyote could do with the idea of hierarchical deities. Oh… my……