Reply With QuoteLot of interesting stuff on this thread. I read them all and used all my freetime after lunch! Thanks for the entertainment, will be following as you progress.
So here's my updated civilization cradles and spread maps.
Again: the dates are approximate start dates of the civilization cradles, but the area represented in colors it's its final before collapsing and leaving behind cultural inheritors.
Hi Pixie, I love your idea. I tried to represent it in the map (CIV C), with a start date of around 4.500 OT. Problem is, 4.500 O.T. is a long way from the time the story takes place, where the Empire is already like 650 years old in the New Time, so that 4.500 O.T. civ is a bit old to be its direct ancestor.
What I see happening is what you said, then that 4.500 O.T. civ collapsed but another one arose later a bit up north-east (CIV E), heavily influence by the collapsed one, the previous centuries. But, eventually E civ also collapsed, and around 1.800 O.T. a new one arose between those 2 rivers where the original agriculture spread waves met, and that 1.800 O.T. is the direct cultural ancestor of the Empire. I don't know how to represent the 1.800 civ into the map along since the area is occupied by 4.500 already.
But yes, the 4.500 O.T. civ you gave birth to will have been the ancestor of the 1.800 one in the end.
Perhaps that 4.500 O.T. civ should be a bit older, since by the year 5k each wave (blue and red) are situated near the river where they'll clash first, perhaps that civ could have arisen from the conflict with blue by 4.800 O.T. I'd even say by 4.500 O.T. blue would have already lost the battle an expand north-west.
Yes Durakken, you're right about a slight discontinuity after the isthmus. I've moved the isthmus' new center a bit to the north, right after the isthmus elevation range ends when it touches the 5.000 O.T. wave line. The reasoning is that the funnel effect of the elevation range gets people on the area above it roughly by 5.000, with the end of the isthmus forming a new spread direction. It's still a non-exact guess.
However, I don't think it'd take till 2250 OT to get to the Isthmus and beyond from the west.
First, since the model is based on migrations mostly motivated by excesses of population, I think we have to suppose an exponential kind of demographic growth, so I don't think with the model people are just on the center of the wave each time, then expand to the sides, then expand to the next wave. I understand there's people pushing along the whole wave to begin with if the terrain allows it.
Second, on Acelor (the west-south quarter of the continent), there's most likely to be a huge desert area on the mid to north area, channeling migrations to the coastal areas, creating a funnel effect that will speed the expansion to the west a bit, but since I still can't know for sure where exactly and how big the desert will be, for now I can't work that out in the map.
So in the end, I think in fact that migrations from the north-west side of the epicenter (A) will reach the isthmus even earlier than predicted by the model, perhaps by 1-2k years, while those expanding trough the southern coast of Acelor will take a bit longer to get to the west because first they have to travel south trough the Nile like river area. In fact, the spread from the southern coast should probably have a new focus/direction of spread with a slower chronology.
This major change once I get the desert on place will probably throw off Pixie's idea since blue would get to the area much sooner than red and spread farming. There would still be conflict with red as different cultural groups, but it'll be in the area close to the bottleneck of the inner sea.
In fact, then I think I'll have civ E be the older there, originated from blue, then red came and couldn't at first displace E, but did push blue culture south of it down back to the isthmus, then grew its own civ there (civ C) as a result of that long-term conflict. So E and C will be independent and rivaling until one of them collapsed first, most likely the oldest one, E.
Sigh, it's clear the model works best when you already know your terrain and for areas with a uniform spread direction, otherwise I'm afraid you have to create a new wave focus each time there's a major change in the orientation of the migrations, which make things messy, but I reckon interesting, conflict! I still think the model it's useful to get started and get a general idea of the spread chronology.
Last edited by groovey; 11-04-2015 at 07:40 AM.
Lot of interesting stuff on this thread. I read them all and used all my freetime after lunch! Thanks for the entertainment, will be following as you progress.
Why 365.25 days in a year? Our calendar has quite the history and reasoning behind it. You know it started off as a 300 day 10 equal month calenders which was then modified to add homage to people and then leap years were made because Christians saw that easter was not in the right place for them...and someone noticed that it got out of whack again which created leap centuries and etc...
Astronomically we have the sidereal year which we could use and it matches somewhat coincidentally. We could toss out our current calenders but that would be annoying. My point though is that using 365.25 may be easier for audiences, but if you don't have a specific reason for it it might not be best for your world and not fit in.
As far as astronomy being only for the emperor. In what way? The sky and stars are important for crops and navigation which is why long voyages out in the middle of the ocean were impossible for the most part*. Any sailor worth their salt knows the stars. Any farmer knows the seasons and the number of moons between them. In short, everyone knows the stars and planets to a much better degree than most of us to the point that you're left with relational astronomy and higher detail astronomy.
*If you don't know the way you navigate is by relative star positions. Once you can find orientation stars and you know what time it is you can do a little math and find out where you are which is more necessary the future from land you go be waves push you about and there is nothing else to orient your direction and position by.
Last edited by Durakken; 11-04-2015 at 01:10 PM.
Ilgoth, thanks for stopping by and your kind words. It never ceases to amaze me when my noob maps and ramblings raise some attention.
You got good points Durakken. I still have things to work out regarding that.
To be honest, I designed my own calendar based around the number 6 (or multiples), since it's key for the Empire. So I thought :
1 year = 12 months = 6 weeks each = 6 days each week = 432 days = too long
OR
1 year = 6 months = 6 weeks each = 6 days each week = 216 days = too short
Then I almost settled for a Greyhawk calendar re-hash, with 365 days a year = 12 months = 28 days each + 1 seven days festivals each 3 months. I loved this one.
Problem was... I have a very extensive family tree of the Imperial family and some nobility dynasties... for which I used to add birth and death dates with months and even days, and it was a pain to try to adapt dates with this calendar to a program which only works with our calendar... so for very practical reasons, I had to settle for a calendar like ours.
Of course... that was when I added the day and month of birth and death, but by now I just add the year... so this might be my chance to make my own calendar with its own History. But of course... if the number of days in a year is too different from ours... then I'd have to be painfully careful when thinking in long term chronology, because if I end up with a 216 days year, for example the chronology for the farming spread and civilizations arising would have to be stretched by a half to match the actual lapse of time I have in mind.
My model for Astronomy being an imperial prerogative was China, as I mentioned.
You're absolutely right common people knew their skies much better than we now, but their knowledge wasn't specialized, it was practical for what they needed and the Crown was fine with that.
The main God is the Sun, his wife the Moon being second, and the Emperor is their representative on the world, so the Imperial family has a special relationship with the sky, and to guard that special bond (if fact Astronomy grew under the Crown's wing), only the Crown gets specialized Astronomers that can predict certain astronomical events and make either modest scientific discoveries or celestial interpretations (so there's astrological elements mixed), for the Emperor to then divulge or not at will.
This doesn't mean there weren't lots of home-made astronomers who in secret did their own observations and findings, but since specialized Astronomy and astrological interpretations were considered an Imperial monopoly, closely linked to their religious bond with the gods, they couldn't be open about it.
I was aware stars were key for navigation at night, but I figured within the Empire most navigation is done close to the coast mostly by daytime. I guess they couldn't always avoid travelling at night if they wanted to make good time though, so I guess they need those stars maps more than I thought.
Last edited by groovey; 11-05-2015 at 04:33 AM.
Well if the thing that is holding you back is conversion that's not a real problem thanks to Julian dating and date conversion algorithms which can convert any date you give it from the standard to whatever you come up with.
Edit:
What I mean to say is that there is Julian dating. I don't know if you know what that is... I am guessing if you read the above you or others might be confusing it with the Julian Calender. They're not the same. The Julian date is used largely in astronomy... and I'd hope to some degree in History... which counts only days up to x amount and then just resets apparently. The beginning date is in like 1400 BCE and won't reach the next cycle for another 3000 years so we're still good to use it.
The important part about this is there is mathematical formula to go from any 365.2425 date (and with modification 365.25 date)...
As I described this I realized I was being a bit stupid... All you need to do is...
Know a date in your current system like January 5th, 515
Math it like so : 515 * 365.25 +5
Now you have the Julian date equivalent for your world and from there you just need to do the math to get the math for whatever other system (I just set up Javascript converters myself ^.^).
So if you have a year that is 6 months (btw Month means moons so probably need something to cover that problem as I assume your moon works on 28 days, but if it's closer to 36 then you start moving away from earth like conditions that might be catastrophic and unrealistic) with 6 weeks of 6 days you just divide into the answer...
So you have...
188108.75 meaning that 516 is a leap year ^.^ but we can ignore that.
188108 / 216 = 870
days remaining: 188108 - 187920 = 188
188 / 36 = 5
days remaining: 8
So January 5th, 515 = The 8th day of the 5th moon, 870.
Doing it long hand is a lot of trouble but if you know any sorta of simple programming you can make something to handle the conversion easily. I find for myself and my timelines I like to still work in the Gregorian Calendar we all use, because it's easier to think in those terms and then after convert, or have them side by side.
I will point out that this type of calendar is probably the most cliched and probably the least realistic. I have a similar calendar centered around the number 8 and I'd get rid of it if I didn't think it had an adequate explanation for why it developed and retained itself.
Last edited by Durakken; 11-05-2015 at 06:13 PM.
Interesting. Do you think setting up some formulas in Excel will do? To automate the process you did? I acn do that, but I'm terrible at math and have 0 experience in programming, so Java sounds, even as simple as you made it sound here, too much for me to handle.
Edit:
I found this to convert any date of our system into Julian Date, so I could get the seed from there and save one step.
For Jan 5th, 515 the calculator's result is 1909165.500000, which then messes up the rest of the calculations, since it gives the year 9351 as a result in my world, not 870. What I'm I missing?
Last edited by groovey; 11-06-2015 at 03:27 AM.
Ahhh, math!
There's a few flaws in the date-calculation of yours, Durakken.
For starters, the conversion method. Though I can get the same result using your math, several things are missing (namely the 4317 BC epoch) and the input date of D1 M1 Y1 would result in Julian Day Number 1.
You would be correct if it was the target world's JDN.
The Julian Date converter Groovey used is correct.
As a reference, I compared that converter's result of [Jan 1, 2000] to the example given on the Wikipedia page. Both give the same number.
The calculations that process the JDN to get to the New World JDN are slightly flawed as well.
It can result in day 0 and month 0.
For the example you used D5 M5 Y515; this resulted in D8 M5 Y870.
Try using D2 M2 Y515. It will result in M0 D0 Y871.
Using a slightly different set of formulas:
Y = floor(JDN/216);
M = floor((JDN - Y*216) / 36) + 1;
D = floor((JDN - Y*216 - (M-1)*36)) + 1;
You should now get D1 M1 Y871.
Like this?Originally Posted by Groovey
The gray fields are input, all others are formulas.
According to my calculations, the input of D5 M1 Y515 results in JDN 188104 and D5 M6 Y870.
The slight differences (JDN is 4 lower) can be attributed to the more accurate conversion method (the one from the Wiki).
Wow, Shikotei! That's exactly what I was trying to achive in Excel, but I was very stuck. I think your set up could do the job more than fine. Many thanks.
Yes because our world's JDN isn't taken into consideration, cuz its not needed and its wrong if your system is Julian rather than Gregorian... That is to say 365.25 vs 365.2425.
For your purposes you just need to know how many days have passed on your calendar since it started, not our JDN for the same date. Then you can redivide them to your new system. The problem with what I did is forgetting no 0 month which is always problematic.
Also one of the reasons people like JDN is no BCE negative numbers so you might want to consider not starting that year 1 month 1 day 1
Edit: also the .500000 on JDN is for us peoples. Midnight is high noon for astronomers. Most people just ignore it but basically in JDN .0 is noon and begins the day while midnight .5
Last edited by Durakken; 11-06-2015 at 11:51 AM.
Now that I'm home, if you'd like I could change a little bit of the code in one of my converters to your system... I can even make it so it can tell you how long it has been since significant events or who's alive or what not. Not hard to do, just busy work really for all those extras.
