: Genert and the spirit giants made the world so long ago no one : remembers. They were strong, and lived in a fertile garden. : Food was everywhere: jackrabbits came freely to the eating, : and if you dropped a seed you had do jump back when the tree : sprang up with much fruit.
Personally, I read this as "all of this happened so long ago no one remembers". The description clearly is Green Age, especially the jackrabbits bit.
Since it is a Beast Rider shaman who tells this history of Prax, no mention of Tada or his era is made. (And noone ever accused wily Tada of trying to deal fairly with the devil...) It continues:
: But the dead giants failed at last - they tried to deal fairly with the devil.
Enter "our folk", the Beast Riders (whose leaders actually were absent from the Gods' Last Stand).
Given the fact that Sandy told us the Beast Riders gained intelligence in Waha's Contest (rather than the Herds only losing it), little more details of the Golden Age are to be expected from this source. Basically, this entire scenario makes it likely that the Golden Age Oasis Folk already then provided food for the Beast Nomads, like treasured pets used in landscape gardening. Think herd men and herd beasts traveling together in symbiosis...
>>While the >>Golden Age Praxian city folks would have appreciated a horn of plenty per >>city or oasis (as per "savannah watering place"), I doubt they went and >>had Ragnaglar break one off for them.
> They didn't need a Horn of Plenty in the good old days. The land was
> so fertile that jackrabbits came freely to eating etc.
"so long ago none remembers".
>>The Golden Age oasis folk were a sedentary people who cultivated some of >>the land for food production.
> They did?
I fail to see how they were different from the early Vingkotlings and Durevings in their respective land of milk and honey.
> The Golden Age folk weren't vegetarian and the argument is over
> how they gathered their food, _not_ what they ate.
The methods of producing or gathering the food surely would have influenced the diet?
>>There have been descriptions of Golden Age Prax as the land where milk
>>and honey flowed without any need for labor. I don't think so: We're
talking
>>Golden Age Prax here, not Green Age.
> And why wasn't golden age Prax a land of milk and honey?
("Land of Milk and Honey" may have been a too weak translation of the German term "Schlaraffenland", but I'm totally unfamiliar with the suggested term "cockaigne".)
Because something brought change to Genert's Garden between the earliest and the middle Golden Age. The original evergreen broadleaf forest was gone, a new species of Aldryami, the Brown Elves, tended the new kind of forest which replaced the yellow elf forest from the earliest age.
This is the usual transition Green Age -> Golden Age. In the earliest Golden Age, you get jackrabbits offering themselves for lunch, later, when things got complicated, people tended the soil and grew and harvested their food. And learned to take precautions against unexpected shortages.
> Similar
> claims are found about Dara Happa, the Land of Logic and Kralorela.
And all of these were agricultural societies.
Peter:
>>> So why does Aldrya/Redwood give Eiritha the magic
>>> of accelerate growth in Cults of Prax?
Chris :
>> I think this is the magic that the Most Respected >> Elder at the Paps can use to replicate Eiritha's >> action when She first brought forth Eiritha's Bounty. >> I.e., it only works on grass. Praxians would not use >> it on something they planted (because they don't plant >> things),
Julian Lord :
> I'm sure the Praxians have magic places where they grow
> special (or ordinary) plants.
They certainly have places where they harvest special harvests, like skullbush, and they might use magic to accelerate this harvest before the herds move on. However, I don't see any Beast Riders planting these plants as a crop. A sacrifice of part of the bounty to the spirit of the place might be a means of sowing plants, but there would be no tending.
> Some oases are AFAIK controlled by Praxians,
> not Oasis People, for starters ...
There are a couple of altars of Prax with no oasis community attached. (IIRC Tourney Altar, Pimper's Block and Day's Rest, for instance).
All oasis communities (except Pavis and the Paps, and nowadays Moonbroth) are controlled by Beast Riders. The exact group in control may change, but the fact of control won't.
>>>>They are restricted to places unravaged by >>>>the Wildfire, though, where sufficient >>>>water flows. >>> The Oasis folk are restricted to places where>>> sufficient water flows. This has nothing to >>> do with the Wildfire.
> To be fair, it's a definite mythic possibility.
Thanks. I was wondering whether I was alone in this...
> Fertile Earth <> Sufficient Water : Chicken <> Egg ?
There are other factors like nutrients (be they chemical or magical), but water is as crucial to plant life as are carbon dioxide and light (in whatever form Gloranthan myth provides these).
Chris:
>> I think they are largely the same. if they are >> different, I agree with Peter. I see the Oasis Folk >> version of "agriculture" really being more of extended >> gardening, very labor- and water-intensive, mostly >> fruits and vegetables.
> This would vary from Oasis to Oasis
Depending on what families of spirits found shelter there
>> But hey, what would you expect of inbred idiots
> You're confusing them with the Oasis People again ...
In their case, it might rather be a problem of interbreeding with herd men?
Guy Hoyle
> Peter Metcalfe wrote:
>> Joerg Baumgartner:
>>> The Golden Age folk of Prax (the Tada-shi) did have agriculture or >>> horticulture, and therefore the need for appropriate spirits.
> I thought that agriculture and horticulture were unnecessary during
> those days? You could drop a seed to the ground and you'd have to jump
> back because the seed grew so fast.
"Those days" actually is a long time between when the spirit giants made the land and when the devil invaded. Lots of things happened, such as Tada tricking Death towards the end of Golden Age Prax.
> Of course, there are the troublesome ruins of irrigation canals that you
> sometimes find along the Zola Fel, IIRC from Borderlands, so SOMEBODY
> was practicing agriculture at some time in Prax.
The Sun Domers were present only from 870 onwards and didn't expand that far south, IIRC. I doubt the Jrusteli colony at Feroda had much if any agriculture. This leaves the Oasis Folk, at no specified time - but it is unlikely they did so within history and were exterminated before either Jrusteli or EWF contacted them. Heck, the Theyalan missionaries entered already in 35 S.T.
Peter might claim that these canals were part of landscape gardening, but in that case who killed all the gazebos? Received on Tue 25 Apr 2006 - 09:57:59 EEST
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