From: David Dunham (dunham@pensee.com)
Date: Wed 01 Jul 1998 - 09:57:18 EEST
Trotsky claimed
> Argrath's real name was Garrath, as far as we can tell
What leads you to this conclusion? That's like saying that Sir Tristram's
real name was Tramtrist, the name he used when he was incognito. I always
thought Garrath was hiding out in Prax, after killing the Lunar tax
collectors.
Julian Lord
> Tradetalk, and one of the reasons it has
> spread so successfully is IMO that it is fairly similar to the original
>Mantongue
I don't know that there was a Mantongue (Darktongue and Aldryami are nearly
instinctive for their species, and humans have no instinctive language).
Even if there was, it probably wouldn't be Tradetalk, which I think is a
simplified language, like a pidgin. I can't think offhand of any place
where it has a creole form (i.e. people have adopted it as a native
language, extending it to a full language).
Bruce Hollebone wrote
> David Dunham notes that historical agricultural densities are 1-2
>people/sq. km for
> dry farming and up to 6-12 people/sq. km for irrigated land.
> (See: http://www.pensee.com/dunham/facts/food.html )
I'm not convinced of the accuracy of that data, unfortunately. I haven't
> The Questlines article has 18,000 Colymar on a package of land about 60
yet found a corroborating source. (If anyone has one, please let me know!)
>by 100 km
> (pre 1613). Assuming that 50% of the land is arable (overly generous
>perhaps) this
> gives us a population density of 6 ppl/sq km, excluding the added load of
>towns and
> cities. Even including a fertility bonus of 10% from Ernalda (or
>whomever), this would
> mean that the Orlanthi have a pretty sophisticated irrigated agricultural
>system and
> are fairly densely packed in their farming vales.
I don't believe Sartar is irrigated. Irrigation almost always implies an
entirely different social system, which we know they don't have.
(Irrigation leads to a hierarchical society -- the Dara Happan culture fits
irrigation much better, and guess what, they're known to practice
irrigation.) So any premises which lead to irrigation are suspect.
One assumption may be that those figures are for arable land only -- they
Looking at things from a different angle: an average clan has about 2 hexes
may well include hinterlands, fallow land, pastures, etc.
on the Dragon Pass boardgame map; this is about 240 hides* of land (each
hide is about 120 acres, enough to support 1 family). If you assume a
family is around 8 people (father, mother, 2 grandparents or other elders,
1 adult unmarried sibling [or client], 3 kids), you get 1920 people per
clan, max. Since clans are usually smaller in population, this fits well --
not all land is under productive use. I haven't counted how many hexes the
entire Colymar tribe has, but I'm pretty sure this number is in fairly good
agreement.
* A hide is actually an Anglo-Saxon unit of taxation, but it's used in
> The cattle graze in the valley floors
Only part of the year -- check The Haunted Ruins and you'll see that
David Dunham <mailto:dunham@pensee.com>
games like Pendragon to measure land for productivity purposes. The size
varies, depending on the fertility of the land.
Sartarite clans practice transhumance.
Glorantha/RQ page: <http://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html>
Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein
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