Introduction to History:




Earth History and the History




of Anieth

Persian and Zelosian

What is history? I know, it seems a silly question, but it is not. For you see, history is only what was written down and survived the years. Pre-history (as in prehistoric) is all the history that has come to us through word of mouth and reconstructions from artifacts and inferences from what others had written down. It is suprising, how little we actually know of Europe before Rome, yet every year more and more is constructed. We do know that much does not change, even costumes can stay the same for hundreds of years. This is because people tend to be imitative and traditional. Sons dress like their fathers did. New histories of technology reveal that much of what we think is "modern" was invented before the Greeks, not in the Middle Ages or the Industrial Age. We know now that Neanderthal man had many of the implements that we think of as having been invented in the Neolithic Age, or 20,000 years later! History is a fascinating subject because it changes so much. A paper is unearthed that may change the entire way we view a battle that everyone thinks went such and such a way because they base their knowledge on other papers. Usually, the recordings we have are by the conquerors. What we know of Europe is mostly what the Greeks and Romans thought of it.

In most modern schools, the study of Western Civilization jumps from the study of the Egyptians to the study of the Greeks. Although the Egyptians are a fascinating study, they did not exist in isolation. A little is said of Sumer and the beginnings of civilization in Mesopotamia, yet little is said of the later empires that existed there except as enemies of the Egyptians (Hittites) and the Greeks (Persians). Yet we owe much to these peoples. It is know speculated that much of what the Greeks wrote down, they borrowed from other people; technology, philosophy, even religious ideas. From a study of the ancient gods, we can see the spread of an idea almost as easily as we can see the spread of DNA in the study of bone fragments.

TMuch of what was passed to Greece was Persian. The architecture, styles in statuary, political structures and philosophy of the empires of Cyrus the Great and Darius the Great influenced Greece before Alexander ever defeated Darius III and inherited the empire that stretched all the way to India. The Persians and the people who existed before them on the Turkish Penisula are especially fascinating to us because they are Zelosia. In Anieth, the ancient Persian forefathers were able to conquer Europe and spread their empire west, across Greece and Italy. In Earth history Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire which stretched from Greece to India. There was a road system in place, a central government, taxes collected all across this area, a uniform sytem of gods and a high level of industry. Alexander merely conquered the rulers of it. We do not know what happened in Anieth later than about 1700BCE (if we were to use Earth dating) yet we can speculate that if Alexander were to arise in Zelosia, he would have an Empire the size of the Roman Empire!

Yet let us step back a little. According to the records, the Akkadians (ancient Persians) were stopped in their spread north by the Scythians. It is said that Darius the Great was very frustrated in his push into their territories because they had no central ruler. He had to conquer and re-conquer every little village. The Scythians represented what I call a "confederacy" or a group of similar people with no central goverment. The Scythians and the Celts and the Goths were groups that pushed west and north out of Sarmatia, which is said to be the home of the Indo-Europeans. The Akkadians themselves were Indo-Europeans who conquered Babylon. Most of what we think of as "European" culture orignated around the Black Sea. The highly decorative animal and organic designs, the mobile cultures on horseback, the non-centralized governments, the scorn of most pottery and brick building out of clay, the fair-haired people who were aggressive, jealous of their freedom and who worshipped the gods of war and wind came out of this area. They are very similar to the Mongols and the Lakota in the Americas, also pastoral confederacies who worshipped wind gods as the king gods.

Here is the extent of the Empire that was so similar to that of Zelosia that predates the Greeks. This Achamedid Empire was short-lived and existed about 700 BCE. This Empire was inherited from the Assyrians (famous for their actions in the Bible) and the Akkadians who had it about 2300BCE. All of these people were locals dominated by a group that had come out of the north, very like what had happened in India. Although these people intermarried, they stayed in place as a ruling caste that was very different in appearance and style than the peoples they conquered. The brought in their ruling gods of wind and fire that dominated the local earth and water gods and goddesses. This rich mixture of culture produced a very distinct caste arrangement of nobles, merchant/farmers (the previous rulers), priests and craftsmen (both local and imported) and slaves and laborers who had been so before.

I show you these Empire pictures to give you a grasp of what happened in Zelosia. Most school children learn of the Greeks and the Battle of Marathon and the Trojan War. In many Western Civilization classes, this is were the West begins. However, in the history of Anieth, the Greeks "lost". I say this in quotes because there were no Greeks, for the Zelosians conquered Scythia and Greece about the time just after the Akkadian Empire about 2000BCE. We do not know why they went West, but we know that they were a sea-fairing people and they wanted to control the sea in order to control the trade that came out of the West. The world of Anieth was also different in that the shapes of the land were not what we knew on Earth. The stars were the same, but not the planet. This may have more to do with why Zelosia went north and west. As you can see, the river valley here runs almost straight to Anieth.

We have tried to place Zelos as if it were on Earth and it seems to be close to where Rome was and Rome went north and west. So although the culture and the people are so much like the Akkadians, they might have been Romans who rose earlier than on Earth and were influenced by the Eastern cultures. Ibarra is certainly the Spanish peninsula which would make Anieth very like Western France, maybe Brittany. Our stellar studies say that it was further north, about the latitude of Britain at 50 degrees north rather than 45. At first the Zelosians went around by sea and settled in Ibarra, but all the lands up the Zelosian River valley and on the coast were heavily settled and influenced by Zelosian culture. Remember that the population was sparse, much more so than it was at the time of Rome. Only about 100-200 thousand people lived around Zelos and Rome had over a million people in the area. I like to think of Zelos as Troy; the culture is more similar, the technology is about the same, and the values are a better mix of East and Northeast rather than Roman.

The Proto-Celtic Horse People

The Tualárach were a race of pastoral peoples spread across the Plain o fhte Horses and down the Zelosian Valley and up into the hills. They claim to have come from the "land of the sunrise." Tualárach, literally means, "people of the stallion" and is rendered, like most of the languages of Anieth in an Irish, Welsh and Gaelic mix that Peter Shields invented for spelling the language. Alexei thought this ridiculous for it was accurately rendered in Cyrillic, but Pete said the spellings gave the langauges a "Celtic flavor" because the people were most like the Celts of Ancient Europe. However, they were also Gothic and like the Scythians. I thought of them as Western Indo-European or Western European. They had moved into Anieth that had been settled by the Anu, a broad-headed people of brown skin and hair. The Horse People were blond to dark brown with no red hair, with fair to light brown of skin, and with blue and brown eyes. Once they began to interbreed with the Clans the coloring of the Clans crept into the royals and from them into the Nations. Black and red hair appeared and skin both lighter and darker and green eyes appeared. Straight hair also appeared as well as the height of the Tree Clans. The Tualárach were not a small people, men averaging about 160cm, but the Veldonaccii of our time were easily two meters tall. The Donnaccii and Lithmeraccii patronized by the Oak and the Pine were as tall and larger people. The Druaccii were a little shorter, but also larger of frame than the Veldonaccii who often were finer boned. Yet, they too, had larger people because of their patronage with the Wolf Clan.

Although the Trees influenced their behavior, they stayed very much as they were, a semi-nomadic confederation of families spread over a wide territory. They gathered at certain times of the year for various festivals and there sought husbands and slaves and exchanged huge numbers of animals: sheep, cattle, goats, pigs, horses and dogs. After the Nine Nations were formed under the Tree patronage, the royals built hillforts, but the main body of the population lived in tents except in Dumona where they lived in stone houses. Houses of lumber were largely unheard of. Farms were also sparse, for the Tualárach lived off their animals and some gathering of fruits, nuts and the grains of the Plain. Only in Dumona did they grow like the Anu had, for the Anu population was much higher there. They grew emmer wheat, sea kale, nettles and a kind of legume as well as greens, berries and herbs. They also raised more dairy cows there rather than the meat cow popular on the Plain. Of course hunting was extremely popular and much of their food was wild game.

The Workshop of a Luthier (instrument maker)

We have put here a copy of Karen's article of the Clan War so that you might read about how the Nations came about. How were the Tualárach similar to the peoples of Ancient Europe about the time of Babylon and Crete? How did the peoples of Ancient Europe differ from those of Babylon, Crete or Egypt? Much of what we know is now based on archeological evidence, not on hearsay from the later historians of Greece and Rome. We can also speculate based on our knowledge of other confederations such as the Mongols, Berbers, Vikings and Siberians. We know that life "on the horse" was not unpleasant at all, but very organized and comfortable compared with "camping." Life in hillforts and stone settlements were also not the primitive lives that we assumed even twenty years ago. People died young, yes, but people died young up until the beginning of the 20th Century. On the average. Infant mortality was high throughout human history and the mortality of women in childbed was high and for men in accidents was high and people exposed to every element and every weather are healthier as young adults but age quickly. Yet the conclusion is that, for the average person, life has pretty much been the same for the last 10,000 years if not more. Only in very recent times has electricity and the ease of travel and communication made life different. Some do not think it is even better. A better life has always depended on wealth. A street person today lives a life no better than a peasant of the Middle Ages or a slave of Rome, perhaps worse. Much of what we read in books is about the very rich or the nobility, usually the top five or ten percent of any population at any time.

People who do reconstructions of history or live in "living museums" find out that life was not as hard as we have learned. People made everything by hand, but often people specialized and trade at fairs was an event looked to as much as we look to our craft fairs or holiday markets. Often people lived in the same place all their lives, but they traveled very long distances. It was on foot or by horseback, but they thought nothing of traveling 100 Km to see someone or go to a special event. They had no books or radios or television, but they were all very adept at story telling and singing. Often people have so much fun camping that they forget that people sat around fires and sang or told ghost stories all the time, every night was a camp out. Their tents were waterproof and cosy and light and full of clean, healthy people. They used saunas regularly and swam in lakes. The Celts thought the Romans were filthy and used running water in their hospitals.

My point is that we were shocked at how little different life was in Anieth and how much better it was. The trade-off that we moderns have made for convenience and comfort is the loss of friendship, clean air, wide open spaces to wander, adventure, quiet and solitude, but also the pride and joy of craft and task. The thing I found most surprising about Anieth was that everyone was always busy. They also sat around a lot and talked, but as they talked and sat they always fiddled with something, spinning, carving, leatherwork, stonework, every kind of busy work you can imagine. I once sat with a fellow who spent several hours talking to me and at the end of the afternoon had made four fishing hooks complete with flies tied to them. He was not so very different from my own grandfather.

The thing that I want to emphasize to you is that life was not very different once you got over the language and some of the customs. Peter Shields was convinced that the Tualárach were Irish for he was Irish and the Shields were exempt from a lot of the Game effects. Bob Gallanis was convinced that the Zelosians were Greek for he was Greek. The rest of us were a bit skeptical of this, but it was a fantasy world. Why not play upon the natural sympathies of the players doing the re-enactment?

The Celts, like the Tualárach suffered a similar fate at the hands of Rome. They also fought between themselves and the Romans picked out one particular king to reward if he would fight the others. The Zelosians needed a traitor king to unravel the block of Nations. They also needed to turn the Nations against one another. Marsyas, the Zelosian Commande played by Bob Gallanis, depended on the chaos that occured in the Red Nation of the Rising Sun ruled by the Ula Druacca (Druaccii) and Raol Aveldonacc for they were the strongest of the Nations and to get them as allies meant he could attack the Wood up through the south while the Oak and Holly were busy with a civil war. In the Game that Lucia changed, Raol became King of the Green Nation that controlled Belva. He defected again, but Marsyas could not attack the Clans down the Trader's Road. The Road lead over the mountains and it ended right in the middle of Holly lands and no closer to An Doras than the southern way.

map by Xoán M. Paredes

It is interesting that pockets of Celts in Turkey and Spain were never conquered by the Romans but remained independent and subject to taxes only. Caesar had the same problem with the Celts as Cyrus had with the Scythians; there was not central leadership. In Gaul, Caesar could push one king against another, one family against another until one strong man arose who had a larger territory. Then Rome could take out the strong man and effectively control the territory. However, most of Gaul was run by locals who paid taxes as was the case in Britain. The British Celts were so close to their ancestors that they refused to live in any of the cities built by the Romans. Even today we see the legacy of these nomadic people in our traditions of common law, public pasture, and strong local organization with a curtailed central ruler. The hatred of despot kings and emperors carried with it intense jealousies that the nobles had for their own territories not being taxed or put upon for the king. Much of Western government still gets enmired in petty squabbles.

The Wood

There is no Earth equivalent of the Wood Clans, for they were magical shape shifters. This is where we depart from all resemblance to Earth historically. However, as Lucia Shields noted, to us of European descent, the Clans make sense mythologically. The Clans are close to our own history in a deeper way than events and people who invented things or did things of note. Our history in the West is full of stories of dryads, talking trees, animals who talk or wear clothing and animals who are people and vice versa. The animals and trees also have stable personalities, bears are bear-like, foxes are fox-like. We cannot compare anyone on Earth who was historically like those of Anieth, but wer can look to our folklore for similar stories. Others have done this throughout these writings. As to why they existed, well that was hotly debated among our people, let me tell you! Why a world so much like Earth except for these magical beings? Lucia thought it was a message. Peter thought it was because our stories are living in us as if they were memories and Anieth was a king of world of the mind. Alexei Greshenko thought that the shape shifters were the key to knowing why Anieth had been created and pointed to obvious markers like the Tree Alphabet of the Celts being the same Trees of the Clans and the mazes of the Shields and An Doras. Whatever the reason, I believe that our encounters with the shapeshifters made us more aware of the stories that we had heard as children. And who can say that the Fairy Tale is not as valid a history as another tale written by an ancient historian? We have seen blatant errors in the works of scholarly people, why not see truth in the fictional works for children? Who knows why Anieth existed, but it did. I was there.