Migration, Extinction Events, and Available Animals || Society & Culture Worldbuilding Guide Part 2
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- Опубліковано 20 чер 2024
- Welcome to the second part of my societies and culture worldbuilding guide series, which is a sort of season 2 of my worldbuilding guide series. These videos build off the physical world building we've already done. Part 2 will include talking about human migration, extinction events, and the availability of large domesticable animals!
Worldbuilding Guide Playlist: • Worldbuilding Guide
Worldbuilding Guide Blog: www.madelinejameswrites.com/b...
00:00 Intro
1:20 Mapping Human Migration
3:50 Migration Paths
8:02 Migration Distance
10:28 Available Beasts of Burden
14:19 Extinction Events
23:45 Mapping Extinction Events
27:26 Final Thoughts
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Got here through the community around Worldbuilding pasta and Artifexian and I must say I'm not disappointed! I posed myself the same question as You did (concerning the causes for the lack of domesticable animals in the Americas, Australia and partly Africa) and after hours of research wasn't able to find a good answer. And you provided me with one!
To add a bit to the discussion, I've read about the additional discrepancy between Africa and Eurasia and one thing that did come up quite often was the fact (and this is a gross oversimplification) that the further you are from the equator, the more domesticable the animals become (in terms of their docility, not the other things needed). The horse contra zebra thing is well known, but you can also see this, albeit blured, in Bovidae and Cervidae among others. The interpretation can be that less dense the biota is, the less danger there is (broadly) and the more docility can be developed. Now I suppose one might argue that the Polar bear contra any other bear sort of ruins this theory, but I didn't get that far. It's just a mind experiment really, don't have much in the way of actual papers supporting this.
Hello!! Thank you! And oh that's fascinating! I wonder if there is a kind of "temperate" vs extreme hot/cold for animals too, so it's less the further away from the equator but the more temperate the environment.
Nice video as always, in your usual style. I love the fact that there are no "major" numbers, no heavy mathematics.
The day I have a lot of math in my videos y'all need to be very concerned about my well-being 😂 (and thank you)
One thing to consider for your newest discovered southern continent is the impact of introduced species on the existing fauna. New Zealand and Hawaii for example, were discovered by humans only in the last 2000 years or so. Yet, their native species have been decimated, not as much by hunting/gathering activities, but by introduced plant and animal species, like rats, dogs, etc. I think your mid purple color for the South makes sense in that context.
My question (might be a future video) is... How do you decide which areas had the right balance between coevolution (plenty of species, but difficult domestication) and late discovery (mass extinctions, few candidate species left) to be where large scale domestication, and thus human civilization, first flourished?
Yes i absolutely agree, the native species would probably be quite destroyed. What I am imagining is that people would have swept through, identified things they found "useful" and domesticated/started cultivating them, but the ecosystem and whatever was left in the wild would probably be nearly destroyed. Since I'm only worried about animals available for human agriculture/animal husbandry, that destruction isn't a big factor yet.
In regards to where civilizations would first flourish, I think the earliest civilizations did not have as advanced of agriculture, so the presence of animals didn't have a huge impact on them. They were all mostly in fertile river valleys and other easy-for-agriculture places where they didn't need more advanced agricultures or draft animals yet. Two parts from now I am going through agriculture and the type of agricultures found where which will hopefully get most of that answered. But I would imagine your earliest advanced civilizations would be found where nature mostly handles watering/easy irrigation, and soil nutrient replenishment/good retention soils. These would also probably be early migration areas first.
@@madelinejameswritesAgreed. Humans got pretty lucky in that there were so many excellent domestication candidates located in that "early migration sweet spot" (Eurasia). If you have good candidate species in the north half of the western continent, that would be a logical "cradle" of civilization spot. Certainly compared to the eastern continent, which would likely suffer from a lot of extinctions before humans had developed enough to focus on domestication vs hunting/gathering.
I'm sure Jared Diamond would have so many thoughts on your world's possibilities! Thanks for using GG&S and similar quality references to baseline your approach to your worldbuilding. It really makes for a much more diverse and immersible world.
I had never even considered that Eurasian animals co-evolving with humans could help explain the massive waves of extinctions after humans migrated into the Americas, and consequently the lack of domestic animals there. It makes so much sense though - even if there's necessarily still a lot of conjecture in these theories. Absolutely brilliant content, and now I'm really looking forward to future videos!
Thank you so much 😊
Before subscribing to scientific journals I'd highly recommend reaching out to the corresponding author of the paper you are interested in as they will likely send you a copy of their paper for free!
Oh that's a great suggestion! Would definitely save some money too
These are also accessible through university libraries (idk if public libraries ever subscribe to scientific journals) if any of the members of your discord are in college or university you can ask them to log in to their school accounts, see if their school is subscribed to that journal and find the article. They often have downloadable pdfs.
Awesome as always
Another great guide! It seems to me like the megafaunal extinctions were also less severe in the tropics, independent of when humans arrived. On the map in your video, the worst-hit regions of Africa were the extreme north and south, and the Amazon was not as affected as the temperate parts of the Americas. This would make sense since the climate change at the end of the glacial period was less severe near the equator.
So I finally finished the guide so far. It's going to take me million years to complete, I'm currently just finishing part one xD.
I love the approach, there's all the detail I wanted for my world, but it's also manageable unlike the other guides I found so far. I especially love that you touched on upwelling, not only is it super interesting to me, I want to dive a bit deeper into fishing cultures and I need to know where the fish are in order to do that 😂.
I really hope that life won't get in the way and you get to the regional guides at some point too. The regional diversity of geography and climate fascinates me and I haven't been able to figure out how to replicate it so far.
Thank you for your great work 😊
I'm so so glad you're enjoying the guide! And I really hope I get to regional stuff too before too long!
I'm so so glad you made a video on this topic! I don't think most people creating worlds think back to when their sapient species first evolved and where and when they migrated, but this is my jam! As you might expect, my winged people... are a complication on this. So I would keep trying to figure out which biomes would apply which pressures to urge these people to evolve into different niches (short wingspan for dense forests, large wingspan for open areas like prairie and ocean), how long they would even stay in one place to continue adapting, how fast they would spread out, what would be barriers to _them_ (there are birds who rely on wind to fly like condors I believe, and other birds have great active flight) but mostly thinking that the wind belts that were impassable to ships would be impassable to soaring people unless they persevere and walk, which doesn't seem super likely but... Well, you see why I get stuck here often. Plus, when did these people evolve vs when humans did (currently thinking concurrently), and I want the flying people to be a minority so why would that be (thinking they reproduce less than humans who are agriculturalists, like in real life with hunter gatherers compared to farmers) and how would they treat each other...
This is so intriguing. Have you looked into the island effect on birds? I've watched some really cool videos on that with how it affects sizes which could be interesting for you!
@@madelinejameswrites I have! I have a few different types of winged people that I just want to exist and am sort of backdating the justifications for them, like hummingbird winged people, because they're cool (even though physically they wouldn't be possible, I want them), and the best way I thought of to allow them to have such impractical flight is if they didn't have a need for long distance flight, so they have a lush island with no threats (but you could argue they then would logically rather lose their flight and just climb trees for fruit, since that would be more energetically efficient, but the rule of cool comes in here)
I love your videos so much! Do you think in a world with multiple sapient species that the migration process would be any different?
Do you mean different different like dwarves and elves or more homo subspecies like neanderthals and denisovans? If they share an ancestor and birthplace, you would probably see the specific subspecies having migrated out into a particular environment and then continuing their evolution to be very effective there. So I would expect those subspecies to be much more limited in where they went. But if it's very different, not really the same birthplace, i think it definitely depends on if they are adapted to the same environments and food sources.
This guide impressively ambitious. I’ve been building cultures for several years now for my RPG world, and developed a much more detailed culture template than most UA-cam worldbuilders seem to have, but I never considered this evolutionary approach that tracks back to the original arrival of humans or other sapients. And only recently did I add a whole section on domestic animals instead of just integrating them into the economy, property, and military categories. This way is much more work than I would be able to put in for my world, but I applaud you for your dedication.
I’d encourage you and your audience to consider the why as well as the how of early human migration. Just as in modern immigration studies, there are “push” factors that make people want to leave their old territory, and “pull” factors that influence their choice of where to go. Population pressure is probably the commonest "push” factor, but climate change, natural disaster, disease, and pests might also have played parts. In the real world, there doesn’t seem ever to have been a big predator species so nasty that we just decided to abandon its habitat completely, but in a fantasy world with dragons, giants, trolls, or other imaginary terrors, we might well have done just that. “Pull” factors would be more abundant forage or prey species, milder winters or more rain, availability of medicinal herbs or hot springs, or even just natural beauty.
Sounds like you've really developed a robust system for your world! And thank you! In the next part (2 after this) we'll get into more of the factors you've mentioned, talking about conflict and migration and the rise and fall of societies etc so we can build era maps. I'm TRYING not to get too in depth this early, and increasing in detail as we get closer to the present but we shall see!
Another great video. My only question this time, are the "10 generations" you mention for domestication generations of the human or animal?
The animal!
Got a climate change tag on a fictional world building video! 😂 We need to to make awards for stumping the censorship algorithm.
That's fantastic 🤣
For my World of Entorais, I have only a few thousand years of migration to consider (starting with "fully evolved" and technologically advanced humans), but invasive species from off-world are a double threat (two sources).
Oh that will definitely be interesting! Are you thinking the impact on native species and megafauna would be really extreme then?
@madelinejameswrites well in the world's semi-secret narrative history the whole biosphere was nearly eradicated, by biological, chemical, and nuclear fallout from an interstellar war. So the impact from mixed species is largely moot... but which survive and which thrive is the real puzzle.
Uum? You know your Human Migration map is badly out of date right?
Which one? I reference a couple. I only can show the ones that are available to use without copyright and all that, so only ones on wiki commons which has very limited options.
@@madelinejameswrites First off Modern Humans made it into Europe the first time around sixty or so thousand years ago, but didn't start to get established until fifty years ago. They left Africa for the first time between 200 thousand and 150 thousand years ago. Humans go into N America between 30 to 50 thousand years ago and where in S. America by 25 to 30 thousand years ago. its also suspected humans may have reached Australia around 75 to 80 thousand years ago (but Australia is a pain to find anything in).
Genus Homo has been out of Africa for at least a million years. so no the mega-fauna extinction map doesn't line up with the Human Migration one at all temporally being off by at least 10s of thousands of years and in some cases hundreds of thousand of years.
Secondly while the percentage of Mega-Fauna lost is mostly right, its shown as a 'at this point in time' meaning the present. none of these area's had a single massive die-off all at once (outside what happen on small islands like Hawaii).
For and example Europe's native horses lasted until WW1, the wild European Auroch lasted until the early seventh century in Poland.
the map of Mega-Faunal extinction doesn't align with the current human migration one temporally very well, but it does align with climate change maps in the various regions fairly well until you get to the small/remote pacific islands or the major agricultural/population booms of the classical and medieval periods.
@@codydunsmuir9398 So
Your time ranges and all that roughly line up with what I've seen in the research journals I've been reading with a few differences. There have been a lot of new theories and ranges for when anatomically modern humans reached different places based on improved technologies that allow scientists to reanalyze findings from different places. Australia has always been the least concrete and largest possible time range. Recent findings that I've read were incorporated into the article I cited in my video and blog on this. I'm fairly confident that the years and findings I referenced in this are consistent with some of the recent theories. I found consistent explanations in a number of recent scientific journals that were heavily cited and explained the inconsistencies, difficulties with exact measurements, and possible alternatives. If you have scientific sources that are recent and contradict this, I would love to look those over and see if there's even never research I missed. As for the graphics, I mentioned this in the video but they aren't from the same sources I got my data from and are the only ones I could legally use. They should provide a decent visual for what these kinds of maps look like that were trying to replicate. But definitely go with the time ranges that I say/have in the blog and not what's in the graphic.