Worldbuilding Wednesdays: The Nu Human Condition

Welcome to Worldbuilding Wednesdays!  Every Wednesday, we spend what is probably far too much time walking through our worldbuilding process.  This week, we're looking at something we won't actually be using:  a human culture that develops in isolation.

What We Have So Far

Our sample area has three intelligent species that, from our perspective, are just starting to interact and influence each other.  We have the nu humans, whom we'll be looking at in just a little bit; the furries, who occupy the upper reaches of the forests and who are slowly spreading to the ground; and the scalies, who mostly occupy the beaches, wetlands, and tide-washed roots.  Our nu humans are mostly guaranteed to be left alone on the megasavannas, grasslands that spread across areas comparable to the entire planet Earth, so we'll be starting there.  A few weeks back, we established that even in a single such savanna with as large a territorial spread as possible, there would be multiple cultures in a single savanna... but we aren't going to worry about that.  What we will be worrying about are the four parts of a culture that don't involve other people:  Language, Values, Norms, and Social Organization.

Terms and Conditions

We are intentionally avoiding certain aspects of culture that normally would be of interest.  Technology, for example.  Religion is another.  We'll be avoiding those aspects of culture that involve interacting with other cultures.  We'll also avoid the bits that would only arise after our species start developing civilization, like urban concerns.

Why?  Mostly because the culture we're developing is only going to be useful when it comes to making the culture we're actually interested in.  What we need is a baseline to tweak as it interacts with others into the culture that we'll actually be using on The Hill.  What we come up with this week is that baseline; it's only useful in the context of what it will become.

So long as it's understood that what we come up with is intentionally stunted and underdeveloped, we should be ready to go.  One proto-culture, coming up!

Language of the Grasslands

This is probably a biased statement, but every culture we've ever encountered has had its own language.  Multiple social species, even the non-human ones on Earth, also have rudimentary or pseudo-languages; whale songs are the most famous, but far from the only examples.  Intelligent simians, ravens, parrots, raccoons, elephants, and even certain species of bats have communication systems that share traits with languages.  So far as we can tell, if you're at all social and have more than a set minimum level of intelligence, language is something that happens.

How does it happen?  Haven't the foggiest.  Languages don't leave fossils, and as far as we can tell, people developed the first languages so far back that the first true languages might pre-date homo sapiens.  Apparently, the topic is so charged that it was banned from open discussion in linguistic circles for about a century.

What we do know is that, once it's there, a language develops to suit the needs of its users.  This makes sense- it would be really weird if human languages featured noises that we can't make.  Similarly, a language will favor those sounds that are easy to make and of use to the people speaking it, especially considering where they spend most of their time.  Words will be developed that have the most utility, and this is where we casually mention the old adage about how many different words for snow that polar-dwelling tribes developed.  It works both ways, of course; some languages don't have different words for blue and green, simply because the speakers don't need a different word.

With that in mind, let's consider our nu humans.  Out in the endless grassy plains, they'll have much to say about grass, the color green, and the skies above.  They'll have rather less to say about other biomes, but we can imagine that they would be encountered on the edges of the savanna.  The oceans would be places of extreme danger to nu humans, with the most vicious predators on the planet crawling out of the waves faster than a person can sprint.  The discussions of the day are mostly about hunting, gathering, or getting out of the rain.

We can get an idea of what the basic language would sound like by looking at people on Earth who live in savannas and plains.  Two examples are the Lakota people of North America and the Maasai of East Africa.  Both have more than two dozen consonants and 8 or 9 vowels, both have explosive sounds and glottal stops, and both use tone to change the meaning of a word.  The upshot is that the noises they use can be used quietly or projected easily, and carry readily through open spaces.  More importantly, you can easily tell what someone says if they shout it at you from a distance.

One particular kind of noise would be special in the nu human tongue:  susurration.  Noises reminiscent of rustling grasses wouldn't be used often, since they would be lost among the actual rustling grasses.  Such noises would be reserved for those things you wish to say and have the savanna swallow.

Values, or Why Humans Are Best

Taboos, religion, and social mores tend to be developed in response to other cultures as a method to convince people that their culture is the best is that everyone who believes otherwise is wrong.  Since we are viewing our culture in isolation, we'll be ignoring those.  Instead, we'll be focusing on values and beliefs- those tools that a culture uses to exemplify those traits that are most valuable.