(03-18-2016, 07:51 PM)RobinhoodtheFletchling Wrote: [ -> ]The thing with fire is that it does require oxygen specifically, it requires an oxidizer. Theoretically they could use something like chlorine or maybe even fluorine as an oxidizer. Maybe using some sort of process to remove chlorine from salt. Then to pump it into an airtight chamber full of flammable material and to have a crucible directly above that. One should be capable of looking up a list of oxidizers and go from there. Keep up the good work.
Hmm, I didn't know that. See, now we're getting deeper into molecular chemistry than my knowledge reaches.
What I do know about oxidizers is they don't stick around for very long. They are by nature very reactive (which is why they burn), so any free oxidizers quickly react with other things to form more stable molecules. The only reason we have so much free oxygen in our atmosphere is because plants are constantly pumping it out when they respirate. That's also why astronomers look for oxygen on exoplanets--if there's a lot of free oxygen, there's something alive on the planet producing it.
Similarly, in order for there to be free chlorine or fluorine on Avalon, you'd need some sort of large-scale (most likely biological) process that constantly produces it. Oxidizers also tend to be poisonous (oxygen is a deadly poison if it gets places it shouldn't), again because they're so reactive, but at this point most Earthly life is adapted to handle oxygen, so adaptations to survive other oxidizers are well within the realm of possibility.
While you talk about extracting chlorine and fluorine, I don't know if that would be possible for a stone-age civilization--you need science and technology to extract chlorine or flourine to make a fire, but how do you get technology without fire? My general theory is that the Avali's environment placed them in sort of a catch-22 with regard to technological development, and they would have been stuck in the stone age forever had they not received technology from the malefactors to skip the intervening steps.
I suppose that, given sufficient time, they would have figured out a clever way around these problems, but only if they had large, stationary, interacting settlements where people had time to do things other than find food, and given their nomadic, predatory nature that seems unlikely. No farming=no civilization=no advanced technology.
Humans had to pass a ton of hurdles to get to where we are, and I'm inclined to speculate that those same hurdles may be almost impossible on an ice moon without outside help.
(03-18-2016, 07:51 PM)RobinhoodtheFletchling Wrote: [ -> ]The thing with fire is that it does require oxygen specifically, it requires an oxidizer. Theoretically they could use something like chlorine or maybe even fluorine as an oxidizer. Maybe using some sort of process to remove chlorine from salt. Then to pump it into an airtight chamber full of flammable material and to have a crucible directly above that. One should be capable of looking up a list of oxidizers and go from there. Keep up the good work.
Hmm, I didn't know that. See, now we're getting deeper into molecular chemistry than my knowledge reaches.
What I do know about oxidizers is they don't stick around for very long. They are by nature very reactive (which is why they burn), so any free oxidizers quickly react with other things to form more stable molecules. The only reason we have so much free oxygen in our atmosphere is because plants are constantly pumping it out when they respirate. That's also why astronomers look for oxygen on exoplanets--if there's a lot of free oxygen, there's something alive on the planet producing it.
Similarly, in order for there to be free chlorine or fluorine on Avalon, you'd need some sort of large-scale (most likely biological) process that constantly produces it. Oxidizers also tend to be poisonous (oxygen is a deadly poison if it gets places it shouldn't), again because they're so reactive, but at this point most Earthly life is adapted to handle oxygen, so adaptations to survive other oxidizers are well within the realm of possibility.
While you talk about extracting chlorine and fluorine, I don't know if that would be possible for a stone-age civilization--you need science and technology to extract chlorine or flourine to make a fire, but how do you get technology without fire? My general theory is that the Avali's environment placed them in sort of a catch-22 with regard to technological development, and they would have been stuck in the stone age forever had they not received technology from the malefactors to skip the intervening steps.
I suppose that, given sufficient time, they would have figured out a clever way around these problems, but only if they had large, stationary, interacting settlements where people had time to do things other than find food, and given their nomadic, predatory nature that seems unlikely. No farming=no civilization=no advanced technology.
Humans had to pass a ton of hurdles to get to where we are, and I'm inclined to speculate that those same hurdles may be almost impossible on an ice moon without outside help.
Yeah I have to concede that it would be almost certainly impossible to achieve this as a nomadic predatory species.
As a though though it would be interesting to just say that Avalon has natural gas pockets of some form underground created through geological means, and a few packs simply stumbled across one said pocket in a cave. The leaking oxidizer spontaneously combusting with the atmosphere as it breaches the surface, and the avali just happening to figure out that they can for tools with such.
Honestly now that I think about that possibility, It could seem to fit with there nomadic nature as while not only hunting for creatures but also hunting for these burning gashes in the land, forming almost beacons. Yet as awesome as it sounds hunting for the glowing cracks in the land in order to form your tools, I digress to the fact that it is highly unlikely that even then they would be able to do farm effectively in large amounts.
But hey, you never know, and it doesn't matter to much anyways as they did get the technology of that alien race. And now look where they are now. As I have said before, and I can't say this enough, keep up the good work.
Thank you for your kind words, I greatly appreciate them.
Pockets of naturally occurring oxidizers is an interesting concept, though I don't know any geological process that would do such a thing (but as I said, by knowledge of molecular chemistry is fairly limited).
The main reason I find this subject worth discussing is because I find it interesting that this horrible stuff the Avali went through at the hands of the malefactors ended up altering the their destiny and their role in the galaxy for the better. Plus, the question of whether they could develop civilization on their own interests me, and if it interests me then it will interest Yellow, and he'll almost certainly use it poke Rhaomi now and again.
(03-19-2016, 01:40 AM)YDH Wrote: [ -> ]Thank you for your kind words, I greatly appreciate them.
Pockets of naturally occurring oxidizers is an interesting concept, though I don't know any geological process that would do such a thing (but as I said, by knowledge of molecular chemistry is fairly limited).
The main reason I find this subject worth discussing is because I find it interesting that this horrible stuff the Avali went through at the hands of the malefactors ended up altering the their destiny and their role in the galaxy for the better. Plus, the question of whether they could develop civilization on their own interests me, and if it interests me then it will interest Yellow, and he'll almost certainly use it poke Rhaomi now and again.
If such things existed on Avalon, I imagine they would have been hotspots (no pun intended) of tribal warfare, especially given that they would be exceedingly rare: Avalon is mostly covered in water ice, I believe, with an ocean of liquid water below. Exposed rock would be rare. That's another strike against metallurgy on Avalon--lack of places to mine.
(03-19-2016, 03:59 AM)YDH Wrote: [ -> ]That's the so-called "Gateway to Hell," right?
If such things existed on Avalon, I imagine they would have been hotspots (no pun intended) of tribal warfare, especially given that they would be exceedingly rare: Avalon is mostly covered in water ice, I believe, with an ocean of liquid water below. Exposed rock would be rare. That's another strike against metallurgy on Avalon--lack of places to mine.
Gasses rise through water, and rotting organic matter creates pockets of gasses. is it stupid to say the organic solvent bacteriums on world might produce different gasses, just like the frozen mosses on world would produce different gases otherwise there would be no homeostasis of the world. I'd blame mosses and microorganisms. Original ocean worlds tend to have MASSIVE amounts of such, and none or few actual "plants" beyond. if they have life on them. Otherwise the life would just die off anyways.
I don't know massive amounts about chemistry, so the most I can speculate about is the basics. I try to minimize talking about things I do not know about.
In other words. Glad you joined in Robinhood.
What of catalytic reactions? For example, heat is produced when you place certain metals in water. Any idea if other similiar reactions would be possible? A large animal on world that has a reserve of sommat in their body that is a catalyst that the avali harvested while hunting? Fact of the matter is, it's possibe that the avali may have started farming fungi and mosses eventually even with their tribal stature of the time. It took us long enough to figure it out anyways. What's to insult their race by saying "never" for? Fungi, mosses, and bacteriums with fruiting bodies are stated in the avali lore. The only real thing the war did, was push them forwards a LOT, including the farming step.
They WOULD have eventually learned how to farm. When, nobody knows. But they wouldn't have been quite where there are yet if it weren't for this.
Also, by mistakes, I mean his mistakes, not yours, or writer's errors. And yes. Unless he was purposefully trying to screw up to the point he basically did absolutely nothing except tell you "this might happen." and nothing else. Those were mistakes.
(03-20-2016, 12:10 AM)Lost Rinoah Wrote: [ -> ]Gasses rise through water, and rotting organic matter creates pockets of gasses. is it stupid to say the organic solvent bacteriums on world might produce different gasses, just like the frozen mosses on world would produce different gases otherwise there would be no homeostasis of the world. I'd blame mosses and microorganisms. Original ocean worlds tend to have MASSIVE amounts of such, and none or few actual "plants" beyond. if they have life on them. Otherwise the life would just die off anyways.
Which brings up another bit of wilderness I'm struggling to account for: hydrogen-breathing life. Why hydrogen? Earthly life-forms breathe oxygen for one reason only: to receive electrons at the end of cellular respiration. Aside from that, free oxygen is something you do not want in your body because it bonds to everything and makes a huge mess. Cellular respiration uses hydrogen too, but we get that from sugars (which are basically carbon and hydrogen). What the heck do Avali need to breathe hydrogen for?
(03-20-2016, 12:10 AM)Lost Rinoah Wrote: [ -> ]Fact of the matter is, it's possibe that the avali may have started farming fungi and mosses eventually even with their tribal stature of the time. It took us long enough to figure it out anyways. What's to insult their race by saying "never" for? Fungi, mosses, and bacteriums with fruiting bodies are stated in the avali lore. The only real thing the war did, was push them forwards a LOT, including the farming step.
They WOULD have eventually learned how to farm. When, nobody knows. But they wouldn't have been quite where there are yet if it weren't for this.
It's hardly an insult to speculate that they never would have learned to farm on their own. The problem is not finding a way to farm: that's problem-solving, and problem-solving is something smart animals (like humans and Avali) are good at. The big stumbling-block is coming up with the idea of farming in the first place when no such thing has ever existed before and no-one has the slightest inkling that it's possible.
My understanding is that we kind of stumbled into farming by accident: the occasional kernel of grain that we didn't eat wound up in our trash piles and sprouted, and eventually people started making the connection. This is a likely event for humans, and in fact agriculture arose independently multiple times in different areas. We're not the only farming species, either: beavers, leafcutter ants, and Ambrosia beetles could all be considered farming species. What holds the Avali back is that:
A) They were much more nomadic than we were (not that we weren't nomadic--we followed animal herds--but avali are much more so)
B) They were hunters, not hunter-gatherers (as far as I can tell)
Point B is an especially big problem. The whole process breaks down: they're not collecting seeds/spores/whatever to sprout in their encampments and trash piles, and they're not paying attention to edible plants.
(03-20-2016, 12:10 AM)Lost Rinoah Wrote: [ -> ]Also, by mistakes, I mean his mistakes, not yours, or writer's errors. And yes. Unless he was purposefully trying to screw up to the point he basically did absolutely nothing except tell you "this might happen." and nothing else. Those were mistakes.
Without getting spoilery, I'll say that Mengele's motivations are more complex than they might appear.
We also tried eating everything, I say idiots are important in some aspects. Finding new sources of food being a big one. If it grows randomly as it would have to for the planet's homeostasis, and someone would eventually eat it. Probably a child.
on the other side of things. Hydrogen is even worse than oxygen for reacting, yeah.
I can totally see Avali nibbling on fungus occasionally (which sounds a lot more gross than it really is), but in order for that to translate into the discovery that you can cultivate said fungus, you need to be consistently eating and looking for and thinking about fungus, and consistently dropping leftover spores into places where you'll notice if they grow--trash piles, most likely. It's a fairly specific set of requirements, and unless they're all met, you don't get the insight that would lead to farming.
Unless there's another chain of events that could lead to the idea of planting things that I'm not thinking of.
Well you only need one person to discover that everyone can more or less subsist on something to know it's viable as food, and individuals can be pretty weird so it's basically an inevitability that somebody will. Then any shortage of alternative foods or culinary interest in the specified food source will lead to attempts at cultivation, which will create farming.
The thing is, it's really easy for us to say "Oh, we can eat this plant, and we need food, so let's cultivate this plant," but that's because we already know about farming. It's the foundation of our modern way of life.
Farming is easy once you figure it out, the biggest hurdle is figuring it out when nobody's ever done it before or even has the slightest inkling that it's possible. Stone-age avali would have been just as ignorant of the less visible functions of the natural world as stone age humans: they would have had to figure out that plants grow from seeds (or fungus from spores, rather), and making that leap of logic requires specific conditions which I've detailed in previous posts, and the nature of Avalon and the avali make it harder for those conditions to come about.
At least that's what I was taught. I'm trying to find where I got this information from (possibly Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel), but I can't remember and I don't have a copy handy at the moment.
Here's a documentary version of the book, but while it talks about the beginning of agriculture, a quick skim didn't turn up anything about how people came up with farming in the first place.
Of course, Diamond's ideas have been criticized as being overly reliant on environmental determinism (the idea that the possibilities a species has at its disposal are controlled by their environment). He is, after all, a biologist. But it makes sense to me that when you're just barely learning to become more than animals, your environment is going to play a large role in what you can and can't do--not until later do you accumulate the necessary knowledge to overcome the environment.
(03-25-2016, 06:52 AM)YDH Wrote: [ -> ]Trying to get a handle on agaran speech for the next episode. Since there is no agaran word for avali, I've made one up: wingcicle.
Good luck. People have been trying to decipher their speech for ages (myself included, for a time). There are a few threads that have lots of word references, though they haven't managed to accurately translate everything yet.
I've actually been speaking under the assertion that finding an edible thing eventually leads to the accidental discovery of how to gain or grow it in larger amounts. That's why I said that saying they never would was insulting even to us. They would, eventually, discover how to grow such fungi. By accident. In the same way they would accidentally discover what other methodologies of subsistance they'd be able to create. I've already given you examples. Plus bone tools and weapons.
You cannot say they never would have discovered the cultivation of fungi. Otherwise you are saying we haven't discovered what farming is or even the idea of it yet. Such a thing is obviously not true, especially considering the eventuality. You can only think in methods of what we've done, That is a mistake. You have to be able to look at what we haven't, and what we have, done.
The fact of the matter is that they may have never discovered how to leave their world on their own. But thriving, and eventual agriculture was a definitive and absolute future for them. To say otherwise is to say they like the death of their own people on wide scale. And that they enjoy the possibility of starvation.
(03-26-2016, 04:35 PM)Lost Rinoah Wrote: [ -> ]I've actually been speaking under the assertion that finding an edible thing eventually leads to the accidental discovery of how to gain or grow it in larger amounts. That's why I said that saying they never would was insulting even to us. They would, eventually, discover how to grow such fungi. By accident. In the same way they would accidentally discover what other methodologies of subsistance they'd be able to create. I've already given you examples. Plus bone tools and weapons.
You cannot say they never would have discovered the cultivation of fungi. Otherwise you are saying we haven't discovered what farming is or even the idea of it yet. Such a thing is obviously not true, especially considering the eventuality. You can only think in methods of what we've done, That is a mistake. You have to be able to look at what we haven't, and what we have, done.
The fact of the matter is that they may have never discovered how to leave their world on their own. But thriving, and eventual agriculture was a definitive and absolute future for them. To say otherwise is to say they like the death of their own people on wide scale. And that they enjoy the possibility of starvation.
I'm having some difficulty following this post, but I think I get the gist. Though I can't make sense of "You cannot say they never would have discovered the cultivation of fungi. Otherwise you are saying we haven't discovered what farming is or even the idea of it yet" and it doesn't seem to follow that saying they would never have discovered agriculture is like saying "they like the death of their own people on wide scale. And that they enjoy the possibility of starvation."
You may be correct that I'm focusing too much on how we developed farming (or rather, the theory I am familiar with about how we developed farming), but given that's the only way we know of that farming has come about and it happened multiple times, I think it's the best approach I can take. I can't evaluate the likelihood of other ways of developing farming because we don't know what those ways are, assuming they exist.
Similarly, avali couldn't consciously tackle the barriers separating them from setting up agriculture for the first time. They didn't know the end goal, and they didn't know what stood in the way, so the only way for them to reach they point where they could farm would be to stumble through those barriers by accident. You know, like we did. Once you get there, it's much easier to look at farming and say "Oh, this makes so much sense. Hey, I wonder if I could make it even better by doing [X]?" Once you know it's possible, it's easier to cast a critical eye and figure out how it works, and how to overcome the associated problems.
Farming isn't hard, but making the necessary observations to do it is. It took us aeons to make the leap of logic from seeds in the ground to new plants, and we were exposed to the process constantly because we were always looking for and gathering edible plants. The avali, as far as I know, were not hunter-gatherers, but hunters, so while they might occasionally munch on some fungus, they weren't out looking for them, and would have had only a small fraction of the exposure that we had. Mind you, it doesn't really make sense to me that if they could eat fungus that they wouldn't be hunter-gatherers, but it's the impression I get from the lore. I could be incorrect.
If they were hunter-gatherers, their chances of discovering farming shoot way up. As hunter-gatherers, they could easily have followed the same pattern we did.
Further complicating the matter is that fungi reproduce differently than plants do. The plants we are familiar with make seeds which you can pick up, hold, and eat. Fungi favor reproduction via spores, which look like dust. How would a stone age culture make the connection between a grain of dust landing somewhere and the growth of a new fungi? It's possible, but hard. Some fungi use other methods like budding, which would be easier to observe and understand, so if those fungi happened to be edible, maybe the avali could learn to cultivate them.
Of course, actually having fungi on Avalon is unlikely. Fungi evolved on Earth from our unique circumstances. Avalon might have fungus-like organisms, but not true fungus, and consequently they could conceivably use practically any reproductive strategy, including seeds. However, all the lore uses the term fungus, not fungus-like species.
Of course, even more unlikely is the planet's sentient species evolving to resemble a feathered dromeosaur. Avali occupy a weird niche where they're sort of different from Earthly life, but not really. They're basically earth creatures with a few twists that make them a pain to write. Drives me nuts sometimes--if you want an alien alien, write an alien alien. If you want an alien that's similar to Earth creatures (like everything in Starbound), write one of those. An alien alien that is also Earthlike is both unlikely and impractical.
We can't write anything actually alien, as we are human, even the things you would say are the furthest disposed of looking or feeling human, are created by the human idea of what something non-human looks like. We, can't make actual aliens. We can only make shadows of ourselves and our thoughts, which are human. The closest things you will find to being non-human are in horror. Horror thrives off the fear of the unknown, things that actually aren't human, but we are still limited by being human. And human fears. Wonder if there's a way to get past being human.
I mean, geesus. Something that breaks our settled definition of what "critical thoughts" is? That'd be the day.
Eh?
In any case, those existential statements you questioned were only referencing the overuse of the word "never" and "impossible". I just sort of overreacted because I see people use it a lot and it actually bugs the dickens outta me, as it's a really bad choice of word. "Take nearly forever." might be more appropriate even. Sorry about that.
Any evidence of our stage before hunter-gatherer no longer remains. With how we develope I'd actually say we started as cannibals, developed to hunters, then hunter gatherers once someone discovered other things edible. We're just lucky to have a lot of edible plants on our world. There's evidence (barely) of our early peoples fighting with the cro-magnons. Whose to say it wasn't racism, or held grudges against the former consumption of the other?
Err. CRAP. Went there again. Sorry.
Sorry sorry, err. Subject change. Linked a couple more people recently. And hope easter goes well for those who even have it and sorry to those who don't... Still too depressing. RAINBOWS SUNSHINE AND BLOODY GOOD TIMES.
What bugs me is that the avali occupy a really awkward slot where they're similar enough that I want them to interact freely with everyone else, but different enough for that to be problematic (I'm not the only one--pretty much everyone seems to want to hug them). A human could comfortably exist on the same world as a floran (or a klingon, or a wookie), and could hug or shake hands with him or her, but with avali I have to resort to a whole bunch of hand-wavy "augments" which probably wouldn't actually work. On the other hand, they're not as alien as a horta or a formic (to use the polite term from the movie). They're basically extremely social dinosaurs, and their biology makes them harder to write without really giving a whole lot of payoff. The reason I chose avali for my machinima was the interesting relationship between them and humanity, but there's nothing about that that requires their weird biology.
Meh. Sorry, I'm ranting. Maybe I was more skilled in writing xenofiction, I wouldn't have these problems.
If it bothers you that I say "never," perhaps I'll rephrase. I think there are so many obstacles that the avali learning to farm on their own that the chances of it coming about are negligible.
Moving on, we have a pretty good idea of what was on our ancestors' plates. We had a basic omnivorous diet and scavenged off kills by other predators. I don't think there was ever a time when we were only hunters (though some later cultures came close), but after we started using stone tools we started eating a lot more meat. We hunted larger game using our famous endurance technique--basically following prey at a jog for hours or days until it exhausts itself. I haven't read anything about systematic cannibalism in human ancestors, though I am familiar with the stories of cannibals that European explores liked to bring back.
I don't know if racism is the right word to describe conflicts between humans and related species. Interspecific competition would be more accurate. But you are correct that early humans were probably much more violent than modern ones--famous still-extant primitive tribes often have long series of killings and revenge killings. I imagine stone-age avali would have behaved similarly, basically the opposite of their modern mindset (at least with the super-loyal, hyper-unified species I give them). Hey, that could be an interesting story idea if I can pull it off.
On a different note, it occurred to me that avali operating in an Earth-like environment with temperature regulation augments like Rhaomi's might actually be warm enough for other races to touch. Their body would be constantly absorbing heat energy from the air around it, and that heat has to go somewhere to keep from melting the avali's internal organs, so it's probably radiated outward. So Rhaomi may be quite huggable (aside from the fact that he would probably bite you). It would be like hugging a reptile. Or maybe not, I haven't really finished thinking this through.
(03-27-2016, 04:33 AM)YDH Wrote: [ -> ]What bugs me is that the avali occupy a really awkward slot where they're similar enough that I want them to interact freely with everyone else, but different enough for that to be problematic (I'm not the only one--pretty much everyone seems to want to hug them). A human could comfortably exist on the same world as a floran (or a klingon, or a wookie), and could hug or shake hands with him or her, but with avali I have to resort to a whole bunch of hand-wavy "augments" which probably wouldn't actually work. On the other hand, they're not as alien as a horta or a formic (to use the polite term from the movie). They're basically extremely social dinosaurs, and their biology makes them harder to write without really giving a whole lot of payoff. The reason I chose avali for my machinima was the interesting relationship between them and humanity, but there's nothing about that that requires their weird biology.
Meh. Sorry, I'm ranting. Maybe I was more skilled in writing xenofiction, I wouldn't have these problems.
If it bothers you that I say "never," perhaps I'll rephrase. I think there are so many obstacles that the avali learning to farm on their own that the chances of it coming about are negligible.
Moving on, we have a pretty good idea of what was on our ancestors' plates. We had a basic omnivorous diet and scavenged off kills by other predators. I don't think there was ever a time when we were only hunters (though some later cultures came close), but after we started using stone tools we started eating a lot more meat. We hunted larger game using our famous endurance technique--basically following prey at a jog for hours or days until it exhausts itself. I haven't read anything about systematic cannibalism in human ancestors, though I am familiar with the stories of cannibals that European explores liked to bring back.
I don't know if racism is the right word to describe conflicts between humans and related species. Inter-specific competition would be more accurate. But you are correct that early humans were probably much more violent than modern ones--famous still-extant primitive tribes often have long series of killings and revenge killings. I imagine stone-age avali would have behaved similarly, basically the opposite of their modern mindset (at least with the super-loyal, hyper-unified species I give them). Hey, that could be an interesting story idea if I can pull it off.
On a different note, it occurred to me that avali operating in an Earth-like environment with temperature regulation augments like Rhaomi's might actually be warm enough for other races to touch. Their body would be constantly absorbing heat energy from the air around it, and that heat has to go somewhere to keep from melting the avali's internal organs, so it's probably radiated outward. So Rhaomi may be quite huggable (aside from the fact that he would probably bite you). It would be like hugging a reptile. Or maybe not, I haven't really finished thinking this through.
They'd be cold to the touch (Although not freezing just slightly uncomfortable like wet clothing cold, although they'd feel even colder the warmer it is.) and probably have a set of "netting" laced through their fur for the temperature regulation. It's more efficient to have it collect to a single point where the heat is rapidly expelled like a radiator. Thing is it would constantly be hot enough to start fires at such a point, which would allow them to use that thermal energy to increase the battery life/reduce strain on the avali. Thus likely on the back with what would amount to a basic HEV computer and regulation systems about as small as a fannypack. They'd also probably have an in mouth breathing regulator that would be VERY uncomfortable without long periods of training beforehand. Connected to the cooling net-work.
Just a "heat repulsion" system like you are thinking would rapidly overheat and burst into flames as the avali dies a flaming sparking mess of death.
I actually have a point to make on the prior point about, cannibalism stuff. I'll leave a spoiler here this time.
Recent evidence to current or the most recent events has actually shown that the first thing we go for in recent times even in the absence of easily obtained foods such as fruits are our own dead, before we'll even eat most animal meat raw. It's quite a "discovery" to be true. People will even do it before trying to hunt if they don't have prior knowledge of hunting.
As I said, we are lucky we have vast amounts of edible plants. We WERE and ARE hunters in the absence of easily edible plants. Look at the Western and Northernmost Inuit culture(I hesitantly call them by the insult Eskimo to make sure people know of what I speak...) Entirely based around hunting culture and survival all. They're just lucky enough to have others trade them some other things now and eventually found some roots that they then took into use.
Oh right. On icy worlds and in icy zones what rocks actually visibly show up are mineral rich, meaning metals are easily obtained. But limited in use to hand pounding in most cases. Meaning basic hooks, wire, and snares. How are they mineral rich? Volcanoes originally formed the island and all of the softer stone has been worn off over metal deposits by ice flows.
Wait wait WAIT! On a world with a hydrogen atmosphere. Fires would burn WAY hotter and produce pure water although hard to start. That's how hydrogen reactors work(partly). Our environment rapidly reacts with hydrogen which is why we don't have enough to have produced hydrogen tech as early as we could have otherwise.
I HAVE FOUND THE MISSING LINK!
Hydrogen reactors produced as early as the stone age by accident.
that would have been a tech catalyst right in front of them that could have slingshotted them like metalwork did for us along a very different set of discoveries.
(03-27-2016, 03:47 PM)Lost Rinoah Wrote: [ -> ]They'd be cold to the touch (Although not freezing just slightly uncomfortable like wet clothing cold, although they'd feel even colder the warmer it is.) and probably have a set of "netting" laced through their fur for the temperature regulation. It's more efficient to have it collect to a single point where the heat is rapidly expelled like a radiator. Thing is it would constantly be hot enough to start fires at such a point, which would allow them to use that thermal energy to increase the battery life/reduce strain on the avali. Thus likely on the back with what would amount to a basic HEV computer and regulation systems about as small as a fannypack. They'd also probably have an in mouth breathing regulator that would be VERY uncomfortable without long periods of training beforehand. Connected to the cooling net-work.
I don't know if a mesh would have sufficient coverage--you'd end up with a patchwork of hot and cold spots that would be at best uncomfortable for the avali. I don't think it would be hot enough to start fires, since it's just taking the ambient heat it absorbs from the environment and re-radiating it. Think of it like a mirror that reflects heat instead of light. I'm thinking some sort of nanotechnology that evenly covers the exposed surfaces would be necessary, including internal organs that could be exposed to air like the lungs or stomach.
But again, a whole lot of handwaving here if I want avali to be able to work in environments the rest of us find comfortable without big, clunky environmental suits that obscure their faces (usually a bad thing in cinematography). Sigh. This it probably one of those things I should just kind of ignore.
I did figure out how Rhaomi's able to breathe without a hydrogen tank--internal apparatus that strips hydrogen from water vapor. So he'd need to carry a supply of hydrogen to operate in low-humidity areas such as deserts or, ironically, cold regions
(03-27-2016, 03:47 PM)Lost Rinoah Wrote: [ -> ]On icy worlds and in icy zones what rocks actually visibly show up are mineral rich, meaning metals are easily obtained. But limited in use to hand pounding in most cases. Meaning basic hooks, wire, and snares. How are they mineral rich? Volcanoes originally formed the island and all of the softer stone has been worn off over metal deposits by ice flows.
Wait wait WAIT! On a world with a hydrogen atmosphere. Fires would burn WAY hotter and produce pure water although hard to start. That's how hydrogen reactors work(partly). Our environment rapidly reacts with hydrogen which is why we don't have enough to have produced hydrogen tech as early as we could have otherwise.
I HAVE FOUND THE MISSING LINK!
Hydrogen reactors produced as early as the stone age by accident.
that would have been a tech catalyst right in front of them that could have slingshotted them like metalwork did for us along a very different set of discoveries.
Yeah, but now we're back to the problem of an oxidizer, which will be rare, otherwise a) it would use up all the hydrogen and b) the whole atmosphere would probably explode. And even if you can shape the metal, it's not going to work as well in the extreme cold experienced on Avalon. At our temperatures, iron weapons and armor are quiet useful, but on Avalon it's like making armor out of glass. Some metals perform better than others, of course. Copper seems to still bend well, but there are limitations on what you can do with copper.
I don't think you could make a hydrogen reactor* in the stone age, as that requires not only hydrogen to burn but also machinery to channel that energy in a useful way. Early avali would basically have fires just like we did, but hotter.
*"Hydrogen reactor" seems to refer to several different things. My first thought was hydrogen fusion, which we still haven't mastered. Commercial hydrogen reactors that you can purchase today work by stripping the electrons from hydrogen and pumping it through membranes, just like cells do in aerobic respiration. You seem to be talking about hydrogen internal combustion engines, which actually burn hydrogen.
(03-27-2016, 03:47 PM)Lost Rinoah Wrote: [ -> ]I actually have a point to make on the prior point about, cannibalism stuff. I'll leave a spoiler here this time.
Recent evidence to current or the most recent events has actually shown that the first thing we go for in recent times even in the absence of easily obtained foods such as fruits are our own dead, before we'll even eat most animal meat raw. It's quite a "discovery" to be true. People will even do it before trying to hunt if they don't have prior knowledge of hunting.
That's an artifact of a) unusual desperate circumstances and b) modern society where most people don't know how to hunt. It's also a really lousy survival mechanism, because how much sustenance are you going to get from someone who died starving?
Actions in such specific and desperate circumstances cannot be generalized to a whole way of life. Further, for early humans and human ancestors, not knowing how to hunt was not an option. Everybody hunted and foraged.
(03-27-2016, 03:47 PM)Lost Rinoah Wrote: [ -> ]As I said, we are lucky we have vast amounts of edible plants. We WERE and ARE hunters in the absence of easily edible plants. Look at the Western and Northernmost Inuit culture(I hesitantly call them by the insult Eskimo to make sure people know of what I speak...) Entirely based around hunting culture and survival all. They're just lucky enough to have others trade them some other things now and eventually found some roots that they then took into use.
I think you have it kind of backwards. When we're talking about human ancestors and how our species started out, what the Inuits do doesn't matter any more than what British and Americans do. None of those groups existed then--we were all near-human apes living in Africa, where we had both plants and animals to eat. That was the environment that shaped us, and it shaped us to be omnivores. Only later when we used our extreme adaptability to expand into areas where foraging was not viable did some of us (like the Inuits) switch to more purely hunter lifestyle.
So the Inuits went from omnivores to near carnivores, rather than from carnivores to omnivores. It's not so much that we were and are hunters, it's that we were and are adaptable.
It's not really meaningful to speculate that humans would have evolved to be hunters in the absence of edible plants, any more than it is to speculate that elephants would. Humans and elephants were both shaped by the availability of edible plants--without that, they would have evolved in very different directions and wouldn't be humans and elephants, but something else.
This is not to say that humans can't be fearsome hunters. One school of thought on the question of why Africa has so many fearsome animals (everything from big cats to super-aggressive honeybees) is that they evolved to be fearsome to survive in the face of an even more fearsome predator: us.
![[+]](images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
Heeee