Human Development in a Fantasy Setting!

Hello again, friends!

Like a bunch of you, I'm quite keen on giving my fantasy world a basis in reality. Our little planet operates pretty consistently, and provides a great model to study, replicate, and branch off from when imagination grips us. For the past few days, I've been musing over an interesting little topic I thought might make a fun discussion for us fantasy writers.

The development of the modern day human (homo sapien sapien) has been billions of years in the making (assuming you believe in evolution, which it's fine if you don't, but boy you're missing out on some really fun biological tendencies). Science, at least so far as I remember my BA, says we've been pretty human-like for at least the last 50,000 years. At 13,000 b.c. we were planting potatoes in South America. In 4000 b.c. we became super agricultural, and domesticated the dog. By 2000 b.c. we were kicking each others butts and enjoying conquering land in the name of kings and Gods--a fundamental of fantasy writing.

But what I've been thinking about lately is the prevalence of monsters in fantasy, and how that might have slowed down, halted, or even stopped the development of modern civilization and the state.

Lets assume that humans actually got to their 13,000 b.c. equivalents of scavenging and wandering around, hunting and gathering (mostly gathering). Migratory Lifestyles. Then lets add in actual monsters, and see how that influences human development. Would humans ever develop agriculture? Would they adopt sedentary lifestyles if doing so meant monsters could just up and wander into their territory? Even big dumb orcs and wandering wendigos would figure out "hey there's a farm of food I can eat over in that river valley, and some tasty humans live there, too." Would humans develop weapons even faster? Would they develop weapons before agriculture? Excess food is what lead to mankind being able to do other stuff. Would they band together more? Would we see a more unified humanity if something like a tribe of goblins lived in the nearby marshes? Would we see more teamwork, more cooperation, if the restless dead dug up out of the ground once a month on the full moon?

How could mankind justify trying to build a city if a wandering troll could smash 10 years of wall-building to pieces in an encounter? Not to mention a dragon.

What ways do you think monsters in a fantasy setting could change the progression of mankind's development, specifically with regards to the creation of civilization?

 

This is an interesting line of thought. I can’t think of any fantasy books I’ve read that tackle this. A surprising number of them either ignore the question or have creationist-style histories.

The Antares series by McCollum brushes on this, with the race of aliens that humans encounter having severe xenophobia inspired by their civilization having to deal with an evolutionary competitor up until modernization. So his answer would be that it would probably make everyday life harsher and militarized. The entire species constantly having to fight to even survive.

Thinking about the difference between monsters and say giant mammoths and saber tooth tigers (okay, I’m drawing 90% of my knowledge of this period from the movie Ice Age, but that’s all I got!), what makes monsters more dangerous than particularly monstrous animals? Was there a period where we “won,” reducing the threat and populations of any strong enough animal to resist us and domesticating animals that would be useful like dogs and cattle? If we was descended from wolves... anyway!

I think you could get away with a lot of interesting stuff here. Magic would help humanity to survive. Magical enemies, magical defenses from them. Humans would probably need to be either stronger than the monsters or left alone by them, otherwise they would succumb to survival of the fittest.

 

Pretty interesting thought here.
I think yes, we would become more militaristic. Defending oneself would be taught from a young age. We would be more insular, dividing into smaller, more defensible colonies with well-fortified bases. Within such bases, agriculture would likely develop, but it would be highly susceptible to interruption, and new tech advances would be less likely to disseminate across the various peoples and tribes/colonies.
I also propose this idea though- if monsters and such are real in this world, would there not also be benevolent creatures that we could enlist to fight on our behalf? Or ones we could tame and use in the fight, if it's sentience is less than ours? I could see a whole scenario where beasts and men fought together against some monsters. (A scenario just like this is kind of the whole underlying idea of my current WIP lol)

 

@Matt E Gaaah it's so cool to think about!!

The only thing I can sort of draw from were settlers moving into California and dealing with Grizzly Bears. We basically had to wipe them out in order to move in, and we had guns at that point. I imagine hunting a darn GRIZZLY BEAR is a LOT similar to hunting a monster, and doing that with swords and spears sounds like a disaster.

But Grizzly Bears weren't terrorizing Mesopotamians. Grizzly Bears weren't a daily catastrophe that appeared from time to time and forced humans to fend them off (actually, I suppose maybe Native Americans might have had to do this? Maybe I should read up on that, they're pretty nomadic, right?). The largest animal humans had to deal with were elephants, and luckily Indian Elephants are pretty docile. I think we murdered all the not-docile elephants. But the thing about 'monsters' is that they're often times more threatening than 'animals'. They're aggressive and territorial, usually larger, or if not large exceedingly cunning. Plus in something like Dungeons and Dragon's, they're everywhere, and often times they're smarter than average animals. Actually, I should probably read up on ancient Africa. Africa has all sorts of monstrous things that can eat you to death--have you guys ever seen a Nile crocodile?

I guess humans would probably find small, defensible natural locations like valleys and mountains to establish monster-free zones? That seems like what we did in real life.

@Stormsong07 Benevolent creatures would be a cool addition! I guess when I think of monsters, I think of them more like "smarter, more aggressive animals" rather than something innately evil. I think the number one thing about them in Fantasy in particular is their frequency, and their destructive capability. I mean come on--would Lake Town really build their city right underneath a dragon mountain? Really though? When one bad afternoon their entire culture could be cauterized from existence?

I'ma' thinkin' noooo.

 

@Infel, you raise a very important question. Humans are one of the weakest species on the planet, and in a fantasy setting with creatures like orcs and goblins, the odds that we would even make it to the hunter-gatherer phase could probably only happen one of two ways; A, one of these superior creatures enslaved us. B, we got stupid lucky

 

It wasn't an over abundance of food that led to bigger brains. It was (among many other advances and dumb luck) that happy discovery we made a long time ago; that roasting meat over a fire tastes pretty damn good. And it seems that cooked meat doesn't make you sick nearly so often as does raw meat. Our brains were growing in both size and sophistication, and so we needed far more calories to support our burgeoning imaginations. What's the difference between an Orc and a Woolly Mammoth? If I was given the choice, I'd rather go up against the Orc than a charging Woolly Mammoth. Humans have always lived in a dangerous world with creatures great and small that wanted a bite of us. We banded together, learned how to kill efficiently, and one by one we sent these animal species that threatened us to the trash heap of evolution.
We humans kill each other with reckless abandon. I can't imagine dragons and orcs and goblins standing in our way.

In a fantasy world that includes say, Dragons, we would either domesticate them or drive them to extinction. Is it so hard to imagine a dragon drawn plow?

 

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat! Humans are the BEST! We beat up CAVE BEARS for their caves 15,000 years ago. CAVE BEARS!!! We can throw things better than any other creature alive! We have the most versatile movement of any creature on earth!! We can swim, and walk, and climb, run, swing, crawl, sneak, and pretty much anything but fly! We're AWESOME!

I think that's the most interesting thing to think about, especially with other 'humanoid' creatures involved. I have a feeling our big brains would give us an edge over orcs and goblins though.

It does taste good. It tastes so good...

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that an over abundance of food led to bigger brains, only that it lead to humans being able to spend more time on things that weren't gathering food. Agriculture gave rise to "people that can do things that aren't getting food for themselves". Art, writing, philosophy, trade skills--those were able to develop because not everyone in the tribe was responsible for food production. Agriculture, at least as far as I can tell, was responsible for giving mankind enough free time to do other stuff. If we were constantly waylayed from that by a barrage of monsters, I'm sure we'd still figure it out somehow, but it would have to be different, right?

I guess there would have to be some places in fantasyland.jpg with less monsters, and humans could expand out from there.[/user][/user]

 

Here's a fun read about cannibal cavemen:
http://themandus.org/

 

This is the time period that I am wondering about in particular — the time before dogs had been domesticated, before any of the non-docile elephants may have been killed, basically the prehistoric times before humans were dominant. I’m not sure if this happened or not, but there would be such a time period if humans were responsible for dealing with the more aggressive, monstrous animals. The dinosaurs would be another real world candidate for the monster monicker though humans did not coexist with them to my understanding.

Perhaps, but would you go against a fairly unintelligent herd of wooly mammoths, or a horde of intellegent, armed, and armored Uruk’Hai that probably have a stronger industrial base than you do? Some of these fictional monsters are pretty scary. Especially the intelligent, flying, and magical ones.

 

Authors sometimes deal with this issue by simply making the monsters too unorganized, evil, or what have you to really achieve the level of an existential threat to humans. Even in prehistory, humans are cooperative, at least within tribal or otherwise affiliated groups. Uruk'Hai orcs may be strong and may even be intelligent, but if they're prone to in-fighting, cannot cooperate with one another, and don't have the dispositions required to develop advancements in society, it makes sense to portray humans as ultimately outpacing them.

 

Hey,
I don't know if my answer was already said or connects to your question, then sorry I misunderstood.
Anime. Some good anime's in a fantasy world who are being attacked by monsters.
I don't know if you have any experience with anime or even like this but here it comes.

Okay: AOT: Attack On Titan:
Its kinda medieval times and life is pretty harsh/ hard.
Mankind lives behind walls. Not 1, not 2 but 3 or even 4 layers of wall to protect themselves from monsters.
Big monsters with length from 2 meters to 20 meters.
The story goes about kids and young adults who try to fight the monsters with the use of technology.
This technology consists of harpoons on their belts so they can shoot two harpoons to move through cities and forests easily.

Progress:
Yes, but not on the technology side.
The protagonist learns how to transform into a monster himself and helps his army/ team / protectors of mankind to survive.

Note: I may or may not made some mistakes on the AOT explanation / storyline. I am very sorry but this is all I can remember of it.

This can transform into some pretty good ideas and replicas of the story.
Hope this helped in any way.

 

Well if I would write a story about huge giant monsters, I would definitely make them at least as intelligent as a dumb human.
They would be of legendary proportions and capabilities which will render fighting them suicidal, I would instead have societies that revolve around the worship of certain monsters, sacrificing food to them, virgins(as humans for some reason enjoyed on doing all throughout history) and in return the monsters wouold either leave the surrounding villages alone, or even offer protection against other monsters.
Maybe humans from different culture can even fight amongst one another over which monsters to worship, maybe it is deemed unacceptable by some to worship certain monsters.

 

The interesting thing here is that we have existed as a species for at least 200,000 years (possibly longer), and culturally started to develop 50,000 years ago.
We can think of evolution along several lines, first prior to homo sapiens, when tools were first invented 1.5 million years ago. Another massively important discovery was cooking food, which freed up tons of time, prevented disease and led to a reduction in the size of teeth in the various upright species. Language seemed to have elevated humans, roughly 50,000 years ago (perhaps accompanied by the ability to make fire, rather than just harness it. All of this is what some refer to as cultural evolution. The species is here, complete with all the potential, but we needed to figure it out and start using our potential.
The big one was agriculture. About 10,000 years ago, people stopped looking for things (like on that show, The Walking Dead), and organized fields. They grew stuff, stored stuff, and that led to bigger villages. Bigger villages led to cities, and culture blew up like a giant balloon.

Without the development of agriculture, lots changes, but the invention of tools predated that, clear into the non-upright period of our evolution, so that would certainly persist. Once again, like the series, Walking Dead, the issue of survival should be the issue of social evolution. If we can get anough people in one place, we can organize, defend, maybe even cause an extinction event for our enemies. But, think about it. Why were we so nomadic? Well, we overhunted and overforaged. Even agricultural societies have this problem of running out of food:

Last year I finished a novel called Mercy Good, and in that I had the Puritan offspring of a woman hanged in Salam run off and eventually live with the Iroquois. The Iroquois village consisted of one to several longhouses, wherein up to 50 families lived under the control of the eldest woman. The Iroquois consisted of 6 major tribes, held together by a peace treaty. These were extremely organized people. They revered a system of agriculture called the Three Sisters: Corn. Beans that climbed the stalks. Squash that had big leaves and kept the ground cool. But, when the fields started to show lower yields (due to depleted nutrients), the Iroquois moved their entire villages to better ground (two-hundred foot long longhouses and all). If you think about it, that is a model for what culture is like when it sits dead center between the old nomadic culture and the new city culture. The Iroquois did not have small villages. They didn't have big cities. They possessed the ultimate middle ground, and were the stronger for it, when compared to tribes that were not as organized and more nomadic, such as the Nipmuk, who went extince the minute Puritans applied the least bit of pressure.

If I was looking for monsters, through all of this, I'd consider the Neanderthals. They went extinct

So, without agriculture, we don't have large enough tribes to combat opposition, and are thus vulnerable to continually starting over or extinction at roughly the same time human beings were figuring out language (28,000 years ago, or maybe not even that far back because they keep lowering that number with new discoveries). Neanderthal was more physical, and evidence suggests there was much interbreeding. We have Neanderthal blood in our veins.

The thing to notice about neanderthals is their tribes were small, meaning they were even more nomadic, far less capable of advanced tools, shelters, fire control, minor levels of agriculture or fishing. Thus, human tribes often outnumbered them, defeating their greater strength. As well, humans had more individuals in their tribes, allowing for less inbreeding (hugely important over time). What this means is that we beat them with CULTURE. At the same time, the arrival of fifty neanderthals at the village gate might have been the same thing as greeting fifty monsters.

 

What I find interesting is how the dominant species on the planet has frequently fallen and the smaller ones take charge - we saw this is the Permian extinction, the KT extinction and throughout the Ice Age. All of these shifts were caused by the planet or outer space. I haven't thought too much about "monsters" because I don't tend to write typical Fantasy but I have thought about how magic could have changed a civilization. Like if we had portal magic for hundreds of years and it was easily accessible. Would we still have long distance travel like boats and planes. We might have transport for small distances like animals or machinery. But why bother to create something like a plane or a boat that takes time to reach it's destination, easily if you're transporting cargo to another area, when you can just portal there in seconds and take the cargo into the building it's required in? Scientific medicine doesn't hold much when magic can cure things faster and more permanently. This is what my story focuses on. How we can become very myopic. We advance a lot but only in certain areas and we don't tend to create any back up options if those things suddenly failed to work. How many people would be totally screwed in technology went down never to start again.

 

We were the ‘monsters’. Walled cities sprung up to keep people OUT. I don’t think it would look any different really - other than certain defensive features in teh architecture being adopted to fend off the ‘monsters’ if they could fly, eat stone, breath fire etc.,.

In the above case you could imagine humans seeking either areas less accessible to ‘monsters’. Underground, floating cities, mountain bases, colder/warmer climes and/or migratory patterns to avoid said ‘monsters’.

Generally though people are going to fight people ‘monsters’ or no monsters. This would require teamwork and cooperation in trade and war. It is certainly an interesting topic to look into. If you want to get more depth it may be worth addressing anthropological puzzles like the birth of commodity, inequality and how attitudes changed due to a sense of ‘ownership’ that previously probably wouldn’t have existed in any sense we recognise today.

Also, if we couldn’t beat the monsters we’d likely try and appease them. This could lead to wars where the losers were ‘sacrificed’ to the ‘god monster’?

If you want to look at the ‘monsters’ that weren’t human then back then you’d be worried about big cats, bears and bulls - depending on where you lived. Plenty of cave paintings show humans in combat with bulls - something akin to modern day wildebeest - and Minoan and Gobekli Tepe clearly show a strong relationship with wild cows/bulls.

I read a book years back called ‘Lost Civilizations of The Stone Age’ by Richard Rudgley. A bit technical maybe, but a nice little book - I was quite taken with archeological etymology and ‘motherese’. I remember an illustration, taken from an actual stone age clay model, depicting a large structure that had a big human head at one end as part if the roof. If you took the top off you could see a miniature alter inside too. I believe it was found somewhere in eastern europe and although there is not direct hard evidence of the structure ever existing it seems likely given that someone went to the trouble of sculpting a small version of a planned, or alesdy existing, structure (the scale was roughly x4 height of man - the head on the roof being roughly 15feet high - and I’d imagine the material would’ve been a combination of mud, clay with a wooden skeleton).

I did a quick search for the sketch in the book online but couldn’t find it