So What can We DO?
Technological Development in Tower Mountain
© 2001 by Hydra's- Head Press. Permission is hereby granted to make copies of this document in any medium for the use of current contributing members of Tower Mountain/New Hope. By Barb Cummings, with Steve Arthur & Ann Stratton
This article addresses the development of technology among the elves of Ketsal's Band, the Old Settlement, Tower Mountain, and New Hope. This is still a rough draft, and I hope to update and expand it as more information comes along. If there's anything vital and obvious I've missed, or if you just have more material to add, comments are welcome.
I am basing the progression of arts, crafts, and technology VERY generally on the development of the same in the Near East and Mediterranean of the Real World, from the period of roughly 10,000 BC to 500 BC, but it’s not an exact match. I’ve made some adjustments to take into account the differing climate, terrain, and population constraints the elves are under, and there are some areas which simply develop at different rates in the Tower universe. The elves developing some technologies (glassmaking, for example) rather early, and failing to develop some technologies (domestication of the horse and subsequent development of chariots and carriages) until relatively late. I haven't attempted to track the development of the trolls, or the local non-Mraal humans, or other elf tribes, though I would like to do this in future revisions.
Obviously this article is very general, and in most cases I haven't specified who came up with a particular idea, or exactly when. If any of you have a particular yen to have your character come up with something, or commission the trolls to come up with something, there's most likely room for them to do so. However, it's equally possible that many developments were the result of a lot of little changes over a long time, with no one person responsible for "inventing" a device or technique.
Further new innovations may come along in 4th mil. EQ Prime has taken their story into Abode’s middle ages and beyond, to the beginning of their space age; there’s no reason why we can’t go that far ourselves someday. However, I’d rather do this gradually than in huge leaps. If you want to introduce an innovation, think about how it arises from existing technology, why it would be adopted, and if it's a practical development given the state of current technology. There are all kinds of ideas which are great in theory–but which can't be implemented until advances in half-a-dozen other fields are made. Also, keep in mind population constraints! Projects which require vast numbers of laborers, or a huge coordinating beauracracy, won't be possible until you've got those laborers, even if the ideas behind them are quite simple.
I The Wandering Years -- TWR -10000 to -5900 (approx. 4000 years)
From the Palace and across the ocean: -10000 to -8600
During this period the Firstcomers concentrate on sheer survival and the rediscovery/invention of basic skills: making fire, building simple shelters, hunting, gathering wild food, tanning hides, sewing, chipping flint, carving wood and bone, etc. Learning the new limitations on their magic, and how to best use what they had left, also occupied a good deal of time. While their remaining magic was of some help (particularly healing and firemaking) it couldn't take care of everything. Rockshaping, for example, could create blunt tools and weapons, but to obtain a sharp edge, the art of stone-chipping had to be invented and refined.Tools from the beginning of this era are simple: crude choppers and scrapers. Simple devices, such as the spear-thrower and mortar, were invented. Lamps consisted of a shallow bowl filled with animal fat, in which was submerged a wick of twisted fiber. Dried, hollowed gourds, treeshaped wooden bowls, and leather bags are used for containers. The elves had also begun twisting vegetable fibers to make cord for sewing, or to make nets or bags.
2. The First Stop: -8599 to -8000
With the Recognition of Ketsal and Isilien, and the birth of the first children to the tribe, the elves stopped wandering for a time. The elves refined their toolmaking techniques and discovered how to use the stone flaked from the parent block to make smaller tools, and eventually, to shape the parent block so as to create flaked "blanks" which could be manufactured into a variety of tools. By the end of this period the elves were making very sophisticated knives, spearheads, needles, fish-hooks, awls, and the like out of stone, bone, antler, and wood. Hides were tanned using urine or water in which oak or other high-tannin leaves had been soaking, and dyed with various vegetable dyes. Fitted and sewn leather clothing became common.As rockshapers were plentiful, there was little incentive to develop non-magical methods of quarrying or carving stone beyond the techniques of aleady in use to create edged tools. Shaped dwellings were common. As the elves had migrated away from the source of the fine-grained metamorphic rock necessary to make heavy tools such as axes, a sporadic trade with various human tribes which had access to such stone marks this and later periods.
The elves took in the wanderer Auiriath during this period; he brought to them a knowlege of boat-building. The wrecked craft he was discovered in was very similar to the outrigger canoe, a stable, fairly easy to build craft, propelled mainly by oars but equipped with an auxillary woven fiber sail, suitable for fishing and fairly long island hops.
3. The Second Stop: -7999 to -5900
The drop spindle is invented, probably by Ataynah, for spinning thread from wool shed from wild goats. Basket and mat weaving becomes an established craft during this period, and more sophisticated tools and weapons are developed, among them the bow. The technique of pressure flaking is developed, allowing the creation of extremely fine stone tools. The bow drill comes into use.In this era several food plants were domesticated and possibly modified by the tribe's few treeshapers to speed that process--a grain plant similar to corn (also called 'childsteeth' by the elves), several types of gourd and squash, and several types of bean. The develoment of the axe, to clear land, the hoe, to break the soil for gardens, and the sickle, for havesting grain, date from this point. Mortars, originally developed to grind pigment, are adapted to grind grain.
The elves begin to rely more upon fishing as a source of food, building boats of two basic designs, dugout canoes and coracles or curraghs made of a framework of wood and wicker and covered with hide. The first horizontal looms are developed. The glaciers reach their furthest extent during this period, forcing the elves even further south.
II The Old Settlement -- TWR -5899 to -2000 (approx. 4000 years)
-5899 to -5000:
Goats and a turkey-like bird (the fantail) are domesticated. Simple ovens come into use; rising bread, beer, and wine are discovered at various times when someone leaves various things out to ferment too long. The first all-clay pots, at first formed around a wicker or wooden mold, and later built up from coils, are developed. The discovery of firing them in the hearth or a bonfire to make them stronger and waterproof follows; the discovery of adding grog (sand or crushed previously-fired clay) to the raw clay to control shrinkage and cracking in the firing follows. Serind develops the upright loom. More varieties of plants come into cultivation: flax, various fruits, root and leaf vegetables.
-4999 to 4000:
Cold-hammered copper ornaments and tools appear for the first time; the first such items were probably obtained in trade from someplace inland where copper ores were more plentiful, but the elves, having a certain advantage in that some rockshapers proved capable of extracting native copper from the rocks, are able to obtain enough metal to make tools of their own, though these items remain rare and valuable. Rockshapers occasionally extract other metals, principally gold and silver. These prove useless for practical applications but make nice ornaments. Some larger fishing boats are made in this period, built by the method of adding planks to the sides of a dugout. The planks are lashed or sewn together with twine.
-3999 to -3000:
First use of slips to make decorated pottery. Discovery of annealing; heating copper allows further working of the metal. (Note that the elves have not developed the concept of smelting ores at this point. With the ability to extract pure metal from rock, they haven't had any incentive to do so.) More sophisticated tools such as the plane and the saw appear for the first time. This in turn allows more sophisticated woodworking techniques to develop; the rarity of treeshapers in Ketsal's Band makes this an important technology. "Built" furniture beds, benches, chests and so forth date from this period. Boats begin to be built with mortise and tenon joints, and stepped masts equipped with a single square sail. These craft range in size from one-person rowboats (often still constructed of hide over a wicker frame) to six-to-eight-person fishing craft. All are coastal vessels only.
-2999 to -2000:
First true pottery kilns, and the development of the turntable, precursor to the pottery wheel. Development of the bag press.
An attempt at creating higher firing temperatures in kilns (mainly by blowing into the kiln through hollow reeds) leads to the discovery of glazes, and glass. (At this point, glass is either shaped with magic, or cut and polished with abrasives.) First experiments in mixing copper with other metals to strengthen it; as metalshapers can't produce alloys by mixing the metals cold, the elves begin heating them, producing bronze. Experiments in bronze casting follow, along with an increased trade with human tribes for the necessary tinstone. Introduction of brailing ropes for reefing. Warp-weighted looms introduced.
III Tower Mountain -- TWR -1999 to +1500 (approx 3500 years)
First Millennium, -1999 to -971:
The Mraal and the elves and the trolls all run into one another within the space of a few hundred years. The Mraal introduce the elves to large-scale agriculture, irrigation, the plow, etc; the elves provide the Mraal with improved seed and root stocks, as well as various modified fruit trees that breed true without grafting. The trolls introduce iron and steel weapons, and some technical items like adding lead to glass, glazes, and bronze. While the elves are not privy to the trolls' ironworking secrets, the elves apply the general idea of melting metals together at high temperatures to what they already know. The invention of lost wax casting dates from this period. Glass begins to be shaped while hot, either by dipping a clay core into a crucible of molten glass or by winding threads of hot glass around a core, then re-heating and rolling the surface to fuse the threads. Bronze tools become extremely common and almost completely displace stone tools. Iron and steel are still too expensive to use for anything but weapons.Giant hawks are tamed (but not domesticated).
More complex machinery becomes available; the bellows, the pump, and various others adapted from the trolls in this period. Simple wheeled carts come into use. Flywheel-style pottery wheels and sophisticated kilns capable of firing to near 1000 degrees F and controlled oxidation come into use. The Water Gardens and sewer systems are the major engineering feat of the first mil. Pulleys and the block and tackle developed by the trolls in order to meet the challenge of lifting things to the higher levels of the Tower.
Second Mil., -970 to 0:
Plows with a share and flat sole developed. Iron tools become more common, spurring further advances in woodworking and some experiments with stonecarving (As the elves still have plenty of rockshapers, the latter remains Ahzeri's hobby only among the elves, but the trolls and the Mraal make more practical use of it in their own dwellings.) The kickwheel developed for pottery, the lathe in woodworking, and the harness loom in weaving. The trolls invent a primitive form of spinning wheel. Beam press developed for extracting oils from flax seed or other vegetable matter. Glassblowing, both free and into molds, developed. Jinan experiments with lens-grinding. Methods of making plate glass without recourse to magic developed.
Advances in dyeing and tanning techniques, new mordants, dyes, and other chemicals. Invention of soap.Contact with the Cow People and the subsequent acquisition of cattle allows for development of larger, animal-drawn plows and animal-drawn carts, enabling the Mraal to bring previously marginal land under cultivation, resulting in population growth among the humans. Experiments with water-powered and cattle-powered millwheels for grinding grain. Standardized stone weights and measures used by the Mraal in trading commodities with other tribes. Several notation systems developed by various elves, Cuendee, Feyhr and Reevirah among them.
Third Mil: 0 to 1179:
During this period most advances are in the field of engineering–i.e., many existing processes are refined and improved upon, but very little innovation occurs–partly due to the social climate, partly because there's no real need for any. The !Nekwithir invasion serves notice that some human tribes have domesticated the horse, but although Dijin acquires some horses and begins to breed them, this remains a cult activity and the animals are not used for any practical purpose by either the elves or the Mraal until the 4th mil.
Fourth Mil: 1180 to (for now) 1600:
Improved wheel and axle tech grows out of the new impetus for travel. Widespread domestication of the horse. Roads between most-traveled points begin to form. (Little more than cart-tracks in most places, but there.) Appearence of true writing in the Tower/NH area: first adapted from the Taiakaari, and then, as it becomes obvious that the Taiakaari syllabary is unsuited to accurately transcribe the elven language, a simplified version of Cuendee's notation system is popularized.
A primitive currency ("trade tokens") is adapted from the troll kingdoms (who have been using it among themselves for some time.) The combination of human, elven and trollish ideas produce radical new architectural developments (I need to read up on architecture and find out what these are) in New Hope, and the relocation to the sea spurs a return to shipbuilding. Development of the lateen-rigged sail, and improvements in rudder technology (replacing the older steering oar) allow more extensive ocean travel. Availability of more crew allows larger sea-going cargo ships to appear for the first time. Horse-drawn barges used for transporting goods along the Bluesnake River between New Hope and Servan's Enclave, and further north to troll and human settlements.
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