Note: I’m not a scholar of history, at all at all at all. Please be kind when pointing out logical inconsistencies!!
A rough history of the people who would become the Callanthe
Timeline numbers from R – discovery of Reiassan (the continent)
(??? BR)
The proto-Callanthe are goat people. They begin as a small tribe of people in the south of Founding-Continent, a group who discovered the advantages of domesticating the wild goats that lived in the mountains near their hunting grounds.
[horses domesticated around 4000 BCE IRL, goats ~~8000-9000 years ago. So “began” is a long time ago even by this timeline… which corresponds loosely to the time of Christ IRL]
The proto-Callanthe were cultural borrowers, appropriators, and thieves; they collected other tribes not so much by conquering them as by assimilating them. In the mountainous south of the Founding Continent, the tribes all came from a very similar stock to begin with (having probably spread out from a small group that came over the mountains), so, at first, this was essentially re-integration.
Once the proto-Callanthe’s territory expanded far enough to run into the unknown people on the West and the proto-Bitrani on the East, the cultural appropriation more often turned to war. The proto-Bitrani, too, had developed cities and seafaring, and some of the proto-Callanthe were intrigued enough to, rather than fight, war, conquer, steal, and assimilate, simple immigrate, acculturate, assimilate, and steal.
Centuries went by this way. Cultures shifted. Wars happened. The population of proto-Callanthe in the proto-Bitrani nations-now-a-single-theocracy had grown to a vocal but generally disenfranchised minority. More importantly for this story, the proto-Bitrani had grown to fill their available land – and the land to the West was still full of warlike proto-Callanthe. They were pushed up against the water – so they started exploring the seas.
(we’re almost to R)
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