Re: Biology and time in Glorantha

From: Sandy Petersen <sandyp_at_idgecko.idsoftware.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 96 09:09:34 -0600

Joerg Baumgartner
>I am having second thoughts about Moirades' impregnating of a 13
year old,
>i.e. hardly initiated into the rites of the women's cult. Remember that
>Gloranthan years are shorter than Terran years, thus a 13-year-old
>Gloranthan is roughly the biological equivalent to a 9-year-old Terran.

        As has been stated before, I now state again that _despite_ the fact that a Glorantha year is only 80% of an Earthly year, they live the same number of years as on Earth and mature at the same yearly age.

	Does this mean they live shorter lives than Terrans? Yes.
	Does this mean they mature earlier than Terrans? Yes.
	Do Gloranthans know that something's wrong? Yes. It is  

universally blamed on the Sunstop, when all time changed, and for the worse.

>While the shorter year has the advantage of letting us use familiar age
>ranges for the Gloranthan denizens (a venerated 60-year-old
Gloranthan elder
>would be a 48-year-old Terran from the Dark Ages, IMO a good parallel)

        Not really. Humans didn't age faster in the Dark Ages. A Dark Age human, once past childhood, was reasonably likely to live to 70 or more. The shorter lifespans of earlier eras were primarily the result of childhood disease. A 48-year old Frank didn't look, act, or feel like a sexagenarian moderner. Disease did take a slightly higher toll among adults, too, but this didn't prematurely age them -- it just made fewer of them (but at a lesser rate than it got rid of the kids).

Sandy.

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