Correct. As I am Homo sapiens, I tend towards the belief that it was really the elves, probably as a side-effect of the Elf Race Wars which took up most of the first few centuries S.T. in Pamaltela.
>Presumably this is the origin of the observations in the
Gloranthan Bestiary >that some humans on the Pamaltelan Shores
worship Manatees.
Kind of. Manatees were an important animal to the extinct merfolk too, and the humans are emulating the merfolk, not worshiping them via proxy.
>This raises an interesting question for the Lascerdans of
Umathela. They are >reported in Elder Secrets to have been
exterminated by the Elves. Yet when the >Lascerdan River Gods come
to claim their revenge, they drown out the God Learner
>Universities.
Note that the latter was written from a humanocentric view - -- hundreds of thousands of elves were killed in the destruction, too, including nearly all the elves still remaining who served as leaders in the vestiges of Errinoru's Elf Empire and liaisons with the God Learners.
>Given that we know that there are human populations before the God
Learners came >despite Elder Secrets (Proto-Sedalpists and
descendants of the Storm Invaders).
Not many, though, and not in the western half of Umathela. Even in the Eastern part, in many areas the humans were considered to be a sub-type of meat elf, even by the elves themselves. This legacy helped lead to the long-time fraternal relations between the para-Orlanthi and Elves that dwell there now.
>it seems to me the humans and elves have conspired in the first
age against the >other dominant species ('You knock off our enemies
and we'll knock off yours') >in the region.
Well, yes, to an extent. Note however that the Lascerdans and the extinct merfolk were related very closely in some way. The Lascerdans fed primarily off freshwater manatees, and their infamous slash-and-burn practices were not true slash-and-burn. Rather, the Lascerdans chopped out huge tracts of forest, burnt the wood, and hauled the greenage back to the rivers to use as manatee fodder. They recognized that they got more useful fodder from cleared areas than from the huge tree-covered portions, so they became tree-enemies.
The exact relationship of the Lascerdans and merfolk is still unclear to me. But then, Pamaltela has enough unanswered questions even in the Third Age, let alone earlier times.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #643
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
Powered by hypermail