> > There is no evidence of [48 old ones] association with the
> > Tada-Shi/Oasis folk nor can they be adduced as evidence of golden
> > age agricultural practices.
>If I hadn't quoted the word "agricultural" from Cults of Prax I might
>agree with that line of reasoning. However, the counter-evidence is quite
>weak, too:
>
> From HeroQuest Voices, Tales of the Wastes:
>
>: Genert and the spirit giants made the world so long ago no one
>: remembers. They were strong, and lived in a fertile garden.
>: Food was everywhere: jackrabbits came freely to the eating,
>: and if you dropped a seed you had do jump back when the tree
>: sprang up with much fruit.
>Personally, I read this as "all of this happened so long ago no one
>remembers". The description clearly is Green Age, especially the
>jackrabbits bit.
Why is it clearly Green Age? It could easily be Golden Age.
>Given the fact that Sandy told us the Beast Riders gained intelligence in
>Waha's Contest (rather than the Herds only losing it), little more details
>of the Golden Age are to be expected from this source. Basically, this
>entire scenario makes it likely that the Golden Age Oasis Folk already
>then provided food for the Beast Nomads, like treasured pets used in
>landscape gardening. Think herd men and herd beasts traveling together in
>symbiosis...
I don't see any reason to assume that the Beast Rider ancestors were stupid in the Golden Age. It's far more likely they had been driven stupid by the destruction of Genert's Garden and related disasters.
> > They didn't need a Horn of Plenty in the good old days. The land was
> > so fertile that jackrabbits came freely to eating etc.
>"so long ago none remembers".
Which is a statement about the creation of Genert's Garden, not a statement about what life was like in that period, which people do remember.
> >>The Golden Age oasis folk were a sedentary people who cultivated some of
> >>the land for food production.
> > They did?
>I fail to see how they were different from the early Vingkotlings and
>Durevings in their respective land of milk and honey.
The Vingkotlings and Durevings are Storm Age folk, not Golden Age.
> > The Golden Age folk weren't vegetarian and the argument is over
> > how they gathered their food, _not_ what they ate.
>The methods of producing or gathering the food surely would have
>influenced the diet?
: Food was everywhere: jackrabbits came freely to the eating, : and if you dropped a seed you had do jump back when the tree : sprang up with much fruit.
Doesn't indicate that they had too much trouble.
> > And why wasn't golden age Prax a land of milk and honey?
>[...]
>Because something brought change to Genert's Garden between the earliest
>and the middle Golden Age. The original evergreen broadleaf forest was
>gone, a new species of Aldryami, the Brown Elves, tended the new kind of
>forest which replaced the yellow elf forest from the earliest age.
I really don't see the point. We are given no information on the flora of Genert's Garden while the Redwood Trees are associated with Green Elves, which have been around since the earliest of times.
--Peter Metcalfe
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