101 Ancient Cultures fit for a Campaign...

[Teflon Billy]

The Tuareg.

About 10,000 Tuareg nomads live scattered in the southwest Sahara desert, wandering in the general vicinity of the oasis towns of Ghat and Ghadamis.

Like other desert nomads, they formerly earned their livelihood by raiding settlements, conducting long-distance trading that those less desert-savvy could not, and extracting protection fees from caravans and travelers.

The Tuareg adhere to a form of Sunni Islam that incorporates nonorthodox magical elements, including belief in Djinn, totem spirits and a ritualizing and spiritualizing of personal combat (the Tuareg maintain a duelling tradition in their tribal law).

Men--but not women--wear veils ("Tagemost"), and the blue dye used in the veils and clothing of Tuareg noblemean frequently transfers to the skin, causing the Tuareg to be known as "blue men." Marriage is monogynous, and Tuareg women enjoy high status; inheritance is through the female line, and as a general rule only women can read and write.

The Tuareg have appeared in many of my campaigns in one guise or another.

 

[jmucchiello]

Why base all your cultures on Ancient peoples? What's wrong with 17th century "puritans"*? Or 1960's San Fransicans? (Is that a wide swing in attitude or what) Make them neighboring cultures for real fun.

Just a thought.

* Yes, I know there were many different groups that made up the puritans but the idea is a repressed religious group recently set "free".

 

[Bran Blackbyrd]

Joshua Dyal beat me to mentioning the mound-building cultures of North America.
They weren't just in the southern US, they left mounds behind as far North as here in Ohio. Ohio is home to some of the most famous mound-builder earthworks, Serpent Mound in particular.
These burial mounds have been found in Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia, West Virginia, Indiana and as previously mentioned, Ohio. Probably other places too.

The primary mound-building cultures were the Adena and Hopewell tribes.
The Adena tribe is thought to date from around 1000 BC to 700. The Hopewells are from around 200 BC to 500 AD.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

55. The Medieval African Kingdoms of the Sahel (Songhai,Mali, Dahomey, Kanem-Boru etc)

Does anyone have any more info on these kingdoms? I'm developing an Africa-like area fro my world, and could use some inspiration.

It would be really useful if people could post not only the name of the culture, but a sentence or two that touches on what makes them unique...

 

[Desdichado]

Yep absolutely certain - although admitedly it is something of a play on words in as much as 'widespread' refers to geographic area and not number of speakers or such. The Geographic Area from Madagascar to SE Asia (including Vietnam, Taiwan) and across the Pacific to Hawaii, Rapanui and NZ is something like 1/5 of the earths surface. Admittedly most of that area is water....

Yeah, but most of Europe, a good half of Asia, a good chunk of Africa and the entire New World ain't small shakes neither. I looked something up on this -- I read that the Austronesian language group was the most widespread until the advent of colonial Europeans -- which certainly predates the spread of English somewhat. It was Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese that had the first big expansion, English was a much later phenomena. All of these are Indo-European languages, of course. Even before the spread of colonial Europeans, almost all of Europe, Asia Minor, most of Northern Asia, India and western China were primarily Indo-European in language. Although the rapid spread of the Turkish languages drove a huge wedge into their territory in the later middle ages.

 

[Teflon Billy]

I just got an email explaining that most of my info regarding the Tuareg is hopelessly out of date. I would seem that they no longer raid settlements or engage in cross-desert trade.

Apaprently their culture has been all but decimated since the loss of raiding revenue left them as the "panhandling scum of North Africa". They have adopted more orthodox Islamic beliefs and their women have suffered for it.

Folks, I don't want or need emails like this. Please, the thread is about "ancient cultures", and I much prefer my "Ancient" version of the Tuareg to the current and "correct" one.

Appaently no Djinn and no Duelling traditions survive either

 

[Goodsport]

9. The Rus (Northmen that took over what is now Russia. Rus, Russia, you know?)

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp A great sourcebook for a period of Russian history little-known to most Westerners (the 10th century to about the 18th century, or Russia of the Middle Ages) is GURPS Russia.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Granted, the Northmen occupied Rus a bit before that time period, but their influence on the land since was lasting.


-G

 

[Corey]

60. Greek-Bactrian (Hellenism in Afghanistan) Kingdom -Bias on my part since my home-brew is based on it-

61. Pre-Islamic Arabia

62. pre-Christian Ireland

63. Gotta say it... Graham Hancock's vision of Atlantis, rubbish as far as history goes, but as RPG material it's priceless. See his book Fingerprints of the Gods.

 

[Desdichado]

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp A great sourcebook for a period of Russian history little-known to most Westerners (the 10th century to about the 18th century, or Russia of the Middle Ages) is GURPS Russia.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Granted, the Northmen occupied Rus a bit before that time period, but their influence on the land since was lasting.

Osprey Press also has a number of good books, all with great Angus MacBride illustrations too, including (just the two I have, I know there's others on the subject) The Vikings and Armies of Medieval Russia.

Osprey Press books are loaded with stuff I steal for cultures in my homebrew settings, BTW. I even scan the pictures and use them as inspirations for cultural iconic characters quite a bit. I'd attach one or two, but the images are fairly large. Hmmm... maybe I'll get into Photoshop and edit them down to manageable size real quick...

 

[Desdichado]

Well, I take it back -- I haven't actually scanned anything from Armies of Medieval Russia after all. I did scan some Rus vikings though -- here's the image: