distant/forgotten civilizations

[Tilla the Hun (work)]

There's a difference between legendary and 'foreign/mythical' when you're talking medieval ages...

Still the point is true. It'll take a whole lot less time than you'd think for something to become truly legendary.

Study the Celtic culture origin sometime, it does cover what you want rather surprisingly well. As a real world series of events, it'll show you several times over that it can take less than 3 generations - that's less than a hundred years - for a culture with nothing but oral traditions to 'legendize' (to coin a word) a remote land or people.

Carthage or Troy both make another good example of a 'long' time period in a much more 'enlightened' time. It took modern archeologists actually 'finding' the place to admit it wasn't a legend... yet latterday Greeks of a mere 150 years after the fall of Troy thought it was mythical or fictional!!

Early Gangtze civilizations in southern china, as documented by vedic scriptures, indicate a civilzation off the coast of India that was warred/traded with, but dissappeared in only 2 generations, fading into myth/legend. Heh, even the early Harappan civilization only a little ways west of there - over 200 cities have been found - dissappeared in a single generation and become legend by the third.


When your talking a culture without any means of verification, and little to no education, and no written records - the increasing number of differences and the distance between the cultural areas inversely reduce the time required for them to become 'mythical' to each other very quickly.

For an excellent story regarding this, try the "Far Kingdoms" series ("The Warrior Returns" among them) - I can't remember the author, but it's a story of 'exactly' what you've described about 2 cultures that traded arduously, then were seperated by cataclysm, then re-discovered when a merchant pursued a myth...


For that matter, consider the difference in time between Leif Ericson and Christopher Columbus... Columbus pursued a myth as well, if you read his journals, you could argue that the myth he pursued was Leif Ericson's discovery of the new found land

Magellan pursued a myth as well - the straits of Magellan. Only funny thing was, he had 'charts' of the straits... But they were 'mythical' to sailors of the time...

Enough rambling. It'd take less than 3 generations given the right circumstances, for the foreign country to become a 'legend'. Less than that for it to be 'exaggerated' or 'hyperbolized' as some would say . After all, when you're a Dad whose been there, and your sons want to hear stories about it - aren't you going to dramatize it a little bit? Or your drinking buddies want to hear it, so you aggrandize it a little bit? OR your a bard who just wants a hit song, so you blow it way out of proportion?

It happens _very_ quickly... It's called propaganda

 

[Hand of Evil]

tell me what you know of the Prussians?

Loved to fight
Disliked the French
Reason why short hair became popular - fashion statement
Mad Bombers​

I would say at least three generations of your race, it is becoming faded history by four and five forgotten unless actively taught and reseached and even then truth becomes one sided or popular.

 

[tarchon]

I think folks are vastly overestimating the time required. I submit that, at a late-classical and early Dark Ages tech, anything more than a week's travel away is pretty much legendary already.

Think - Europe had trade with the Orient back before Marco Polo, by the Silk road through the Middle East. But how many Eurpoeans really knew anything solid about the culture of India? Even during the Crusades, a time of active (if violent) contact, how much did Europeans know about the cultures of people in the Holy Land?

They knew things, but not all of them accurate. Everyone knew who Saladin was; they had vague notions of "Saracens" and notable place names like Acre and Jerusalem. Any educated person would know or could easily find out a few things about India from sources on Alexander, like Arrian. Michael Wood showed that you could even today find some Indian and South Central Asian customs and geography that Arrian had reported. When a very detailed and reliable ancient source existed, Pausanias for instance, travellers could and still can use it to identify landmarks over a thousand years later. The knowledge possessed by a literate culture isn't limited to the extent of the average person's knowledge but to extant literary sources, as well as the knowledge of experts, who would certainly have fairly reliable knowledge of important countries more than a week away.

 

[Turanil]

OK, so let's say you have a gameworld, and in the past, several distinct civilizations used to trade with and war against each other on a regular basis. Let's say that these groups were separated by great distance (like China and France) or by geographic features (oceans, deserts, mountain ranges), whatever. At any rate, trade/war between these cultures is possible, but involves spending a lot of time travelling. We're talking late classical/early dark ages technology here.

Now say something comes along and makes the travel impossible, or at least nearly so. Natural disasters, gods erect a barrier, dragons occupy the trade routes, doesn't matter for my purposes. My questions for you ancient culture mongers: How long, in your estimation, would it take for the distant cultures to fade into legend and/or be completely forgotten? Let's assume there are no printing presses, but there are scribes, libraries, and bards to maintain oral traditions. Are we talking centuries or what?

IMO it depends on the land and culture.

Some lands / cultures would be eventually forgotten, but others would still be remembered thousands of years later: I speak of Atlantis here. After the so many books I did read on that subject, I am convinced that there has been a great civilization (but akin to ancient Egypt, not sci-fi) in a very distant past around China sea, and that it is what Atlantis is about. Of course, in a fantasy world, a land peopled with some new race, having magic, etc., would become a totally weird legend in the lands far from it.

Now, don't forget that a wall or dragon is not enough to prevent travel there. Did you forget about Teleportation?

 

[Umbran]

They knew things, but not all of them accurate. Everyone knew who Saladin was; they had vague notions of "Saracens" and notable place names like Acre and Jerusalem. Any educated person would know or could easily find out a few things about India from sources on Alexander....

Yes, but remember why they were called the "Dark Ages"? Because there was little to no education in Europe at the time. Yes, an educated person could find the information - but there were very, very few educated people. If you were not a member of that small class, you knew diddly-squat about anything far away.

In D&D, this is equivalent to the archetypal sage knowing a few books to look for for a bit of forgotten lore, but the main populace knowing nothing.

 

[francisca]

Now, don't forget that a wall or dragon is not enough to prevent travel there. Did you forget about Teleportation?

Nope. Didn't forget about teleportation. Just ignoring it.

My world is set during the dawn of magic, both arcane and divine. I wanted to run a world without the standard fantasy trapping of "great power tore the world asunder ages past", leaving leaving all kinds of crap like the Head of Vecna, Rings of Power, and an untold number of ancient ruins to adventure in. As much as I love that cliche', I thought I'd try a homebrew without it.

So, I have a world wherein my players are the movers and shakers, and do not have to depend on finding the ancient artifact of walla-walla-bing-bong to defeat the BBEG. I want them to be around to fight someone like Melkor, or witness the Invoked Devastation of Greyhawk, or whatever the big cataclysm of the first age of my world happens to be. Not even the elves have loads of arcane magic, though they have a pretty strong druidial tradition.

Oh, and when I said "Dragon", I was speaking metaphorically, not literally. Doesn't really matter anyway. Several cultures around the game world think, well *know*, they are the only group of humans/elves/dwarves in the universe. My game is set in a time of good weather, just after an ice age. Crops and animal populations are exploding, which means so are humanoid populations, and push is coming to shove. Several expansionist empires are finding these other populations, and are starting to butt heads, and hell is going to break loose.

 

[Dogbrain]

I feel such the fool for ignoring the OBVIOUS example: Ethiopia.

Ethiopia was a constant trading partner to the Roman Empire, through Nubia, into the Egypt province. It (known as "Aksum" at the time) was also one of the earliest countries to officially adopt Christianity (ca. AD330). Ethiopia eventually became "The Kingdom of Prester John" in the understanding of Western Europeans.