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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 660073" data-attributes="member: 812">Hello, SHARK. To answer your question, the main reason is lack of information. We simply don't know very much about what life was like before Europeans arrived here because there are so few records of it. Egypt has yielded up her secrets through the hieroglyphs, and Sub-Saharan Africa is slowly getting exposed through archaeology and anthropology and just talking to the existing people and tracing their stories back -- but all of that is very difficult in North and South America. In the first place because there are so few people left. Whether the figure was 90% or 50% or whatever, the fact is that there is almost nobody left who continues to preserve the cultural heritage of the many nations that once covered this land. At least in Africa those nations still exist, separated though they have been by imposed borders and petty colonialists and local tyrants. But in the Americas, not only were the populations decimated to some degree by disease, alcoholism, and genocide, but the in many cases the survivors were taken away from their culture and the children were raised as European, with no knowledge of their own heritage.I'm not being a big ol' bleeding heart here, but the fact is we know very little about pre-colonial life in North America and those are the reasons why. Some of them, anyway.That said, Barsoom fortunately suffers from no such depressing tragedies. The Yshakan nation, holding the bountiful northern plains, has long been immune to the depredations of the Empire of Kish. Even traders seeking their fine worked goods must be cautious, for the Yshakans are proud warriors and their nation is a morass of tribal politics so that making a deal with one group is no guarantee that another will allow you passage. In fact, if you make a deal with the wrong group, you may find yourself being hunted by the others! The Yshakans consider themselves the children of the one goddess, who delivered them from certain death at the hands of the dragons who once walked the earth. As such, their natural superiority over all other, lesser, humans is self-evident. To them, at least.The Yshakans are sort of a combination of Plains Indian cultures with the city-building religious hierarchies of the Aztecs. The party hasn't explored their country yet, but oh, they will. Not this season, I don't think, but very likely the next one...</blockquote>

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