Love the idea of husbands being ambassadors/diplomats between families, but ultimately not having a ton of power of their own. It’s a very interesting gender role for a man to inhabit. Your vids are so good!
And it's especially neat that it makes perfect sense, since men in this setting aren't going to be soldiers or manual laborers and are unlikely to be generals or do any risky jobs, so none of the classic reasons for male political dominance or most male gender roles apply.
I know this is probably definitely not what really happens, but I like to think that if an aristocratic family does lose their social standing and becomes part of the peasantry, then all the males in the family just sort of pop out of existence with a confused expression.
What a fascinating view of polygyny and kinship. You're an amazingly thoughtful worldbuilder, and I feel l learn a lot about both anthropology and how to approach fantasy cultures in a way that's both creative and real from your videos. Keep up what you're doing, it's great! I can't wait to see the female side.
This is not something the next video will touch on, because the scenario I'll discuss won't have room for it. But if a man is married to women who get demoted to peasant, he'll just return to his family, and most likely re-marry soon after. And if his own family gets demoted, then he's on shaky ground, but still in a better situation than the female members of his family, because there's a dire shortage of men, so while he might not be an aristocrat any more on a technical level, he'll carry on living the life of an aristocrat in one way or another.
This is more top quality and fascinating stuff. Once again, it makes the idea of them interacting with the Hunter-gathers even more fun to think about. Especially if the hunter gatherers start advancing their society and develop further like the river basin people have. The idea of some aristocrats acting like: "Wait these guys only marry ONE woman?? What about the rest of the family??? How do these people function??!" This just strikes me as humorous. But considering how cultural differences such as this spell disaster for people in our real world..... perhaps I'm underestimating or being naive about how both cultures communicating would actually go down. 😞 And that's what I love about your videos?? They get me to think about things and just put me in such a blissful creative mood! And they hype me up for the next part, so there's that too I suppose. XD
Since the hunter-gatherers can't settle in (and thus have no reason to invade) the river basin and the river basin kingdom can't or has little reason to invade downriver, their interactions would likely be much nicer than most historical ones, although there'd likely still be some border friction (a male hunter-gatherer can travel into the river basin without risking their fertility, either as a merchant or other peaceful type or as part of a raiding warband) and mutual culture shock/cultural disdain.
I'm really in love with the idea of the ideal trait for men being about balance and being built around intuition and interpersonal relationships, but also trade. I feel like it's an interesting look that incorporates what westerners might see as "traditionally feminine values", but does it in a way that's not just "what's the opposite of what men have" and looks at what a natural role these men might fulfill in their families. Question: how do you see the river basin aristocracy falling on the matri/patri-lineal and matri/patri-local continuum (or outside the continuum)? (apologies if you've already answered this in a video and I forgot)
I think of them as matrilocal and patrilineal, though the patrilineal bit is really just about generation names (aristocratic children get their youngest father's name as their generation name).
@@WorldbuildingNotes That makes sense. The way you were describing the aristocratic families in this video didn't really seem like it fit into a strict matri or patrilineal structure. Like there's either more collective decision making or just the power is broken up between different people. I also appreciate how much you've bitten off with your kinship system. One of my con cultures has one that's also really chunky and hard to write out like in the kinship trees, but that's because I'm baking other things into my system like tracking inheritance and whether you've had kids or not.
You would not believe how excited I get whenever you upload. Your ideas are extremely cool and they truly inspire me and make me absolutely pumped every time I see an upload. You're doing a great job. Thank you so much Ewa. My regards from America.
Hello, this is the first video that I saw that has comments enabled, I just wanted to tell you that your videos are amazing and they keep inspiring me to build my own worlds and create my own stories, thank you
Can't wait for the next episode! Also thank you so much for your work on this series. You've inspired me to relax a little and go down my own rabbit holes of worldbuilding. This has yielded some great treasures for me, and I have you to thank for it. Keep up the good work.
how do the children receive their names? My guess on naming scheme: king: [(new) given name] queens: [family name] [given name] nuns: [family name] [given name] [monetarist] aristocrats (female): [family name] [given name] ([father(s) given name + suffix]) aristocrats (male): [family name] [given name] ([wifes family's name]) peasants: [given name] [ruling family's name] The hunter gatherers: [given name] or [nickname]
There are no family names, but aristocracy have patronymics. Which, due to the way things work, are also generation names. So it's: [given name] [the name of the youngest father]
Somewhere along the way--most likely due to certain interests (i.e. medieval warfare) I have on the side with worldbuilding--I started thinking about death in the River Basin. Specifically violent death, whether it be through warfare or its derivatives, or through violent crime. Because no matter how prosperous a culture may be, violence will always be present. Things like rivalry, murder, and warfare will always be a thing. Even if a society can't afford it, violence is still going to occur for one reason or another. And on that note, what about other societies outside of the River Valley and the River Basin? Like Bird Island? We know other societies exist because we know about Bird Island. What if there's a culture that, due to the absence of such a magical being, has a vastly larger population that's still capable of reproducing? And what if these cultures were to come into contact? Would it be something vaguely reminiscent of what happened in our world with the Colombian Exchange? Or would it be more akin to what the Icelanders and native Canadians had going on for a little bit?
The people I've discussed on this channel so far are the only people that exist on this planet. I know it's kind of a bummer and might come across like it makes the whole setup more boring, but I made things this way because an isolated culture is already an extremely complex thing, and adding interactions with other cultures into the mix would make this whole worldbuilding project extremely unwieldy.
I absolutely love your channel because the comment section is, unlike in other channels, very civil and usually has more info that is too small to make a video on by the way I remember you mentioned in a previous video that aristocratic families could get demoted to peasents but i do not remember you explaining how?
I’m curious about how the peasants think about all this? What do the peasants think of men? But also, in the lack of gender among peasants, do they organize themselves socially in some other way that’s similar to gender, like more defined social roles like professions? Is there a peasant version of marriage?
I was just thinking about that as well. Surely it's not such a big problem for women, especially peasants, but male homosexual relationships are very rare and I'm curious as to what those look like
@That one friend that genuinely enjoys Rick Astley true, true. I wonder if being a homosexual male can get you cast out from society. On the other hand, a marriage isn't fully about fertility in this society, so perhaps some homosexual males still get married as an "ambassador" but still have a stigma surrounding them due to their sexuality
@Jesse Mathis I suppose being trans might be less common if people didn't have a word for what they were experiencing, and more strictly enforced gender roles might limit such as well. Still, it's not like trans (and otherwise queer) people would stop existing in all forms just because the society is an early one. I'm just curious as to how this society would treat the people who _are_ queer; even if they were rarer, they would still exist in some form. I wonder to what extent conformity is valued and deviation is punished, basically, and whether there are any interesting cultural ideas around queerness in a culture as different to ours as this one.
I'm kind of confused about logistics and curious about how it works. Here are three facts that I may have wrong: 1. Families will arrange for a male teen from one to marry the whole family of the other, including previous generations. 2. A family remains in a household on the same land from generation to generation. 3. A plot of land is granted to the first family from the second for the male to bed in. This sounds unsustainable after so many generations as all the plots would have been given to other tribes as marriage gifts, no? Also, do families only decide to get married if there are no remaining male family members on the bride's side?
Sadly, there's not enough grammar for one to be able to hold an actual conversation in Itlu. I've decided to leave it as a naming language, the passion for figuring out all the grammar is just not there for me.
Interesting idea, I really enjoy your videos. I may have missed it but a questions I had were how does someone become a peasant and how does the population of peasants reproduce?
Markk4kk 1. Be born a peasant; noble-to-peasant will be explained soon 2. The queens give them a magic token that allows them to give birth to a female child
It's a beautifull world and overall system is built realy fine but just out off curiosity is there any love in political aragments like that even desired?
So in closing you have a very insular society that can by its very means of survival never increase in size. Protected because people who live outside the river basin know it kills female fertility. What i dont get is the fact that you have resource heavy culture in the basin but no resource heavy culture outside it. As for reveference where do the river basin people get iron or metals for tool making? They seem very insular and idealised.
@@WorldbuildingNotes but your dotted line indicates that those mountains which i assume are at the river sources are outside the infertility zone or at least these queens legal authority and i remember you showed that those areas nearest the mountains spoke a non itlu language. So how is the metal paid for?
Here's the map that shows the mountains: i.imgur.com/edmOElF.png Most of those mountains lie outside the infertility zone, but some of them lie inside it.
So what would happen to the retaliation ships that form beyond the vally ( speciflicly- vally dwellers x non vally dweller intermixing, what are the repercussions of that relationship / sexual relationships ? )
With such a huge imbalance in the population in terms of gender, what happens to homosexuals? Surely there is not much of a problem for females, especially in the peasantry but what about males? Interesting question that you might want to answer in the future.
![[Live] : ONE 168 วันนี้!! "โจนาธาน vs ซุปเปอร์เล็ก"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0jIN65KgJsI/mqdefault.jpg)
You may not like it, but that's what peak performance looks like
Love the idea of husbands being ambassadors/diplomats between families, but ultimately not having a ton of power of their own. It’s a very interesting gender role for a man to inhabit.
Your vids are so good!
Kinda the opposite of some south asian families
And it's especially neat that it makes perfect sense, since men in this setting aren't going to be soldiers or manual laborers and are unlikely to be generals or do any risky jobs, so none of the classic reasons for male political dominance or most male gender roles apply.
I know this is probably definitely not what really happens, but I like to think that if an aristocratic family does lose their social standing and becomes part of the peasantry, then all the males in the family just sort of pop out of existence with a confused expression.
They just collectively go "ah fu.." and pop out of existance 😂
This is the ideal male body type. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.
What a fascinating view of polygyny and kinship. You're an amazingly thoughtful worldbuilder, and I feel l learn a lot about both anthropology and how to approach fantasy cultures in a way that's both creative and real from your videos. Keep up what you're doing, it's great! I can't wait to see the female side.
I am curious to see what will happen to the men when their family's aristocratic status is revoked since they only appear in the aristocracy.
This is not something the next video will touch on, because the scenario I'll discuss won't have room for it. But if a man is married to women who get demoted to peasant, he'll just return to his family, and most likely re-marry soon after. And if his own family gets demoted, then he's on shaky ground, but still in a better situation than the female members of his family, because there's a dire shortage of men, so while he might not be an aristocrat any more on a technical level, he'll carry on living the life of an aristocrat in one way or another.
@@WorldbuildingNotes I figured he'd get transferred to another family if his original family was demoted.
This is so cool; it feels like I'm listening to a description of a real culture
This is more top quality and fascinating stuff. Once again, it makes the idea of them interacting with the Hunter-gathers even more fun to think about. Especially if the hunter gatherers start advancing their society and develop further like the river basin people have.
The idea of some aristocrats acting like: "Wait these guys only marry ONE woman?? What about the rest of the family??? How do these people function??!"
This just strikes me as humorous. But considering how cultural differences such as this spell disaster for people in our real world..... perhaps I'm underestimating or being naive about how both cultures communicating would actually go down. 😞
And that's what I love about your videos?? They get me to think about things and just put me in such a blissful creative mood! And they hype me up for the next part, so there's that too I suppose. XD
Since the hunter-gatherers can't settle in (and thus have no reason to invade) the river basin and the river basin kingdom can't or has little reason to invade downriver, their interactions would likely be much nicer than most historical ones, although there'd likely still be some border friction (a male hunter-gatherer can travel into the river basin without risking their fertility, either as a merchant or other peaceful type or as part of a raiding warband) and mutual culture shock/cultural disdain.
I'm really in love with the idea of the ideal trait for men being about balance and being built around intuition and interpersonal relationships, but also trade. I feel like it's an interesting look that incorporates what westerners might see as "traditionally feminine values", but does it in a way that's not just "what's the opposite of what men have" and looks at what a natural role these men might fulfill in their families. Question: how do you see the river basin aristocracy falling on the matri/patri-lineal and matri/patri-local continuum (or outside the continuum)? (apologies if you've already answered this in a video and I forgot)
I think of them as matrilocal and patrilineal, though the patrilineal bit is really just about generation names (aristocratic children get their youngest father's name as their generation name).
@@WorldbuildingNotes That makes sense. The way you were describing the aristocratic families in this video didn't really seem like it fit into a strict matri or patrilineal structure. Like there's either more collective decision making or just the power is broken up between different people. I also appreciate how much you've bitten off with your kinship system. One of my con cultures has one that's also really chunky and hard to write out like in the kinship trees, but that's because I'm baking other things into my system like tracking inheritance and whether you've had kids or not.
I wonder if there are any swear words in the Itlu language and the man can go "fudge it, I'm out of this"
You would not believe how excited I get whenever you upload. Your ideas are extremely cool and they truly inspire me and make me absolutely pumped every time I see an upload. You're doing a great job. Thank you so much Ewa. My regards from America.
You’re one of my favorite channels.
Hello, this is the first video that I saw that has comments enabled, I just wanted to tell you that your videos are amazing and they keep inspiring me to build my own worlds and create my own stories, thank you
I was actually pondering when you'd upload next about an hour ago!
Can't wait for the next episode!
Also thank you so much for your work on this series. You've inspired me to relax a little and go down my own rabbit holes of worldbuilding. This has yielded some great treasures for me, and I have you to thank for it. Keep up the good work.
It's always a great day whenever I see a new Worldbuilding Notes video
how do the children receive their names? My guess on naming scheme:
king: [(new) given name]
queens: [family name] [given name]
nuns: [family name] [given name]
[monetarist]
aristocrats (female): [family name] [given name] ([father(s) given name + suffix])
aristocrats (male): [family name] [given name] ([wifes family's name])
peasants: [given name] [ruling family's name]
The hunter gatherers: [given name] or [nickname]
There are no family names, but aristocracy have patronymics. Which, due to the way things work, are also generation names. So it's: [given name] [the name of the youngest father]
Well I think that's a little bizarre for then... ok. I was originally was going to say clan name but changed it to family.
Well thought out and unique, as usual =).
I love this channel, can't wait for the next one, as always
Somewhere along the way--most likely due to certain interests (i.e. medieval warfare) I have on the side with worldbuilding--I started thinking about death in the River Basin. Specifically violent death, whether it be through warfare or its derivatives, or through violent crime. Because no matter how prosperous a culture may be, violence will always be present. Things like rivalry, murder, and warfare will always be a thing. Even if a society can't afford it, violence is still going to occur for one reason or another.
And on that note, what about other societies outside of the River Valley and the River Basin? Like Bird Island? We know other societies exist because we know about Bird Island. What if there's a culture that, due to the absence of such a magical being, has a vastly larger population that's still capable of reproducing? And what if these cultures were to come into contact? Would it be something vaguely reminiscent of what happened in our world with the Colombian Exchange? Or would it be more akin to what the Icelanders and native Canadians had going on for a little bit?
The people I've discussed on this channel so far are the only people that exist on this planet. I know it's kind of a bummer and might come across like it makes the whole setup more boring, but I made things this way because an isolated culture is already an extremely complex thing, and adding interactions with other cultures into the mix would make this whole worldbuilding project extremely unwieldy.
I absolutely love your channel because the comment section is, unlike in other channels, very civil and usually has more info that is too small to make a video on
by the way I remember you mentioned in a previous video that aristocratic families could get demoted to peasents but i do not remember you explaining how?
That will be covered in the next video.
This is a really cool idea
I have seen every video, i need more.
Great video! Answered a lot of questions about your world
Another fantastic video Ewa
What about the ideal woman?
Easy, Her. I mean damn that accent.
Next month
Uuuuu! My favourite animation style is back!
I’m curious about how the peasants think about all this? What do the peasants think of men? But also, in the lack of gender among peasants, do they organize themselves socially in some other way that’s similar to gender, like more defined social roles like professions? Is there a peasant version of marriage?
Given that most of the society is female, what are the attitudes of same-sex relationships?
yeah, i wonder too! and I'm curious what the attitudes about transgender people are as well.
I was just thinking about that as well. Surely it's not such a big problem for women, especially peasants, but male homosexual relationships are very rare and I'm curious as to what those look like
@That one friend that genuinely enjoys Rick Astley true, true. I wonder if being a homosexual male can get you cast out from society. On the other hand, a marriage isn't fully about fertility in this society, so perhaps some homosexual males still get married as an "ambassador" but still have a stigma surrounding them due to their sexuality
@Jesse Mathis I suppose being trans might be less common if people didn't have a word for what they were experiencing, and more strictly enforced gender roles might limit such as well. Still, it's not like trans (and otherwise queer) people would stop existing in all forms just because the society is an early one. I'm just curious as to how this society would treat the people who _are_ queer; even if they were rarer, they would still exist in some form. I wonder to what extent conformity is valued and deviation is punished, basically, and whether there are any interesting cultural ideas around queerness in a culture as different to ours as this one.
Yooo!!! I never thought about that!! Kind of makes me think about how bisexual or asexual people would be treated or interpreted to be like as well.🤔
I'm kind of confused about logistics and curious about how it works. Here are three facts that I may have wrong:
1. Families will arrange for a male teen from one to marry the whole family of the other, including previous generations.
2. A family remains in a household on the same land from generation to generation.
3. A plot of land is granted to the first family from the second for the male to bed in.
This sounds unsustainable after so many generations as all the plots would have been given to other tribes as marriage gifts, no?
Also, do families only decide to get married if there are no remaining male family members on the bride's side?
The plot-granting thing only lasts for the duration of marriage.
Wouldn't it be so awesome to be fluent in Itlu, along with a few friends?
Sadly, there's not enough grammar for one to be able to hold an actual conversation in Itlu. I've decided to leave it as a naming language, the passion for figuring out all the grammar is just not there for me.
I Luv it
I've never clicked a notification so fast in my life
Nice idea!
Sehr gut!
Yay!
Interesting idea, I really enjoy your videos. I may have missed it but a questions I had were how does someone become a peasant and how does the population of peasants reproduce?
Markk4kk
1. Be born a peasant; noble-to-peasant will be explained soon
2. The queens give them a magic token that allows them to give birth to a female child
Great video! How do these ideals and gender roles affect the language in your world?
300th like more vids plz thank you
It's a beautifull world and overall system is built realy fine but just out off curiosity is there any love in political aragments like that even desired?
So in closing you have a very insular society that can by its very means of survival never increase in size. Protected because people who live outside the river basin know it kills female fertility. What i dont get is the fact that you have resource heavy culture in the basin but no resource heavy culture outside it. As for reveference where do the river basin people get iron or metals for tool making? They seem very insular and idealised.
They get gold, silver, copper and iron from the mountains surrounding the basin.
@@WorldbuildingNotes but your dotted line indicates that those mountains which i assume are at the river sources are outside the infertility zone or at least these queens legal authority and i remember you showed that those areas nearest the mountains spoke a non itlu language. So how is the metal paid for?
Here's the map that shows the mountains: i.imgur.com/edmOElF.png
Most of those mountains lie outside the infertility zone, but some of them lie inside it.
So what would happen to the retaliation ships that form beyond the vally ( speciflicly- vally dwellers x non vally dweller intermixing, what are the repercussions of that relationship / sexual relationships ? )
I am interested what language you were talking in your videos about the bird Island? Was this language itlu?
It was Lojban.
Wow
YAAAAAS
I thought the video was going to be about the built religion of the people, due to the thumbnail and the title
wait, what happened to the island?? is this the same civ or..?
Same planet, different location.
@@WorldbuildingNotes Alright!
when children are born to an aristocratic couple, to which family they belong? the man's or the woman's?
The woman's.
@@WorldbuildingNotes makes sense. Thanks!
0:15 AMOG US????
What do the ideal men on your world use to shave?
Do they use Gillette? 🤔
With such a huge imbalance in the population in terms of gender, what happens to homosexuals? Surely there is not much of a problem for females, especially in the peasantry but what about males? Interesting question that you might want to answer in the future.
So is this a Matriarchy?
This sounds perfect for an Harem Anime.
How do the peasants propagate then? Does the aristocratic man also marry all the peasant women on the other family's claim?
The queens give them a magic token that allows them to give birth to a female child.
Parthenogenesis that causes the peasant to become pregnant with a clone of herself.
how do the peasants repopulate?
Baker's Bread She made a segment somewhere that explains the queens give them a token that allows them to give birth to a definitely female child
They give birth to clones of themselves! It was explained in a prior video so it shouldn't be too hard to find.
omg first!
nobody cares
@@frank_calvert I do, that's all that matters.