Numantia

Welcome to Numantia!
As with our neighbor and Ally, the Independent State of Caledon, Numantia has a Victorian era, steampunk theme. While, like Caledon, Numantia is located in the temparate latitudes, between the tropics and the polar circles, it differs from Caledon in having Mediterranean climate. Thus it accomadates villas with light walls and red-colored tile roofs, vineyards, and groves of olive and citrus trees. Geographically, Numantia can be considered to be located somewhere on or near the Iberian Peninsula.
In our implementation of Numantia in Second Life, there are two main ridges, both running from the northwest to the southeast. To the west of the western ridge lies a broad beach. At the southeast end of the eastern ridge, lies a small village and a harbor. Both ridges have terraced agriculture on their inward-facing sides. A stream originates on each ridge, joining in the center and flowing downslope to the harbor. The two-ridges are connected by a third ridge on the north side. To the north of this ridge, the terrain makes a steep, rocky descent to the ocean...a place with a high likelihood of caves being found. Numantia is surrounded by a border of sea sufficient for navigating a small boat.
Scattered about Numantia are more white, notecard-giving pillars such as this one. These contain short articles and links to reference material on different conceptual aspects of Numantia.
Numantia draws on multiple conceptual frameworks. The name is taken from an Iberian Celtic city that held out against the Roman Empire for several decades, before being totally annihilated in a prolonged Roman siege in 133 BC. The Wikipedia article on Numantia notes that, "After 20 years of hostilities, in the year 133 BC the Roman Senate gave Scipio Aemilianus Africanus the task of destroying Numantia. He laid siege to the city, erecting a nine kilometre fence supported by towers, moats, impaling rods and so on. After 13 months of siege, the Numantians decided to burn the city and die free rather than live and be slaves."
Wikipedia has a fairly thorough introduction to Celtic peoples on the Iberian peninsula., noting that, "The Celtiberians were Celtic-speaking people of the Iberian Peninsula in the final centuries BC. The group originated when Celts migrated from Gaul and integrated with the local pre-Indo-European populations, in particular the Iberians." The novel "Bard", by Morgan Llywelyn is based on the migration of a Celtic tribe from the Iberian peninsula to Ireland. In a paper, "The Celts in Iberia: an Overview", Alberto J. Lorrio and Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero offer another extensive review of research on the Celtiberians. Among the images from their paper is this one of Celtiberian pottery with polychrome painting from historical Numantia.
 http://www4.uwm.edu/celtic/ekeltoi/volumes/vol6/6_4/images/fig21_300.jpg
References
Bard, Morgan Llywelyn
http://www.rambles.net/llywelyn_bard.html
Celtiberians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtiberians
Mediterranean climate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_climate
Milladoiro (Galician Celtic music)
http://greenlinnet.com/Milladoiro
Numantia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numantia
Temperateness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperateness
Alberto J. Lorrio, Universidad de Alicante, and Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
The Celts in Iberia: An Overview
http://www4.uwm.edu/celtic/ekeltoi/volumes/vol6/6_4/lorrio_zapatero_6_4.html
Category: Virtual WorldsCategory: Second LifeCategory: MicronationsCategory: Numantia