Yag II - An Overview, 12,500 to 8,000 Years Ago

**Yag II - An Overview, 12,500 to 8,000 Years Ago**

***Course Abstract, University of Bahrain Institute of Polar Studies, Ishander McGillicuddy***

The Great Surge was a major cultural disaster, wiping away two thirds of the Yag in its heartland areas and devastating the agricultural base. Vast numbers of refugees and displaced persons were set on the move, attempting to rebuild their communities and fleeing to surviving communities which were unable to accommodate them. The result were massive starvation and refugee wars.

Over time, theYag re-populated slowly, re-occupying their traditional territories. Although they faced competition in their ranges from interlopers from Tsalmothua, Azul and even Ptahr, the prior depopulation of surrounding for forced labour left considerable breathing room. The trans-community networks and alliances, the cooperation, of the Pre-Surge era ended. Surviving Yag communities became fortified compounds at war with their neighbors.

Large scale water management works came to an end. The degree of cooperation necessary for joint labour or massive seasonal slave taking was no longer in place, and there was widespread suspicion of elaborate water works. The result was that the post-surge Yag territories, while remaining comparatively dense, could not support the same density of population. Even a thousand years later, Yag population was estimated at roughly half of pre-surge levels.

The proto-democracies which characterized Yag communities prior to the Great Surge were completely erased, being replaced by a profusion of warlords and strongmen who monopolized resources. The Yag monolith period dates from this era. Forced enslavement and forced labour of foreigners continued on a reduced scale, but most often, the Yag warred with and slaughtered each other. Instead, the Yag were themselves reduced to force labour. They no longer constructed immense waterworks, but rather erected massive fortresses, walls, temples and stone edifices.

With inter-community warfare now a natural state, the early Yag experiment with egalitarianism and democratic institutions came to an end. The exalted status of Calendar men and empirical inquiry declined, although the calendar glyph system continued to evolve into a full fledged writing system. Yag communities became martial, ruled by warlords. The surge had stripped away vast amounts of fertile soil, and decline of water management, left the Yag with reduced arable land. Competition for arable land produced constant seasonal wars, with the victors in war imposing mass culls or executions on the losers. Over time, many communities were driven to extinction, while a handful of victorious communities grew steadily into city states. Roads and transport networks were developed to allow the city states to extend their reach to increasingly remote arable lands, and extending warfare.

By approximately 9,000 years ago, the Yag Basin was divided into a collection of approximately a dozen contending polities, framed by occasional alliances, with brief periods of unity. Yag cultures tended to be extremely insular and murderously hostile to outsiders.

In this era, with Astropothere populations in serious decline, short on protein, with agricultural capacity crippled, and surrounded by hostile enemies, the Yag culture took to the sea, building rafts and reed boats in order to harvest fish for food and protein. Shoreline huggers, the Yag fishing boats grew more elaborate and sophisticated, and fishing expeditions ventured further and further into the sea of tranquility.

Fishing camps were established along the shorelines. Eventually, secondary areas of Yag berry production were established all along the coast of the sea of tranquility, particularly the Azul coasts. Small scale irrigation was used to mimic the season floodings of the Yag basins. The Yag colonies were overall more labour intensive and less productive than the Yag heartlands, but thrived nevertheless.

These extensions of the Yag cultural complex, however, were not pure. Rather, they were characterized by the simultaneous adoption of crops and agricultural techniques moving in from Tsalmothua. It was also in Azul that Yag crops and technologies, including forms of the calendar glyphs began to proliferate beyond Yag culture.

Isolated from the paranoia and warfare of the heartland complex, robust societies began to emerge. By 8,000 years ago, the coastal city states of Azul had emerged as a rival hybrid culture.

I like this, consider me subscribed. BTW DValdron, are you going to get back to your Mu TL? That was a really cool work that could've gone farther than it did.

Thanks. One more bit of Yag. Then I spend time on Penguin cultures.

Then its back to the Coal Kings.

As for Empire of Mu, I actually had timeline notes all the way up to WWII. However, it managed to go past where I needed to, in order to start writing a novel. There's lots of Mu and Lemuria stories I'd love to get to sometime.