Talk:Proto-Persian'

Is this an althistory where Dravidian became a major language family, instead of being restricted to South India? Nik 09:52, 1 November 2007 (PDT)

No. Just look at the thing - it looks nothing like Dravidian. (Three stop phonation series, no geminates, and only one coronal but two dorsal POAs, for just the few most glaring feature mismatches thus far.) Earth' branches from ours a few hundred thousand years ago: we get multiple surviving hominid species etc. The "present day" is a millenia or two off from ours, too.

The allusions are per the wider historical role played by the family. Tsonboran is pretty much the Sumerian analog, in a nod to the Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis... And yes "allusions", as there are more of these. The Altaic' family (see Proto-Altaic') for instance is something of an Afro-Asian parallel, and the alleged Betamax (actually, that one has a proper interuniverse name too: "Ouiqál") is a "pseudo-Spanish". There's more, but these are the most up-front about it. --John Vertical 08:13, 2 November 2007 (PDT)

Ah, okay. I thought by "analogue" you meant that it was descended from it. I know only a little bit about modern Tamil (and no other Dravidian languages), and nothing about reconstructed Proto-Dravidian.

Multiple surviving hominid species? How'd that happen? Nik 16:07, 2 November 2007 (PDT)

I haven't worked out much details, but chiefly it seems that H. sapiens & co. were not quite successful in wiping out H. erectus. It, or its descendants generally hold the hunter-gatherer ecological niche in continental Eurasia, and have domesticated the dog. Civilization is generally limited to Asia and NW Africa. There may be a Neanderthalid species still in Europe, and a fourth species in southern Africa. Australia and the Americas have nothing radically different, and I'm unsure if the latter have even been completely colonized yet. Oh, and this just in: the dromedary was hunted to extinction before the Neolithic, which could explain why there have been no nomadic peeples invading the Iberian Peninsula. --John Vertical 10:23, 4 November 2007 (PST)

So, is H. sapiens the only species with our level of intelligence? Also, is their highest civilization still at a fairly low level of development? Nik 07:13, 5 November 2007 (PST)

[bɜ̃ːʰ] [<sound of smacking face>], I realized I never checked back on this. Yeah, there's only one truly sapient hominid species. Actually, due to some differences — tentativly, a more "water-ape" development leading to eg. a smaller figure: a well-fed person would be 1.6 m on average, with less variation between sexes — I don't think they should be called H. sapiens actually. Nevertheless, this is all still pretty half-baked; this conworld isn't really in activ development as much as a background sketch to hang some projects & excess phonology sketches to... When, or if, I get around to expanding on this it'll be at Earth' and subpages.

As for your other question, it's a highly diachronic conworld, but my "present day" in terms of politics & absolute chronology compares somewhat close to 1100s~1300s Arabia & China. Some, but certainly not all technological aspects may be as far as mid-1800s level. Haven't decided yet which. (Leaning towards at least medicine.) --John Vertical 16:53, 16 March 2008 (PDT)