[gurps] [Worldbuilding] Intriguing concept

[Matt Riggsby]

On 7/3/06, hal at buffnet.net <hal at buffnet.net> wrote:
>
> More importantly - how does such a culture keep a sustained population
> growth if its young women are off waging a war and/or dying on the
> battlefield?

Unless they're off fighting *all the time*, population losses through
warfare are probably small enough to be absorbed without too much
trouble.  It's difficult for a society to keep more than 1-2% of the
population in the field for extended periods anyway (granted, those
people who *are* off fighting are disproportionately in their
childbearing years), so you're only exposing a small proportion of the
population to increased risk.  Moreover, when young men get killed off
on the battlefield, that historically doesn't usually lead to polygamy
to keep all the young women back at home producing babies; it just
means more women never getting married and having kids.  So killing
off young women instead of young men on the battlefield won't make a
lot of difference to the population.  You'll get similar population
effects either way.

> One could almost imagine that such an Amazonian culture might have to
> develop what amounts to creche style child rearing.  I wonder what kind of
> effect this might have on a "family" in general, and how would such a
> culture pass on its traditions?  Who teaches the children loyalty to the
> family if there is no real nuclear family such as we know today?

Easy:  there's little or no attachment to the parents/the nuclear
family.  There's loyalty to a tribe or extended family, a common
concept in most societies (we in the modern west are an exception to
the global trend).  Children are raised by whoever is left behind:
matriarchs past fighting years, the mildly disabled, and whoever the
society can't economically afford to put into the field.

> If
> loyalty transcends that of Mother/daughter/sister - how does it anchor
> itself overall with the creche?

The extended family group becomes the point to which loyalty anchors.
You might see something like joking and avoidance relationships
skipping generations.  Any given person might have a relatively warm
relationship with her age-cohorts, her grandmother's generation (which
took on most of the burden of raising her), and her granddaughter's
generation (which she is raising), but a more formalized, respectful
relationship with her mother's and daughter's generations.

> Would the men be regulated in a free role within society or would they be
> slaves or a combination thereof?

That's a significant wild card.  Just what roles do men fill?  The
mythical option is to have a small number of men around doing stud
duty and little else, like drone bees, leaving them with an extremely
limited social and economic role.  A more realistic (which does not,
of course, necessarily mean better or more interesting) would to
relegate them to a socially inferior role, just as women have been
subjugated in most other societies.  Families want to produce
daughters rather than sons, so excess sons are exposed rather than
excess daughters.  Men may do more tasks around the household while
women work outside, doing the trading, fighting, and politics.
Perhaps men are regarded a bit like dumb animals, just the thing to do
the plowing and carrying but not fit for more refined tasks.

In either case, it's a society likely to be a lot less concerned with
sexuality.  Paternity, a constant niggle for patriarchial societies,
doesn't matter; a man may not know for sure that the child his wife is
carrying is his, but the woman *always* knows that it's hers.
Consequently, virginity and controling who people have sex with won't
be nearly as important.  That also probably makes relationships
between men and women less important (childbearing and initiation as a
warrior are important milestones in a girl's life; marriage as we know
it may not exist) and increases the importance of friendships and
alliances between women.  There's some good literature on intense
female friendships which would be useful here, but, alas, I've read
precious little of it.



-- 
My wife's food blog is quite interesting:
http://thehappysorceress.blogspot.com