anthropology

• evolution of humans
• anatomical modernity
• behavioural modernity
• human variation, “race”
• human nature?
• what does culture mean and is it a useful term
  • similarly, is religion separable from culture or is that a western concept?
  • trying to be careful with terminology of religion because english unhelpfully just uses the word God for any vaguely monotheistic tradition; myth tends to have the colloquial connotations of untruth or fictionality, as does magic; what the hell does organized religion even mean
  • similarly, differentiation between technologies or sciences and arts, and “science” from other forms of knowledge and truth, such as “religion”
• how do you define a culture. how do you define a society. what is the difference between the two. how do you define a civilization. how do you define a nation. a state. sovereignty

I won’t be doing guides for culture building per se, primarily because there is no formula you can compute to build a society, but also because, in my opinion, this is the most personal part of worldbuilding: the cultures you build are a product of the goals and interests you want to explore, and that’s a task only you can carry out. This also means that your own personal views or convictions on any number of topics are more likely to play a part, and you might find that information and sources that I supply are, in your opinion, total hogwash. Culture is intangible, and unmeasurable, and therefore you are almost certainly coming at it from at least a slightly different angle than I am.

However! While I can’t help you decide what the people of your world believe or how they act or what they value, I can help with some of the things that they might do. All of that is over at the Technology page. Firstly, the walkthrough is meant to get you thinking about all the different technologies that people make use of on a daily basis that might not be readily obvious.

In addition to these notes I also highly recommend, if you’re building at the planetary scale, working out a reasonable distribution of plant and animal life beforehand, as well as a little geology. This ensures that each culture will have their own unique package of local resources to build with, and will help avoid making obvious knock-offs of existing Earth cultures.

• Look at the surroundings of a given people, and identify any common threats: dangerous predators, poisonous plants or snakes, treacherous terrain, inhospitable weather. Whatever they are, these will undoubtedly feature prominently in folklore — possibly ascribed mythological or supernatural status, almost certainly the subject of didactic tales meant to teach children to avoid them (how many well-known European folktales essentially boil down to “Don’t go into the woods”?).
• Supernatural creatures, dangerous or not, often originate as explanation for features of the landscape or natural phenomena, but mundane creatures will figure at least as prominently. What animals coexist alongside the people? What traits of theirs receive the most cultural emphasis (e.g. foxes, famed for their cunning)? Which animals are important to the local ecosystem? Which ones are important for the survival of the people?
• Never underestimate the power of collective memory — climate change in Australia. flood myths, seven sisters, extinct megafauna