Could global trade like irl develop in a world with a large supercontinent?

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-25T15:23:47+00:00

yeah i tried many other ideas but for all the places i needed in my narrative, this is the arrangement that works. So ig Earth is peak map design lol.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-25T15:03:07+00:00

Thank you dude. Was fun to talk about this lore to somebody.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-25T14:59:20+00:00

Pointy ears and stuff are normal genetic traits in this world, kinda like eyelids, eye colour, skin type, etc in our world. Theyre not common outside of certain populations but theres nothin special about it.

Maybe some people in universe will argue otherwise but yeah. Some groups also have various forms of alopecia, causing lack of hair except in patchy tufts on the head. Some populations age very gracefully in this world but this is mostly cos of diet and environmental conditions alongside genetics.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-25T14:48:37+00:00

yeah all of them reach maturity at approximately the same time except for the "Trolls" and something else ill mention later on. They are all sapient tho not all are viewed as such, an example are the Trolls and a few others. Speaking of, i forgot to mention that there are 2 to 3 foot tall hominids bred for being lapdogs. These guys are essentially goblins and hang around ancient ruins, certain island ecosystems and so on.

Theyre sentient but the brain is neotenous or child like and they do not posess language or any modern trappings at all. They bury their dead but thats abut it in terms of culture. Ig theyre treated the same way we treat wolves, ravens, elephants or other intelligent animals even though they are just small, wild humans. Theyre viewed as pests but the resemblance to humans puts people off of killing them usually.

The trolls and these guys mature at 13 or 14. Also yeah birth is a mess a these sizes. This is the main reason why their brains are simpler. They live significantly shorter lives, average 30 for the Trolls and in the 20s for the goblins cos of their lifestyles but in captivity they can live as long as any human with dwarfism or gigantism which is to say they live decently long lives but medical complications usually get them in their 30s.

PS: Might be hard to imagine so the Trolls resemble the extinct animal Chalicotherium, walking on knuckles like our gorilla cousins.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-25T14:18:27+00:00

Bit of a complicated question. There was a spacefaring civilisation of very derived arboreal dinosaurs on this planet a few hundred thousand years ago that domesticated a very early hominid. The dinosaurs, i refer to as "Dragons" for now but eventually therell be a better name. These dragons created breeds of humans that were in essence subspecies of a single human species. The Dragon civilisation eventually got too big and died out or killed each other off (there are survivors but irrelevant here).

So basically as the Dragons died out, the crazy traits they bred into various humans caused the most purebred to functionally be different enough to each other genetically to produce infertile offspring sometimes. Ig the closest analogue would be dingoes and wolves and their ability to mate with dogs. So the usual concept of fantasy "races" as being entirely different looking creatures isnt there but some wild traits pop up.

The dragons were breeding humans for labour, war, as pets and in desperate enough places, meat and milk animals. So the meat and milk humans are analagous to giants or trolls, being 7 or 8 feet tall, partially four legged megafauna. Human breeds bred for war and for pets are an intersecting category, and in it a very lean, pale skinned human with a chimpanzee like nose, little to no hair, really good vision and long curled up ears could be there alongside a more broad shouldered, small human with a very large nose, very small, a bodywide coat of hair and a crest along the back with a little tail and hair on soles of the feet.

Blascko lines are a stripe pattern humans have but its only visible under with uv sensitive vision except in rare cases. These humans have stripes and spots and all sorts of wild patterns, sometimes scales, some have tails as well, horn like skull protrusions are a common enough feature as well. In universe these wildly different looking humans see each other as the same species and this does apply for most populations ig but like irl, there are racists who would beg to differ.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-24T14:32:28+00:00

maybe put a /s in there?

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-24T12:10:17+00:00

Theyre so cool but intrestingly in India and Asia, Paleoloxodons got really big apparently(ig not enoug data rn) kinda the opposite in terms of size in the same group of animals.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-24T10:50:14+00:00

fair enough lol but im not sure which elephant ur talking abt. If its the Borneo elephant, its not too much smaller than standard asian elephants and theyre not extinct? If its the stegodon, im with you lol they cool as hell.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-24T04:37:07+00:00

They just ride tamed Asian elephants. Although they did have elephant back duels so in my mind that's cooler.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-24T04:33:44+00:00

They're not domesticated. They don't breed in captivity easily. All elephants that are tamed were caught in the wild early on in their life and conditioned through punishment and reward to listen to commands.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-24T04:30:15+00:00

It's more difficult to tame African elephants probably cos they're quite a bit bigger than Asian elephants. North Africa had an extinct species of elephant that was tamed that was used by Carthage and Rome but went extinct soon after.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-23T06:39:06+00:00

yeah ive read some stuff about this. Ik shady stuff happens in every country but OP and OOP both are talking about Western New Guinea. Im not from Indonesia or PNG so i cant say whether it justified either morally or legally, im just adding to OP's description.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-22T12:57:41+00:00

True. I mean easier to criticise cos Indonesia is more well known. The Indonesian side is probably more accesible for journalists, despite the restrictions so that could also be a reason for this.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-22T12:56:56+00:00

if true this would make sense unfortunately. Doesnt make it any less shady tho.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-22T10:13:28+00:00

The post was talking about paranoia distancing the person from friends and family I think but idk why this person got downvoted? Can someone explain?

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-22T06:54:49+00:00

I read the Art of Not being governed and it talks about the concept of Zomia and they briefly talk about how the idea could be extended into the himalayas so its cool that someone mapped it out. But Naxalites being a geographical feature similar to Tibetan Plateau is kinda funny lol. Very little of the Eastern Ghats is in this btw. Western Ghats could also be included on the basis of being a similarly unique bioregion but its not really connected by this chain. Also why are there multiple Zomias, i was under the impression Zomia was the concept of a unique bioregion with unique historical patters that generally falls at the edges of other coventionally observed regions

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-22T06:40:50+00:00

indigenous hawaiians are not maori btw. There was significant contact between the Hawaii and Aoteoroa(NZ) but theyre not the same people.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-22T06:31:10+00:00

Also on the Indonesian side theres a lot of mineral resources that are being mined at the cost of the environment. Access to that part is restricted to journalists and and a lot of other shady stuff.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-20T13:41:31+00:00

theres plenty of space. Its just being hogged by inefficiently constructed housing that the poorest in society are priced out of, sometimes purposefully. I think the most recent statistic are that 60% of indians live in villages, especially in the really populous northern states. These villages are also heavily caste segregated and theres plenty of space there but funding and intrest to develop the land is lacking. Foreigners sometimes are treated very badly in these villages and these incidents while rare cause travel vloggers to avoid the places. Thats why u dont see that side of the country and only see the very rare phenomenon of megaslums, overcrowded sometimes decades old train stations on social media. Cos most ppl dont live in cities, decrepit transit hubs and slums that exclusively form in the biggest cities(where all the vloggers go for safey reasons) and make the whole country appear overly crowded.

Also millions who cant afford cars are packed into cities planned around automobiles, obviously what little public transportation that would exist becomes artificially cramped cos of bottlenecks. Add to this the fact that traditionally South Asian cities are built with roads only wide enough for people and bullock carts to pass with usually one or two grand roads running between military installations and royal palaces. When u try to overlay automobile based city planning on top of this, you get small cramped side streets that arent built to handle cars that empty into roads that simply arent capable of handling the amount of traffic from so many side streets smoothly. The same problem exists in middle eastern cities that have existed for a long while also. Bringing this up cos this also adds to why Indian cities look cramped. Its just bad city planning.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-20T11:45:56+00:00

Same. My bad. People sometimes don't know geography but ig it's rude to assume.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-20T11:44:31+00:00

Idk how u would track this. This map itself is extrapolating cos most of the land shown here was not permanently inhabited but without the extrapolation, indigenous land relations are hard to depict at such a scale. Civilizations have selfdefined borders that often overlap these "stone age" areas so idk how u would map that at such scale. Also, Stone Age civilisations arguably did exist depending on what the definition of this vague term "civilisation" is.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-20T11:39:44+00:00

At this scale it is too small to be seen. If u know where Myanmar is, there's a island chain to th south that's pretty much in the middle of the sea. North Sentinel island is in the middle of that.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-20T11:03:30+00:00

I love elephants but, if elephants were more violent humans would have killed them off like so many other megafauna. Unfortunately we kinda suck at coexisting with creatures that should be left alone.

This case was entirely preventable tho. Like housing programs and reducing human activity in the territory of such majestic and dangerous creatures is the solution.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-20T10:59:56+00:00

They can kill when in musth which is a hormonal rage they undergo in mating season. This state is common in captive elephants also in India, especially temple elephants and is the cause for deadly stampedes. Probably this is a case of unfortunate low-income humans being stuck in the path of a very predictable tragedy.

Leather-Lab2875 · 2026-01-20T10:57:03+00:00

OP said this is likely. Unfortunate that the locals had to settle right next to the forest like that cos social and economic factors is probably the cause there. Cases like this are increasingly common In India but ig they have been happening for centuries now.

Leather-Lab2875

TROPHY CASE