I am not saying flax was not used, just that I don’t see it as displacing leather and being a miracle material due to the effort used to cultivate it.
It’s actually quite labor intensive =/
(I work with it often)
As for Herxhiem, cannibalism is often found to be ritualistic. It doesn’t always serve the nutritional need.
You certainly have more experience in handling flax. I have only a little researched and seen the application of flax in many museums. To this the admixture of the logical human understanding of a layman …
Most frequently, I saw flax in connection with “threads”, “ropes” and “oils”.
no, not always. On this subject the experts are very divided. In a game it would also be something “shocking”. Let’s forget it first.
Even today the core of one of the major religions is a soft ritual of cannibalism: “Eat the body and drink the blood”.
Anyway if we add cannibalism of any sort it will be in the rated DLC, we know it is sensible stuff.
lol
I completely agree about the symbolic nature of some rituals. I actually have a chapter with neolithic cannibles in my last book. Defintly something for DLC, but not your general release. =/
I desperately want there to be a religious component to the game. As mentioned in earlier threads, religion was an essential need to peoples of the Neolithic time period. This allowed them to feel an sense of belonging and know that they were not alone in a vast world where death could come from any direction at any time. Their religious beliefs drove their behaviors and moral compasses allowing for specific traditions and behaviors to become common place.
If there is no religious component to the game I feel that that detracts from the Neolithic realism that this game is going for and I truly hope that you can fit it into the mechanics. I do have some ideas about the mechanics, but without knowing the other mechanics the ideas may be flawed. Please, please, please find a way to fit religion into the game!
Thank you AC for all of your hard work to make this awesome game into a reality! ^.^
I totally agree with you – and as the devs spoke about religion in their interviews, I think they agree also.
Regarding your suggestions, I think you should not hesitate to present them (like I did here on the same topic). We know a few weeks/months ago the devs still had some gameplay aspects to think at, so either this comes too late, either this may help to feel a blank, but if this allow to elaborate on it, or if even a tiny piece of your ideas is according to the general gameplay or state of advancement and is judged interesting, this is always positive.
So please don’t hesitate!
Earthen mounds, generous God’s and evil gods. Many people believed in rather sadistic gods to explain why bad events occurred. Including these kinds of aspects and making possibly customizable by either the player or shaped by the tribe in the game itself would be great. I would personally really like to have the option around an option for no religion.
Keep up the great work in the game!
It may not work so easily. For the character image (motivation) of the NPC’s an alternative would have to be found at this point. Or?
It might not. I remember sometime over summer the devs did not have a decision on religion, atheism and if religion could be turned on or off. Has there been any change in their stance?
I’m not against the no-religion feature, despite that would (probably) be anachronistic.
However, if religion is well implemented, it should have an incidence on every aspect of the game, as this is effectively the case in every traditional society. Then this would mean the game would be a total hell to balance.
Just to take an example, imagining a very basic system where choosing to revere such main spirit instead of another one to gain such modifier instead of another one, not having this feature would make your game much harder.
Good point. Maybe it’s best for religion to only impact shrines, structure, war paint or visual aspects along those lines. Are the devs considering having regions provide perks? I think that might take away a bit from the accurasy/realism.
I don’t think it would be an anachronistim to have an atheist Society insomuch as we have already found the incidence of at least one tribe in the Amazon who has no concept of religion or spirituality, and presumably have not for a significant period of time. I think we can safely say, upon examining the totality of cultures and societies of which we do have information that this is certainly uncommon, and potentially even unique. Of course I support the idea of a religion on off switch, and I do believe it is completely plausible that it may have existed, but even I must stress how unlikely its prevalence would have been.
Can you point us to some reference about that tribe?
I can look for better referencese when I get home. The tribe is listed below. Quite an interating people, and perhaps unique.
I just read the article and it said they “have no concept of a supreme god or spirit” but they do believe in “spirits that can sometimes take on the shape of things in the environment”, which resembles most animistic religions. Humans are a most complex being, and religion is (often? always?) needed to explain things primitive knowledge cannot explain.
They are atheist, as they don’t believe in God’s, and they might be considered areligious, as they don’t appear to have a concise religion; however, it does seem that they have a level of spirituality. I’m pretty certain that the invention of Gods to explain the unknown is almost completely Universal among our species, but these people do show that it is quite possible to have a society that is not theistic nor has any sort of developed religion. While this is definitely animism, it does not seem as pronounced as other forms which often have developed religions.
I should also note that while I am an atheist, I actually find religions quite interesting and if given the chance we’ll certainly have one in my villages.
I literally just made a goddess pendant reproduction two days ago LOL
@lotus253 Could you please define the difference you make between religion and spirituality, with simple terms? I’m afraid otherwise it could lead to vain discussions.
Two other related questions: would you use “belief” as a general term gathering those two fields? And would you make animism a religion or a spirituality? (despite there are numerous forms or animism…)
We are technically naming “religion” the set of rules and structures that are related to “spirituality” or “belief” in the game, no matter if that spirituality include gods or not.
It seemed strange to me that a primitive tribe had no spirituality whatsoever, which seems not to be the case.
This is definitely a nuanced topic involving the need for definitions. I probably should have already defined my own definitions before hand LOL
Disclaimer: these are my opinions and I am not a religious scholar. These definitions are my working definitions and or not necessarily correct
I see spirituality as a general belief in things beyond our knowledge, perhaps Supernatural. Spirituality can exist without religion. For example, you might walk out to a beautiful lake under the moon and feel as though there is some form of energy or presents around you, but it is hardly an organized dogmatic framework.
I Define religion as an organized set of practices and beliefs which are used to facilitate either the understanding of, and/or, the interaction with something spiritual, not necessarily a God but at least something to be worshipped. I don’t exclude them to Supernaturalality as there could be religions who worship nature itself.
To put it very simply, I see spirituality as the belief in something beyond our immediate material understanding while religion is the framework by which we interact with the spiritual, in a formal, reproducible manner.
I see gods as a central coalescence of some form of spirituality. They are a focal point often given anthropomorphic features and typically have some sense of agency, being anthropogenic in nature.
I would categorize both religion and spirituality as systems of belief, one a primitive varient while the other organized. I would categorize animism as a belief which could take the form of spirituality or religion, depending on how it is implemented. If you believe that the animals and nature are perhaps harbingers of Omens, this might be an example of spiritualism. If you kneel before a shrine to the bears of the forest and pray to them for a plentiful Harvest, this would be more of a religion.
While it may sound like my definition is more nuanced than substantial, consider that spiritualism rarely leads too ideology and fundamentalism, whereas religion most certainly does. It’s that sense of religious sectarianism, and if there is a God involved, divine inspired Authority/agency which provides people with the mechanism to do things they would otherwise consider immoral, and both feel moral doing it and be judged likewise.
