Hey look another underwater thread. This one is different though. My questions are fluff related.
How do you handle every day things in a underwater civilization? Agriculture, entertainment, waste management, and disposal of the dead all offer significant challenges.
My thoughts would be that most underwater sapient creatures are probably nomadic. That kind of solves most of those problems, especially since marine productivity away from shore can be spotty and seasonal in nature. Agriculture would be incredibly difficult...I can see some sort of project that would entail dredging up nutrients from the bottom, creating artificial upwelling zones which would attract and hold large numbers of fish.
There are fish and inverts which are able to do small scale "gardening" of algae, generally in shallow, tropical regions. If you were able to live off algae as a main food stuff, I suppose that would be possible as well.
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Cross-posted from the other thread in which this question was asked ...
Interesting question! I think that, since different aquatic societies are every bit as varied as land-based societies, their ways of approaching things like agriculture, entertainment, waste management, and proper disposal of the dead would be just as varied.
When writing the The Sunken Pyramid, I included a pretty extensive section on Sahuagin culture, religion and society in which I addressed many of these very topics!
Merfolk, aquatic elves, kua toa and the like would (or should) each have their own ways of addressing these things, although there would most likely be some similarity due to their common aquatic natures.
Depends. Are we looking at a high tech civilization or a low tech one? I'm addressing the former at the moment, and the second is addressed in Cerulean Seas. In fact, watch my thread on how my high tech society tackles the problem. Elton Robb's Tritonis. .
The latter actually. I'm actually speaking of the Cerulean Seas setting. They give a lot of info, but it's a little sparse on the specifics of life.
I'd imagine aquaculture would be a significant replacement for agriculture.
Entertainment is fairly easy. I would presume that sports would be popular, and music. However what type of instruments would come about underwater baffles me.
Waste management is a puzzler. Obviously they could make "dumps" where they deposit detritus. However they'd likely attract unwanted pests, and the creatures that feed on said pests.
Additionally, biological waste would be a notable problem. Certainly you could just go anywhere and let the current sweep it away. But that would be awful for those living down stream, as their dwellings and they themselves would shortly become caked with waste.
I suppose they could build a bypass that focuses the current under the city with "storm drains" that suck up all the excreta
Finally, how do you get rid of a body? Assuming they have some sort of reverence for their dead, they wouldn't just flush them down the sewer. They can't cremate for obvious reasons, or let them just float off. I suppose they could entomb them like they do in New Orleans, or build a catacomb like Paris.
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Depends. Are we looking at a high tech civilization or a low tech one? I'm addressing the former at the moment, and the second is addressed in Cerulean Seas. In fact, watch my thread on how my high tech society tackles the problem. Elton Robb's Tritonis. .
The latter actually. I'm actually speaking of the Cerulean Seas setting. They give a lot of info, but it's a little sparse on the specifics of life.
I'd imagine aquaculture would be a significant replacement for agriculture.
Entertainment is fairly easy. I would presume that sports would be popular, and music. However what type of instruments would come about underwater baffles me.
Waste management is a puzzler. Obviously they could make "dumps" where they deposit detritus. However they'd likely attract unwanted pests, and the creatures that feed on said pests.
Additionally, biological waste would be a notable problem. Certainly you could just go anywhere and let the current sweep it away. But that would be awful for those living down stream, as their dwellings and they themselves would shortly become caked with waste.
I suppose they could build a bypass that focuses the current under the city with "storm drains" that suck up all the excretaFinally, how do you get rid of a body? Assuming they have some sort of reverence for their dead, they wouldn't just flush them down the sewer. They can't cremate for obvious reasons, or let them just float off. I suppose they could entomb them like they do in New Orleans, or build a catacomb like Paris.
We just throw the dead off the boat. buried at sea, where the body becomes food for the fishes. As for them, a mausoleum might be the best thing your looking for. As for the rest, your suggesting high technology or heavy magic use.
As for instruments, how whales sing should give you an idea of what kind of instruments they have. Here's how balleen whales sing -- kinda: Baleen whales (formally called mysticetes) do not have phonic lip structure. Instead, they have a larynx that appears to play a role in sound production, but it lacks vocal cords, and scientists remain uncertain as to the exact mechanism.[citation needed] The process, however, cannot be completely analogous to humans, because whales do not have to exhale in order to produce sound. It is likely that they recycle air around the body for this purpose. Cranial sinuses may also be used to create the sounds, but again researchers are currently unclear how.
Toothed whales sing in this purpose: Odontocetes produce rapid bursts of high-frequency clicks that are thought to be primarily for echolocation. Specialized organs in an odontocete produce collections of clicks and buzzes at frequencies from 0.2 to 150 kHz to obtain sonic information about its environment. Lower frequencies are used for distance echolocation, due to the fact that shorter wavelengths do not travel as far as longer wavelengths underwater. Higher frequencies are more effective at shorter distances, and can reveal more detailed information about a target. Echoes from clicks convey, not only the distance to the target, but also the size, shape, speed, and vector of its movement. Additionally, echolocation allows the odontocete to easily discern the difference between objects that are different in material composition, even if visually identical, by their different densities. Individuals appear to also be able to isolate their own echoes during pod feeding activity without interference from other pod members' echolocations.[6]
Whistles are used for communication, and four to six month old calves develop unique sounds that they use most frequently throughout their lives. Such "signature whistles" are distinctive to the individual and may serve as a form of identification among other odontocetes.[7] Though a large pod of dolphins will produce a wide range of different noises, very little is known about the meaning of the sound. Frankel quotes one researcher who says listening to a school of odontocetes is like listening to a group of children at a school playground.[8]
The multiple sounds odontocetes make are produced by passing air through a structure in the head called the phonic lips.[citation needed] This structure functions like the human nasal cavity.[citation needed] As the air passes through this narrow passage, the phonic lip membranes are sucked together, causing the surrounding tissue to vibrate. These vibrations can, as with the vibrations in the human larynx, be consciously controlled with great sensitivity.[citation needed] The vibrations pass through the tissue of the head to the melon, which shapes and directs the sound into a beam of sound useful in echolocation. Every toothed whale except the sperm whale has two sets of phonic lips and is thus capable of making two sounds independently.[9] Once the air has passed the phonic lips it enters the vestibular sac. From there, the air may be recycled back into the lower part of the nasal complex, ready to be used for sound creation again, or passed out through the blowhole.[citation needed]
The French name for phonic lips, museau de singe, translates literally as "monkey's muzzle," which the phonic lip structure is supposed to resemble.[10] New cranial analysis using computed axial and single photon emission computed tomography scans in 2004 showed, at least in the case of bottlenose dolphins, that air might be supplied to the nasal complex from the lungs by the palatopharyngeal sphincter, enabling the sound creation process to continue for as long as the dolphin is able to hold its breath.[11]
Sound is very important underseas, and a musical concert wouldn't be taken lightly.
It's very possible that a marine race might not have any social mores about waste management or eating the dead. Any waste produced (assuming it's not industrial in nature) would provide nutrients for for organisms and increase productivity. And eating the dead in a fantasy environment not only provides nutrition, but also prevents any pesky corporeal dead problem. Garbage is only going to be a massive problem for a highly populated area with an advanced urban culture. One work around for that sort of society would be to simply bury it (it's not like erosion is going to expose it), jettison it down a trench (sucks for anything that lives down there, but out of sight/out of mind...). They could also use active margins to dispose of left over material, which would bury and destroy pretty much anything, albeit on a geological time scale
art and entertainment is interesting. For one...color vision might be completely different in a marine organism, due to differing light levels...which could be reflected in the color of dwellings or structures. Sonar would also lead to very different appreciation of the arts...imagine sculptures made of sound for instance. Many marine organisms also heavily rely on scent or electricity. Which could give you very different art forms.
Well I've figured out waste disposal. Oddly it was from watching Spongebob. Snails, slugs, and other bottom feeders. Not sure why I didn't think of it sooner.
I've never understood why sea creatures cannot find a process to make water resistant paper and ink. Instead of saying it dries, say it hardens.
I've never understood why sea creatures cannot find a process to make water resistant paper and ink. Instead of saying it dries, say it hardens.
Cerulean Seas solved that problem. They just use a thicker kelp paper and scratch the words into it with squid ink. I highly recommend the products.
I've never understood why sea creatures cannot find a process to make water resistant paper and ink. Instead of saying it dries, say it hardens.Cerulean Seas solved that problem. They just use a thicker kelp paper and scratch the words into it with squid ink. I highly recommend the products.
My pirate spellcaster solved the spell-book vs. water problem by stitching (yes, with a needle) all her spellbooks on bolts of cloth.
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Oh hey, this thread bubbled up to the surface again!
Just as we land-lubbers tend to place our communities on rivers, I'd have undersea dwellers located near currents or gulf streams or whatever, so that they can just haul stuff they never want to see again to the area of stronger current and let it be carried away.
By building their reef cities in areas with a perpetual 'mild breeze' going on, excrement and the like would tend to wash away naturally, and the 'good side of town' might be the one that's 'upcurrent' and doesn't have the smell of the rest of the town wafting across it. Aquatic communities might find themselves growing and expanding always towards the current, or to the sides, as nobody wants to expand in the 'backwater' that ends up getting to smell everyone else's waste.
More solid kinds of organic waste would likely be filtered and consumed by an assortment of bottom-feeders and sucker fish and crustaceans that infest the towns, like the pigeons and rats and roaches of the undersea city. In the poorer quarters, said waste-cleaner critters might also find themselves on the menu...
My pirate spellcaster solved the spell-book vs. water problem by stitching (yes, with a needle) all her spellbooks on bolts of cloth.I've never understood why sea creatures cannot find a process to make water resistant paper and ink. Instead of saying it dries, say it hardens.Cerulean Seas solved that problem. They just use a thicker kelp paper and scratch the words into it with squid ink. I highly recommend the products.
That's an interesting solution.