A few weeks ago, my church had a missionary from Niger visit. The country (it's in Africa, by the way) has a vastly Muslim population, and though there is freedom of religion in Niger, there are approximately 80 Christians (and no, I did not forget a zero) in Niger. As a result, the culture is very different from North America.

The missionary was talking about how the tribe she works with has never heard that the rainbow is God's promise to never send another flood. Instead, they believe (and it has probably been passed down) that the rainbow is a snake in the sky that comes to suck up all the water after a rain.

Since Niger is a dry, desert-like place, quite close to the equator, water is scarce and they need every rain during the wet season for the crops to grow. To think that after a rain the water is sucked away by a snake in the sky has caused the tribe to develop a dislike for the rainbow, and with good reason, since they have not been taught otherwise.

If you have two different cultures in your fantasy world, what does each one think of a particular aspect of nature, or food, or item, or animal, or religion? Do you have any examples of the cultures in our world and how they view the same thing in two very different lights? Have you used this in your story? How can you use two (Or more!) separate groups of people and their view on the same thing to show how different the cultures are in your story?

I don't really have anything like this developed right now, since all the cultures in mine trace their roots to one larger culture that split after a devastating war that shattered a part of the main continent and flooded the giant central lowlands. So, their base cultural assumptions and the like are all the same.

That's actually rather similar to the tower of Babel on earth, Varon...was this war in the more recent past than Babel is to us?

This concept is a very interesting one.... I love creating disconnects between various cultures in this way. I think the most obvious ones are the antipathies felt by the various tribes in my world to the habitats of the other tribes. The Ttekarx, for instance, who inhabit the marshy regions, cannot bear the plains, and have dozens of reasons for it. The Haharu, plains folk, are the opposite. And so it goes throughout all the tribes. And all of them have extremely different ideas and impressions about the various aspects of nature. The Ttekarx tell stories about the stars being lamps of the gods. The Ssexane know what the stars really are, to as great a degree as they can, and use them for navigation. The Rwemun attach religious and superstitious meanings to them. And this goes on for all of the tribes, over everything, practically. It's great fun. Especially when people from different cultures get into miscommunications because of it – insulting each other without meaning to, etc.

No, I don't think so. The timeline for Ainaan is still wibbly-wobbly. It's just that a lot of them that I've dealt with so far all compressed to about half a continent so they're all in fairly normal touch with each other.

That makes sense.

Yeah, sort of the way the different cultures in Britain slowly homogenized somewhat over time as they were all crowded next to each other, except a bit in reverse.

The only thing that I can think of where two of my built cultures have a different perspective on something is learning. The Nalycian nobles prize learning and knowledge, while the Athulian nobles consider learning other than that necessary for warfare to be a waste of time. I should probably do some more thinking on this, since my novel contrasts the two cultures extensively.

*Nods* I'm guessing that after a long period of time things might start to develop in different directions if the cultures are cut off from each other, but if they are still somewhat connected, then maybe not so much.


That sounds fascinating, Juliet!


I'm glad it might help you, Raven.

Yeah, that would be correct. The cultures in the other continents are different, but I've not done much with them yet. But yes, since they're still connected fairly well, there's not much change yet.