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In the meantime, we, among other things, are also drawing the beautiful Zēar. We is me (Andrew) and Zēar himself, and since neither of us is a professional 3D artist, the results are coming slowly, being quite... debatable. It took two weeks just to get him decent marks upon his forehead and nose, so you can imagine the scale of this whole thing. Sculpting/drawing fur in 3D is a disaster.

In any case, there is some progress, and that's good. Speaking of large things, only the mane remains, and that's it. We'll deal with the rest of less significant stuff along the way.

Why do we need this, you might ask? You'll see in the near (hopefully) future.

On the last page of the comic that we posted a couple of days ago, you may have noticed (and probably did) a strange Г-shaped symbol in the lower right corner. Question: what is it?

Since this thing is located in the corner where the numbering used to be, it is obvious to assume exactly that. Well in general, yes, that's so, it is a number. The next question is: what kind of numbering system is this?

Answer: such one. It was used on the Lavinavian Peninsula and adjacent territories, in conjunction with runic calendars and runic inscriptions. The numbers are terribly simple: a one is Г, and to form others further up to a four, one horizontal line is added each time. Five is P, and up to a nine, we also add a line each time.

There is a slight difficulty with a ten/zero, which looks like Ф. The fact is that this sign was used completely randomly: both as 10 and as 0, without any consistency. Moreover, it's not known whether the people of that time had any idea about the decimal number system (most likely not). But we have some idea about it, and therefore in the comic we will use it as the full equivalent of zero.

Now you know a little more!

We have already talked so much about things that are quite decently removed from us - in time or in distance. So let's talk today about what is right under our noses.

As you may remember, our excavation site is located near the city of Hveitstad. This city is characterized by the fact that until the seventeenth century it was inhabited almost exclusively by fouls (and very few Kayans). Then the Rechans, Retsins and a few others already came there, but even at the last census 71% of the entire population indicated themselves as fouls. A lot, right?

The linguistic situation there, of course, is a masterpiece. The older generation speaks mainly Retsin, but the younger generation speaks the most beautiful surzhik. It consists mainly of Rechanian grammar, Folian vocabulary, and some other small pieces from Kayan and Retsin. Let's look at examples?

> I'm idhiv to the center hindaga
“I went / went to the center today.” Wed f. hIndaga "today" and Iddga "[I went".

> Map chi ezafehu?
"Card or cash?" Wed f. aızafaıhn "cash".

> Magtesh listen to me without rebrikandya?
"Can you listen to me without interrupting?" To me, this is a masterpiece. The first is the contamination of the Fol magt and Recha you can "can"; last - Rechan prefix re- + f. nнdaʀvʀıkands "Interrupting" + Retsin gerundial suffix -I.

We really hope that someday we will be able to record an interview with a person who speaks such a crazy idiom. If it comes out, we'll show you right away!

We return again to our beloved Lavinavians, and this time again a little about their customs. In the last (if I don’t confuse anything) post, we talked a little about the differences between different Lavinavian tribes - from the words of an eyewitness, so to speak. Here we will consider one important tradition that has survived to this day.

This is a national type of wrestling called glyma (glima). The scribe describes it thus:

“... two husbands become close to each other, face to face. With the right hand, one husband grabs the second by the belt, with the left - by the pants on the hip. The other husband does the same. Then each tries to knock the other to the ground; whoever first touches the ground with any part of the body, except for the feet, will lose. Or whoever lets the other go first will lose too.”

Then he writes about some more minor rules, such as: punches and kicks are prohibited; it is forbidden to fall on the enemy or intentionally try to inflict any injury on him; put on jewelry that can injure the enemy ... In general, from this everything is immediately clear: glima is precisely that sport, a competition in strength and dexterity, and not a banal scuffle. And they treated him accordingly: the one who broke the rules could well be branded as níingr - an outcast, a person who has lost honor.

And this struggle eventually survived to our times and is now in use among all Lavinavian peoples. In Snelandia, glima is generally a national sport, in which competitions are held twice a year. The rules, of course, have changed a little compared to those times, but the meaning still remains the same.

A bit of evening anthropology! Because we don't have anything to do right now.

First, let's take a quick look at the terminology. "Mitochondrial Eve" is a woman whose mitochondrial DNA has been inherited by all living people. That is, the woman whose family is female lines were not interrupted.

"Y-Chromosome Adam" - a man whose Y-chromosome was inherited by all living people. Similarly to "Eve", his genus according to male The lines were also not interrupted.

These two people, of course, were not "first" in the direct sense of the word. It’s just that the descendants of Eve in the female line at some stage supplanted other women, and the descendants of Adam in the male line supplanted the men. Therefore, in the end, we have just such a situation now.

But this state of affairs concerns only people - the very ones who Homo sapiens. In the rest of the sentient species, things are much, much more interesting.

- Gearts: three mitochondrial Eves and three Y-chromosomal Adams. Each of the three pairs corresponds to one of the subspecies/races: leoids, lincoids and canoids. Which indicates that these very subspecies diverged a long time ago and since then they have hardly mixed - well, until recently.

- alves: three Y-chromosomal Adams, one mitochondrial Eve. Here, everything is even a little more interesting, because the geographical distribution of these very three different Y chromosomes looks completely random. Males from two neighboring populations can easily have two different Y chromosomes or two identical ones. This is probably due to both longevity (a very low reproduction rate) and some chaotic migrations that occurred a very long time ago.

- doors. Winners: six mitochondrial Eves to twelve (!) Y-chromosome Adams. How it happened is a complete mystery. For this to happen, the dwarves had to split into twelve independent populations at the very dawn of their existence. Apparently, this happened, but why? ..

- dredges. Unknown: little data.