Acronis: Difference between revisions
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===Early History===
[[File:Avnatra topo.png|left|250px|thumb|A topographical map of the island of Avnatra. The elevated region in the center of the island is the Ranat Plateau, and Mt. Avotro is located in the region of highest elevation in the northwest of the plateau.]]
The island of Avnatra, on which the modern countries of Acronis, [[Serramal]], Tavaris and (western) [[Vaklori]] sit, has been inhabited (perhaps not continuously) for at least 350,000 years. The first inhabitants were [[Orc|orcs]], and since the earliest times of habitation, the farthest western portions of the island have always among the least densely populated. Modern Acronis also seems to have become populated much later than other regions of the island; the oldest discovered, verified prehistoric orcish remains found around Crystal Coast date to 200,000 years ago, much more recent than both the southeastern and northeastern regions, suggesting that initial settlement of the island may have come from both directions. Much of the explanation for the west-central region's relative isolation is geographical and geological; the relatively elevated Ranat Plateau, close to the center of the island, is much more rugged in terrain than the lowlands, and historically was the densest portion of the rainforest (the natural jungle has since been thinned considerably in favor of coffee and cocoa plantations), making travel to the west difficult and dangerous. The far northwest of the island, home to [[Mt. Avotro]], reaches high enough in elevation for there to be snow, and the northwest coastal region is arid steppe, making travel from those directions even more difficult. As a result, the region has long been distant from local centers of power and considered remote.
The very first inhabitants of Acronis were [[w:Paleolithic|paleolithic]] hunter-gatherers who hunted megafauna—primarily saber-tooth cats, giant ground sloths, and [[w:glyptodont|glyptodonts]]—on the savanna. However, these species would all become extinct by 4000 BCE, likely due to a combination of a changing climate as well as hunting by orcs. Archaeological evidence suggests that, around this time, the peoples in the west-central savanna began to leave the inland regions and condense along the coast, where they developed a primarily seafood-based diet supplemented by gathering fruit and roots such as [[wikipedia:cassava|cassava]] and [[wikipedia:sweet potato|sweet potato]] that grew in the wild. [[Wikipedia:Agriculture|Agriculture]] began around the year 2000 BCE, when the [[Vaklori#History|First Va]] people—who, at that time, could be found all across the northern two-thirds of the island—domesticated the tubers as well as [[wikipedia:amaranth grain|amaranth]] and began to deliberately plant and cultivate them themselves. When the proto-Tavari arrived in the latter centuries of the first millennium BCE, they brought with them their own agricultural tradition, the staple crop maize, as well as the domesticated jungle cat which, while evidenced on mainland northwest Gondwana for thousands of years by that point, had never before been present on Avnatra.
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