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Submitted via Google Form:

Tex: Admittedly, my mind goes immediately to Pokemon - if this is your reference, then by all means, apply as many of the canon’s concepts as you wish in your own work. If not, then… well, Pokemon nails the concept on the head pretty well.

Anything that society uses as a norm will go about one of two ways, depending on the economic system; 1) completely accommodated for and within reasonable economic means of the average person, or 2) deliberately outpricing the average person in order to encourage a systemic dependency upon debt.

You mentioned a comparison to owning a phone, and technology works extremely well as a metaphor because of its prevalence in our society. Our transportation uses technology, our communication uses technology, our residences use technology, and our governments and economic systems use technology. How can this be paralleled with your idea of working animals?

Licorice: In a world where personal working animals are common, how do the poor afford the vet bills and the animal feed? That's a great question, and this question should be one of the foundation stones of your worldbuilding. Unless your world is a monoculture, I imagine that individuals, communities, and societies will all come up with different solutions. In Soviet Russia, workers are issued with work-animal coupons. Save or steal your coupons to get an upgraded animal. There's a thriving black market in genetically-engineered high-grade animals smuggled in from the West, far better in quality that anything the comrades' centrally-planned economy can produce. 

Meanwhile in the USA, the poor are caught in the poverty trap of not being able to afford the animal that would help lift them out of poverty. Some impoverished communities have banded together to purchase a shared animal, but that smacks of communism and runs contrary to the spirit of rugged individualism on which America prides itself, and the authorities are always passing laws to shut down animal sharing, often under the guise of animal welfare. Middle class parents save furiously from birth to be able to provide their off-spring with high-grade animals.

While over in Norway, the state maintains a fund which provides every citizen with the animal of their choice when they attain their 18th birthday.

And so on.

Another thought: something else your worldbuilding should consider is the emotional bond between the work animal and its human, and what happens when that bond is severed by death. Humans will suffer all the stages of grief, plus the necessity of obtaining a new animal and how they might feel about this “replacement” taking over from the animal they loved. And what about work-animals who lose their human? Do they have to be taken over by a new human? Can they be sold or given away? Can they be inherited? 

Submitted via Google Form:

Tex: Things generally won’t reproduce if you keep killing them every time you see them - this is what pesticides and herbicides do, which are just some pretty words for environmental poisons that end up affecting all other plant life around it. Man-made poisons can sit in the ground for decades, which is why it’s generally advised not to grow plants made for eating on golf courses, and the soil needs at least a decade of remediation before it’s considered in the realm of safe for interaction, much less agriculture or remanding the land back to nature.

“Annoying weeds” serve an ecological and cultural purpose. The following plants are used as examples, pulled from the The Spruce as cited “weeds”. Much of this information is drawn from memory, or the accompanying Wikipedia pages, which are numerous and easily found:

The long tap root of dandelion aerate the soil, reduce erosion, are frequently eaten, used for medicinal purposes, and encourage pollination and diverse insect and wildlife.

Chickweed is edible for both humans and livestock such as chickens and mountain sheep - which will bring dung that fertilizes the soil and remineralizes it, when not also being used as a folk medicine.

Plantain breaks up hardpan, prevents soil erosion, can be eaten by humans (the young leaves are high in calcium), and also used medicinally.

Ragweed is from the wormwood family, which while it can incite allergies, is also used medicinally to treat intestinal parasites (although too much can cause hallucinations), when not being used to pull lead from the soil.

Bindweed can be used for folk medicine to treat hypotension due to its glycoside content (side effect of being toxic to mice).

Ground ivy, and also deadnettle, are part of the Lamiaceae family, which is related to mint and sage. The former can be used for beer brewing, medicine, and as a rennet substitute for making cheese. The latter are unrelated to stinging nettle (their name only means that they are considered “dead” in comparison), and function as sometimes ornamental groundcover, which is useful for preventing soil erosion.

The purslane family is quite edible to humans, and can be fed to livestock such as chickens, when not being a source of food for some types of moths, which increases biodiversity.

Stinging nettle is very nutritious and can be used in folk medicine for things like arthritis, when not also being used as a source to make textiles.

Yellow dock is related to buckwheat, and indeed the seeds can be ground into a flour. It’s also high in iron, so can be used medicinally (to some degree) to treat anemia, as well as a wider array of uses.

Wild madder is from the Rubiaceae family, which also contains bedstraw (historically used to stuff mattresses) and coffee. Plants with madder in the name are typically used to dye textiles, and its long tap root - similar to dandelion - also helps break up the soil and allow aeration.

White clover fixes nitrogen in the soil, outcompetes weeds, and is also edible. Additionally, the flowers can be smoked recreationally, and the leaves assist with the curing of a tapeworm infection.

Jewelweed is fungicidal, and its saponins can - if used carefully - treat poison ivy rashes. The young shoots can be rendered into a potherb, but it’s not recommended due to the oxalic content.

Staff vine (some cultivars) can be used for rope-making, basket-making, and some livestock can eat it without any ill effects.

Horsetail (some cultivars) is edible for humans, though can cause toxicity in large amounts to grazing animals such as horses (name of no relation to this phenomena, but to how it looks). In small amounts if can be medicinal.

Canadian thistle is from the Asteraceae family, and is related to daisies. It has a long tap root that is edible to humans, can be used to make gin, and has also been used to fletch blowgun darts.

Quackgrass, or couchgrass, is native to most continents on the planet and is thus a common food source for grazing animals and also many types of birds and some types of butterflies. This, then, increases biodiversity.

Shepherd’s purse has the distinctive ability to lure and eat nematodes, which fertilize the soil. It is edible by both humans and livestock, and can be used in folk medicine.

Wood sorrel (multiple cultivars) has a significant amount of oxalic acid, but its leaves can be eaten by humans after some preparation.

Mallow (multiple cultivars) is edible to humans, and can be used medicinally.

Lamb’s quarters, also called goosefoot or wild spinach, is from the Amaranthaceae, and is related to spinach, beets, chard, amaranth, plumed cockscomb, and quinoa. It can be cultivated in lieu of spinach as a vegetable crop, can be fed to livestock, and the juice of the plant has been attested to make wall plaster.

Pigweed is related to lamb’s quarters, as it is from the same Amaranthaceae family. They are often considered nutritious, though may need some preparation to be used as a vegetable.

Nutsedge, or tiger nut, is quite often eaten, and the oil can be considered a biofuel.

Dayflower is widely used as a medicines and dye, and can be eaten by both humans and livestock.

Velvetleaf can be used to for rope-making, paper-making, and caulk. It’s also edible to humans, and used in folk medicine.

Wild violet is a main food source for many bees and butterflies, increasing biodiversity. It can be used for medicine, but other cultivars are more often utilized.

Smartweed is from the Polygonaceae family, which makes it related to buckwheat and also knotweed. It is an important food source and habitat for many types of birds, and can be used in folk medicine.

Quickweed, like Canadian thistle, is also from the Asteraceae family. It is edible to humans, and can be eaten either in soup or a salad.

Pokeweed, also known as pigeonberry weed or inkberry, is edible to songbirds, which increases biodiversity. While toxic to mammals, it can be used medicinally, if sometimes edible after much preparation. The berries can be used to make dye, and one cultivar is being used in biomedical research.

Black nightshade, despite its toxicity, can be eaten depending on the cultivar and level of preparation required (tread carefully!), and has a long historical usage as a folk medicine.

Black medic, also known as hop clover, is from the Fabaceae family (aka legumes, peas, and beans), but is most closely related to the other clover genera Trifolium and Melilotus, and is closely related to alfalfa. It fixes nitrogen in the soil, and is frequently used by bees, which increases biodiversity.

Poison ivy, interestingly, is not a true ivy but rather from the Anacardiaceae family, which makes it a relative of plants such as cashews or sumac. Birds and other animals that are unaffected by urushiol often eat it, which increases biodiversity.

Barnyard grass, also known as cockspur or Japanese millet, can be used to reclaim saline and alkaline areas, can be eaten by some livestock and wild animals, and also eaten by humans.

Goosegrass is related to finger millet, the latter of which is a cereal crop, and comes from the Poaceae family, which hosts most cultivated cereal grains.

Annual bluegrass also comes from the Poaceae family, like goosegrass, and can be considered a type of fodder grass.

Hairy bittercress is from the Brassicaceae family, which makes it related to mustard and cabbage plants. It is edible to humans, and can be eaten raw or cooked.

Henbit, like ground ivy and deadnettle, comes from the Lamiaceae family. It is also edible to humans, and can be eaten raw or cooked.

Lawn burrweed, also known as field burrweed or common soliva, is from the Soliva genus, and thus related to sunflowers. It is also of the Asteraceae family, which makes it related to daisies. As its name suggests, it has burrs on it.

Bahiagrass is from the family Poaceae, liked barnyard grass, goosegrass, and annual bluegrass. It is used for forage by livestock, and controls soil erosion.

These plants are not “weeds” - what they can be, however, is disruptive to local ecologies or otherwise not considered economically important enough to utilize (many of these plants are used as food outside the United States, for example).

The wilderness does not get overridden by weeds because it has an ecosystem generally untouched by humans. This means that the potential for invasive plants is low without human interference, and many plants that do occur from outside the environment can be naturalized and used as an alternate food source by insects and animals.

Submitted via Google Form:

Tex: Body hair is… not so much a microevolution as it is genes being turned on or off, and this is environmentally dependent. For swimming, in particular, hair’s hydrophobic properties mean very little in contrast to things like subcutaneous fat for its insulating properties for various internal organs.

Additionally, the ability to swim is a learned skill, which means it is something that can be practiced regardless of one’s original place or culture of birth. The practice of hair removal is common for competitive swimmers who are judged based on their skill at being fast swimmers (rather than endurance swimmers), where their skill is measured in milliseconds and any reasonable advantage they can take is going to be taken into account.

Submitted via Google Form:

Tex: Tolkien had much the same dilemma about whether to write in the characters’ languages or in English, and eventually settled on a contrived solution that makes the fandom debate to this day on vocabulary choices.

Cities, according to settlement hierarchy, are already one of the largest groupings of inhabitants - the only other grouping larger would be a conurbation. The latter are frequently named metropolitan areas, and work as an umbrella term for many inter-connected cities, towns, etc that function as one large cultural area. A mega-city, a conurbation, and a metropolitan area all roughly define the same thing (Wikipedia), so “[adjective] city” are just increasing superlatives of marketing words meant to wave money around to prospective investors.

For worldbuilding, as in real life, it’s mostly about picking the words that are most applicable to describe the phenomena, object, or feature that you wish to discuss. If you have a particular favourite in mind, it would probably be best to use that, or to make one up as you need.

Submitted via Google Form:

Tex: The frequent method to accumulating knowledge as a society and as a culture is to indulge one’s curiosity and deal with the results of finding out what they were looking for. Over time, if something is considered a worthwhile source of amusement or satisfaction, more resources will be pooled together to achieve larger and more significant results. (This is often how science works, as well.)

“Primitive” is a misnomer, as well as a convenient label that early anthropologists liked to apply to cultures that existed before their concept of religion. Because of this, there’s many anthropologists re-examining what we know on the subject and attempting to course correct disproven ideas, methods, and rationales.

A boat is, more or less, still going to be a boat. The issue is not necessarily its seaworthiness, but the seaworthiness of its crew. Will the crew be hungry for the duration of the voyage? Will they suffer from malnutrition? What about injuries, or inclement weather? What about damage to the boat that could sink it? The boat, itself, is irrelevant - once it has been constructed and proven to float, many other details and worries quickly emerge, and typically discovered and solved through trial and error.

Another thing to consider is the need for sailing at all. Curiosity is one thing, sure, but a lot of trade is either done over land or over sea (rather than ocean) - the modern day has moved to either air or cargo ship, but much of it is still by land via train. A lot of this travel is for trade goods, and consequently most people hardly travel such great distances at all if it isn’t done for their employment.

Licorice: In human geography we speak of “pull” and “push” factors driving human migration. As you can tell by the terms used, human beings can be “pushed” out of the place where they were born for all sorts of reasons; persecution, natural disasters, insufficient resources for a growing population, and so on. They can also be “pulled” to migrate by things such as the curiosity Tex mentioned, by a desire to improve their lot in their life, to rejoin family members who migrated earlier, and so on. 

This being the case, if human beings have the means, they will migrate. 

If we think about the Portuguese in the 15th-16th centuries,  we can see that a number of factors 

contributed to their success as long-distance navigators . First of all, Portugal has a long Atlantic coastline; over countless generations of reliance on the sea for food, they acquired an intimate understanding of the ocean and its moods and patterns, and had a tradition as skilful sailors. They knew how to survive long periods out at sea. Secondly, their government pursued a policy of supporting navigation, exploration and trade and set up a college to foster research in these areas. They were constantly improving their ship designs. Thirdly, they progressed in stages, establishing the safest route to Point A before they explored the route from Point A to Point B. 

We shouldn’t forget, of course, the most famous voyage of all - Christopher Columbus, which only happened because he miscalculated the size of the earth and thought “Japan” was much closer to Spain than it really was. His skills as a captain and his crews skills as mariners enabled them to cross the Atlantic, but if an unknown continent hadn’t been in the way they would all have died of starvation before they reached Asia. 

It’s very likely that the successes of the long-distance voyagers of times past stand on the shoulders of similar experiments and miscalculations: expeditions that set off, from Norway or from Papua New Guinea, with plans to follow X star map, and were never heard from again, leading everyone to conclude that the X star map plan was a bad idea; or serendipitous miscalculations, finding land where no land was expected. 

If you look at a map of the history of Polynesian migrations, you’ll see that it took place over thousands of years. This quotation summarising their methods comes from Malaysia’s Institute for Scientific Advancement:

“The islands scattered along the north shore of New Guinea first drew these canoe people eastwards into the ocean. By 1500 B.C., these voyagers began moving east beyond New Guinea, first along the Solomon Island chain, and then to the Banks and Vanuatu Archipelagos. As the gaps between islands grew from tens of miles at the edge of the western Pacific to hundreds of miles along the way to Polynesia, and then to thousands of miles in the case of voyages to the far corners of the Polynesian triangle, these oceanic colonizers developed great double-hulled vessels capable of carrying colonists as well as all their supplies, domesticated animals, and planting materials. As the voyages became longer, they developed a highly sophisticated navigation system based on observations of the stars, the ocean swells, the flight patterns of birds and other natural signs to find their way over the open ocean. And, as they moved farther away from the biotic centers of Southeast Asia and New Guinea, finding the flora and fauna increasingly diminished, they developed a portable agricultural system, whereby the domesticated plants and animals were carried in their canoes for transplantation on the islands they found.”

Submitted via Google Form:

Tex: Dogs can suffer from inbreeding (PawTracks), and cats can also suffer from inbreeding (The Cat Bandit Blog), to cite two of the most popular species for pets. Inbreeding has been long-known for causing deleterious effects in offspring (R Frankham), and that it can produce a lower lifetime reproductive success (Spurgin and Gage). As a consequence, there will not be very many generations produced from inbreeding, and it can cause a species collapse, which is impacting biodiversity and extinction events.

Outside of the psychological harm being done to pets by abandoning them and the fact that it is a form of abuse toward these animals, given the increasing amount of laws regarding responsible pet ownership over time, it is not ideal to simply drop pets off on another planet. Domesticated animals frequently have predator or prey instincts bred out of them, and their socialization with other domesticated animals will reflect an additional handicap on their ability to survive without human input. A domesticated animal cannot simply “go wild” just because it is an animal - humans are animals, too, and often do not do well in many environments to which they are untrained to survive in.

Submitted via Google Form:

Tex: Insofar as I’m aware, there is currently no such tool for computer-based maps, and someone would need to write that particular program into existence - an unenviable task given the amount of variables required. However, the traditional method for measuring distance in physical maps is often assisted with a map scale (Wikipedia). This is often associated with the longitude and latitude lines, which are an alternate format for measuring approximate distances. Between these two tools, often printed directly onto a map in some corner, it’s reasonably simple to use some pins and a bit of string to get the total distance traveled and calculate the fraction given to convert into real-life distances.

I don’t know if this is the amount of effort you wish to put into your map, but these are the tools that I’m aware of for your disposal.

Submitted via Google Form:

Tex: A planet rotating will create, as a matter of course, wind, which will influence meteorological activity on the planet, and thus create a variety of climates on a planet. Even a planet that does not rotate will experience multiple climates, albeit with a higher degree of disparity between climates.

Life will evolve if it can, and when it does, often develops into an unimaginable amount of species capable of withstanding many types of environments. This can range from microbes to mammals such as whales or gorillas.

Wootzel: Single-biome planets are a hugely popular trope in sci-fi because they simplify a setting that’s so big it’s hard to wrap your head around into just one environment. Unfortunately, when it comes to habitable planets, they’re very unrealistic. 

Planets that have similar conditions across the entire surface are common! …. But they’re pretty much all devoid of life and usually lack atmosphere or temperature anywhere close to what would be needed to sustain life.

A planet whose entire surface is covered in ocean could probably have plenty of complex life on it, but it’d still have different biomes (our tropical oceans and arctic oceans are vastly different from each other). 

So, if you want to use one-biome planets in your works, don’t try to justify them. They just don’t work in reality, but they’re common enough in fiction that most audiences will roll their eyes about it at worst.

Submitted via Google Form:

Tex: So I went and gave “how much farmland is needed per person” a quick search on the internet, and here are the first three results:

Now, I do not necessarily claim these are the best search results, only the first search results. (Admittedly, the top result is pretty good for most uses.) Adjusting your keywords and search parameters will likely net you more pertinent results.

For some additional context, here is a list of types of malnutrition (Wikipedia). It has a category for both under- and over-nourishment, which will be useful for your context and as a form of general education in real life.

Humans require a varied diet. If they do not get this, and in proper quantities, they fall ill. Trade has been an enormous supplement for this, in terms of things like preserved produce or meats that cannot be produced locally for various reasons, or preservation agents such as salt (which also fill a spot in the nutritional index).

Land can only produce so much during a growing period, and requires seasonal periods to lay fallow - something which typically requires the use of manure to amend the soil to a useful mineral ratio (you can use chemicals, strictly speaking, if you don’t mind destroying the microbiome in the process). Greenhouses have much the same pitfalls, hence their experimental or ornamental nature compared to the style of agriculture humans have been practicing for thousands of years.

The amount of arable land will dictate how many people can survive healthily in a given area. For this, you’ll probably want to use the calculator linked above, and make sure to account for non-arable, uninhabitable land for other flora, other fauna, and geological features such as rocks or beaches.

It will not be a utopia, and an agriculturally-dependent society that vegetarianism or veganism (an even more stringent diet) demands will necessarily spend the majority of their time tending to their crops and the accessory chores to keep their farms running year-round.

Additionally, food waste is a relatively new concept, and mostly for the Western or adjacent world, because historically most people have been too poor to afford wasting even a single scrap of a mealy vegetable. If it cannot be cooked into edibility, fed to a farm animal, composted, used to insulate crops over winter, converted into a useful craft (see: textiles, manufacturing of non-food goods), or otherwise consumed in a worthwhile manner, it generally is not bothered with as a crop because wasted crop costs money - and money is historically housed by the wealthy who need not worry about such things as where and when their next meal arrives, not the people who produce the food.

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Tex: So there’s this plant, called plantain. One of the common varieties is known as Plantago major. One of its primary uses in herbal medicine is to heal wounds - and it’s very good at it!

A little bit too good, unfortunately, and it often comes with a warning to clean out wounds first before applying it, because it has the tendency to work so quickly at encouraging skin to knit back up that infections can easily be sealed underneath. This is a problem, because in order to heal the infection, the skin must be cut back open, lest someone risk the infection spreading to the blood and causing sepsis (if not, in bad cases, necrosis).

“Super healing” has many of the same flaws. In practice, the process of healing is rather complex, and while there is some overlap in steps (excess blood cleared away, immune system response to pathogens, phagocytosis, signals sent to regenerate broken tissue or other affected organs), doing too much of only one process can have detrimental effects on the patient in question. It’s the reason why in first aid you clean a wound first, then apply medicines, then apply bandages.

Things like bones, and the squishier bits called organs, take time to heal, because they’re not only reallocating resources to grow new cells (i.e. neurogenesis, osteogenesis, etc), they’re also going through the entire pathway of fighting infections (i.e. B cells, T cells, etc) and checking for cancerous markers of cells that duplicated incorrectly (uncommon, but non-zero possibility). It’s a lot, lot more than “add calcium to bone” or “make skin whole”.

Regeneration of tissue is also rather itchy, and uncomfortable. That, barring anything else, is going to make a lot of people think twice about how many injuries they’re willing to risk. Compounding injuries compounds the discomfort, and most people wish to avoid being uncomfortable if there’s any other option for a situation.

On top of that, rapid regeneration would require a large amount of resources for both calories and micronutrients. This translates to being hungry all the time. Humans can generally heal quickly with a good diet and enough sleep (the brain regulates the flushing of metabolic waste during sleep, Patel et al.), which is why it’s seen as a good sign for hospital patients to have an appetite and also to have a regular sleep schedule.

You can handwave as much of this as you like in your worldbuilding, but to borrow SAW’s general rule, “you break it, you bought it” in terms of internal consistency.

Submitted via Google Form:

Licorice: The heuristic is 4 generations per century.

However, in any given generation the total number of individuals who live long enough to reproduce depends on their living conditions and health care - their birth rate, their death rate, their infant mortality rate and so on.

Basically, as long as people are being born and dying in equal numbers the population will neither grow nor decline. I believe it’s the case that with no birth control and no life-saving medicine, human populations tend to remain pretty stable. If a society has birth control but no life-saving medicines (e.g. vaccines, antibiotics), the population will rapidly dwindle; alternatively, if a society does not control births (i.e., every woman has as many babies as she possibly can) but does have life saving medicines, it will very rapidly outgrow its resources; society will become corrupt and unjust, and the people will either starve or migrate. 

Theoretically, you could start with 2,400 people, and two hundred years later still have 2,400 people, due to some people dying young, some people being infertile, some people not marrying, and some people having six kids that all lived to adulthood, and that’s before we factor in pandemics and natural disasters. A woman could give birth to six or twelve children and be left with one adult child to rely on. Look at Katharine of Aragon - all those pregnancies, and only one living child. 

Nowadays, developed countries have what some people like to call a “birth rate crisis” because people (women?) are choosing not to have babies. Prior to reliable birth control, “choice” was a bit hit and miss to say the least. For much of its existence, humanity’s problem has usually been to produce enough of the next generation of workers. 

In short, their population will fluctuate depending on the history you give them. They could start off with 2,400, get hit by a plague that wipes out half of them, and take 3 generations or more to restore their population to its pre-plague levels. One or more of your remote villages could get completely wiped out in an earthquake, and people from other villages might then migrate there to repopulate the place because the land is worth farming. It’s really up to you. 

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Tex: For some additional context:

Much of the differences in Hawai’i’s ecology is mediated by the fact that it is an island chain in the Pacific ocean at around the equator, and thus is typically very, very humid. It also experiences a lot of precipitation, so its elevation doesn’t pose a significant factor in how much of what part of each island receives precipitation.

In order to have a desert, there needs to be very little precipitation (this goes for deserts like the Sahara and also tundra like the Antarctic). In order to have snow, and ice, it must regularly reach temperatures below freezing. Hawai’i does, yes, experience 10 of 14 climates according to the Köppen system, and here is a map illustrating that (Wikipedia):

The hot desert and hot semi-arid sections of the main island are generally isolated along one coastline, and the hot semi-arid are likewise few - I haven’t been to Hawai’i, so I cannot confirm if this is just because the soil is too sandy to grow much, and thus is very hot, or if it’s some other factor. The tundra areas on Hawai’i are, I believe, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, both of which are volcanoes.

To quote a snippet from the wiki on Hawai’i’s climate:

Because of this, Hawai’i is not a typical example for a diverse climate - many islands are not, due to their relatively small size compared to continents. Australia, for example, is large enough to have significant swathes of biomes (Wikipedia):

And is also large enough to host a desert of a size comparable to the Sahara, Arctic, Antarctic, and Arabian, to name a few examples (Wikipedia). I mention Australia because it is a continent unattached to Eurasia, Africa, or the Americas, and also because its desert receives a significant amount of rainfall but remains arid due to evapotranspiration (Wikipedia).

A planet cannot create and sustain biomes the way, say, Minecraft can, primarily because it is a round object, and also because it is not computer-generated to have different biomes within a character’s walking distance. Anything small enough for someone to easily travel several different climates is likely going to be too small to have a climate, or at least one sustainable to human life.

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Tex: Amnesia is generally neurological in nature (Wikipedia), rather than psychological. This means that, for most cases, any absence in memory is caused by brain damage to a varying degree. Notable exceptions to this are childhood amnesia, with potential arguments for situation-specific - also known as dissociative - amnesia depending on the cause (Wikipedia).

Psychogenic amnesia, that is, amnesia without the occurrence of brain damage or brain lesions, has to the best of our understanding no known organic cause, so can be difficult to diagnose. Repeated episodes of psychogenic amnesia have a currently unknown effect on the brain, but this type of dissociative amnesia can be a comorbidity of another disease (such as depression), a result of previous brain injuries in the past (more injuries means more likely to experience cases of different types of amnesia), and has a non-zero amount of cases accused of malingering.

Memory is divided into two categories: explicit and implicit. The physical structure of a memory in the brain is a result of multiple parts of the brain working together, in this case several areas between the subcortical and cortical sections of the brain. This is dependent upon neurotransmission, which conveys neurotransmitters between neurons, which are released by the Point A neuron’s axon terminal and received by Point B neuron’s dendrite receptor.

I go into this much detail because the interruption of neuronal signaling is the basis of memory loss. When there’s an injury or lesion to a particular part of the brain - be it the subcortical or cortical or not - it affects the brain’s ability to send and receive neurotransmitters responsible for the aggregate information that comprises a memory. It is for this reason that psychogenic amnesia is often considered as the mind working against itself to deliberately suppress the information recall of a particular memory, and can cause a situational amnesia that blocks out related information for a particular episode.

A psychologist that sees a patient with a repeated episodic memory loss - say, caused by going near a particular set of woods - will likely assume via the accumulation of context clues that something traumatic happened to their patient and that the associated memories have been blocked out. They might offer counseling on how to cope with this trauma, and depending on what behaviours their patient exhibits - such as anxiety, depression, or PTSD, may prescribe certain medications on a therapeutic course.

If they have a patient that has an erratic pattern of memory loss, they might adjust their approach to rule out factors on a deductive approach. Multiple patients having the same issue might raise some flags with not only an individual psychologist, but among multiple, and regardless of the patient they might reach out to doctors and request MRIs and other scans to see if there’s an underlying issue, as head injuries or brain lesions are a reasonably common cause of amnesia, on top of concerns about drug usage - psychotropic or not - that might indicate a population-wide issue.

At some point someone will begin to ask questions, and depending on the social climate, they may or may not have an uphill battle about discovering the source of these blackouts and other episodes of amnesia. Patients may come up and have similar stories, as well, which would raise more eyebrows and introduce mixed feelings among psychologists, ranging from skepticism to concern depending on the psychologist and their individual history with treating patients. Implementing constructed memories will have varying degrees of success, depending on the person affected - if these memories share a remarkable amount of similarity among multiple patients, that will also wave a flag to psychologists on what to pay attention to.

Psychologists are trained, and are scientists that study mental states of their patients in an applied setting. Depending on their specialization, they may also study neurology as biological psychologists, but they will study the basic structure and function of the brain as a minimum. Adding on to this, there are laws about the boundaries of their practice, according to the area they have a license to practice psychology in. This will also have an impact on how they approach their patients.

Below are some pieces of research regarding different types of amnesia that might be useful for you:

Further Reading

PDF Psychogenic amnesia: syndromes, outcome, and patterns of retrograde amnesia by N. A. Harrison et al.

PDF Impaired subjective organisation of memory in psychogenic amnesia by Sanjay Kumar et al.

Functional (Psychogenic) Cognitive Disorders: A Perspective from the Neurology Clinic by Jon Stone et al.

PDF Acute-onset amnesia: transient global amnesia and other causes by Thomas D Miller and Christopher R Butler

Dissociative amnesia: Disproportionate retrograde amnesia, stressful experiences and neurological circumstances by C. Thomas-Antérion

Feral: One of the easiest pit-falls to make when worldbuilding something like the Masquerade is that unless magic suddenly appeared or reappeared in the world, the whole history of the world would be affected. Suddenly you have millenia of people experiencing amnesia - would it even be considered disordered if it is so “natural” to the human experience? 

Remember that you’re looking at diagnostic criteria, you’re looking at how divergent from the norm or expectation is and how negatively it impacts a given individual’s ability to live day to day and cope. While scientists will likely be attempting to study why the amnesia occurs and find patterns in it, psychologists treating patients are probably going to be treating those patients who seem to pathologically seek out amnesia or are too terrified to leave their homes for fear of amnesia or who react in an unusual way to the amnesia, insisting on some conspiracy theory or another. 

If Covid has taught us anything, it’s that once humans decide something is normal, no matter how bad it is for them, the “weird ones” of society are the ones who keep pointing out that it’s bad.

Wootzel: For some additional reading, you might get good mileage out of the amnesia tag on scriptshrink’s blog.

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Tex: Major religions are often major because they are state-backed - i.e., they have lots of money at their disposal, so they become economically and thus culturally relevant. Religion answers, approximately, two major questions: 1) Are we alone in X or Y manner? and 2) I’m scared of X thing that I have difficulty understanding, what is Y solution?

For a place like Earth, the planet that we know the most about, there are no planet-wide confirmations about the physical existence of any deity in particular (as in, shows up in a grocery and says hello to you in an entirely unambiguous manner that all onlookers can agree upon). This means that religions on Earth are predicated on the idea that belief - and, thus, willpower - makes the deity real. Or at least “proves” it. Your mileage may vary.

Because of this, the real-world religions that you can observe and study will have many, many commonalities to the two general questions I stated above. The first question usually contains subjects such as sentience, and the emotional frills of that. The second question usually contains subjects such as death and the process of dying.

In order to have many distinct religions, you would need a lot of unanswered questions for various societies to answer, a severe lack of contact and communication between groups of societies, and most importantly a lack of (or lack of need of) money. The more travel there is, the more people of different backgrounds will talk to each other, and the more ideas will be confronted, shared, and discussed. Trade would correspondingly be low, because of the lack of travel.

Utuabzu: There’s a couple things to consider here. Firstly, how are we defining religion? This isn’t a trick question, it’s a genuine issue. The Abrahamic concept of religion doesn’t really carry over well to other spiritual traditions. Most other belief systems are more local and action-focused (orthoprax, concerned with what one does, rather than what one believes), and often lack any mandatory set of beliefs, or standardised mythology. Religions like Chinese Folk Religion, Shintō, Hinduism*, etc. can have wildly varying pantheons and myths depending on where you are and who you ask. So depending on your definition every tiny village could have its own religion, because it has its own version of the cultural mythos and its own pantheon including some distinctive local gods and dropping some more common cultural ones.

Universal (applicable to everyone regardless of origin or location), proselytising (actively attempting to convert people) religions are rare. There’s only actually a few of them. Most notably, Christianity and Islam. They are both also orthodox religions (concerned with believing the correct things), which means they have a standard mythology and theology (or several competing standards that have historically attempted to resolve their differences via murder). A third, very notable difference they have with most belief systems is that they are exclusive, you can’t (or at least you’re not supposed to) combine them with other belief systems. Most non-Abrahamic belief systems are more or less fine with syncretism (combining belief systems), most clearly seen with the way Buddhism** is practiced concurrently with folk religions across Asia.

So, in answer to the actual question, your best bet here is to just not have an equivalent to Christianity or Islam. I suggest reading up on non-Abrahamic and pre-Christian/Muslim religions and religious practices, as that should give you an idea of what such a world might look like. I’d expect it to be colourful and diverse, with cities filled with temples and shrines to an ever-expanding array of deities and hosting various festivals much of the year. Many people would likely layer a philosophy like Daoism or Stoicism over their day-to-day religious practice, and it would be common and expected for people to show respect to or make  offerings to local deities when traveling. Religion would be a thing you do, not what you believe.

*Hinduism is less a religion and more a family of closely related religions and spiritual traditions that all originate on the Indian subcontinent. Which is why the Indian government considers Jains and Buddhists to be Hindu.

**Buddhism can be described as a religion or as a philosophy, depending on who you ask, what the context is, and whether Mercury is in Gatorade. Western definitions don’t really apply cleanly to non-Western contexts.

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Tex: Prison islands are primarily used, in a mostly descending order of priority, for political prisoners, people who committed very severe crimes, somewhat indiscriminate venues for torturing random people, and (for Australia) a processing center for immigrants.

There’s a significant amount of overlap in the first three reasons, so a major cause of these prisons being shut down is a change in overall political opinion. This may not always line up with a government’s political opinion, and thus the people who hold the purse strings of any given country, but historically speaking a more humane approach to foreign relations generally means there’s less of a reason to put people into prisons on islands, and thus less funding to keep these prisons open.

Utuabzu: Honestly, the main reasons are probably cost and the inconvenience of getting staff and basic services to and from. It’s expensive to build anything on an isolated island and logistically difficult to get people, food and basic services there, which only adds to the cost. The isolation also makes it harder to have proper oversight of the prison staff, making corruption and abuse more likely. But, I suspect it’s mostly just a matter of cost. Prisons are already expensive and there’s little political benefit to spending money on one that is too isolated to provide an economic boost to any particular community.

Where you do still get these, it’s either because the government doesn’t really care that much about public opinion (various dictatorships) or because the whole point is to isolate the detainees away from the mainland (Australian immigration, Guantanamo Bay, etc.) So you can have an island prison, just figure out why the local government is willing to go to that much effort.

Licorice: According to the American Federal Bureau of Prisons, “On March 21, 1963, USP Alcatraz closed after 29 years of operation. It did not close because of the disappearance of Morris and the Anglins (the decision to close the prison was made long before the three disappeared), but because the institution was too expensive to continue operating. An estimated $3-5 million was needed just for restoration and maintenance work to keep the prison open. That figure did not include daily operating costs - Alcatraz was nearly three times more expensive to operate than any other Federal prison”

https://www.bop.gov/about/history/alcatraz.jsp

China apparently still has an island prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongguan_Prison

And so does Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ognenny_Ostrov

And so does Norway. Bastoy Island  is sometimes called “the nicest prison in the world”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/25/norwegian-prison-inmates-treated-like-people

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Tex: To wit, much of petroleum is comprised of zooplankton and algae that settles at the bottom of places like lakes (Wikipedia). As petroleum mining is heavily pollutive, if these humanoids had drilled for petroleum, they likely would have stopped it reasonably quickly by how pervasively it destroy their, particularly, aquatic environment. I don’t know for sure what kind of energy source they would have, or even if they would need something like produced energy - a lot of this depends on whether they’ve invented the concept of money, and purchasing things primarily via currency rather than bartering, which shapes a society in particular ways to have particular goals.

What does semi-aquatic mean, in this context? Do they have their homes in the water, in an intertidal zone, or on land? Do they have a designated architectural construction that would be a primary residence at all, or are they nomadic? What about their physiology, can they adapt to darkness and the cold well? Being able to cook, see in the dark, and have warmth outside of textiles are the main reasons why fuels and accelerants for fire-making are pursued - the longer each of these resources can last, and the more things they can be repurposed for, the better.

If a society wants to truly become advanced, then they need to move beyond chemically-produced sources of energy. Generally this means the necessary effort into the research, creation, and production of solid state energy - solid-state batteries are a good intermediary technology, but ultimately the end point would need to be an interfacing platform for drawing energy from a zero-energy universe.

An ancient civilization only becomes a curiosity for a present-day civilization if there is something to interrupt the former’s very existence. Usually this is some form of catastrophe, be it natural or man-made. Whether this advanced society has the tools and skills to avert or ameliorate a civilization-ending occurrence is largely up to your preferences on worldbuilding, and what that civilization intends to focus on for their cultural values.

Feral: Water has been a power source and source for technology since humans figured out that water runs downhill and will carry things in the current. Burning fossil fuels makes more sense when you are out of the water. Water mills and wave farms would likely be more intuitive to a semi-aquatic civilization.