Steampunk, Space and Aliens

[tshiggins]

Okay, leaving aside the fun but implausible notion of spaceflight before TL7, let's focus on the culture of the natives of the other moons.

The first thing to remember is that there is no such thing as a single "African" culture. Africa is the second largest continent on our world, and various parts of it came under different influences, throughout its history.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...jection_SW.jpg

That means the people who live in different parts of Africa have cultures that differ substantially. You need to figure out how many cultures exist on your moons, and how they interact with one another, so as to capture the complexity of the situation your astronauts find, when they arrive.

https://www.loc.gov/resource/g8201e.ct001273/

Generally speaking, the eastern part of Sub-Saharan Africa is higher and dryer than the western half of the continent, with the exception of the Kalahari and Namib deserts of Southwest Africa. The climate is more mild, with well-watered grasslands of the Serengeti (from the Massai word meaning "endless plains"), as well as the light woodlands and rugged badlands of Mozambique, and the fertile grasslands and deep forests of Tanzania. The most advanced indigenous societies existed there, in large part due to the early interaction with traders from other coastal regions of the Indian Ocean, as well as the region's amenability to animal husbandry (especially cattle, although you might want to look at an analog for elands as the primary domesticated animal).

http://wildliferanching.com/content/...agelaphus-oryx

By contrast, the western part of the continent -- especially in the Congo River basin -- struggled to develop due to limited crop choices, as well as insects and parasites that killed cattle.

South Africa, which has one of the best climates in the world, was so isolated and so difficult to reach that it lagged in development as compared to the north and east, and fell quickly to European colonialism -- although, the Zulu gave the British a tough fight, for a short time.

So, how would you map out your cultures? Would you avoid the more developed cultures such as those that emerged on the Swahili Coast, and just make the natives analogs of the Massai, the Zulu, the Ashanti, the Yoruba, and the Igbo?

The latter choice more closely fits the formerly popular (and grotesquely mistaken) view of Africa as the home of cannibals and spear-chucking savages, but might be easier to play in an RPG setting. To have an area that resembled the more sophisticated cultures of coastal East Africa, you'd have to figure out how those societies developed, absent constant access to trading partners.