The Falmer: An Anthropological Analysis (part 6 of 7)

(Just returning home from work has left me very tired the past few days, but I have found the time to keep writing. A link to the whole text can be found here Enjoy! )

Neo-Falmer Culture: Salatsel

Truly our greatest find of this expedition was that of Salatsel, a metropolis that has defied all previous expectations of Neo-Falmer culture. The tribe has features found nowhere else in primitive civilizations and has shown a degree of societal development that rivals that of 1st Era Men and Mer cultures, a standard that is leagues above its counterparts. It is also believed to be the oldest Neo-Falmer settlement, dating the oldest chitin structures to the late Second Era. Of observed populations, they also appear to have the most diverse diet, incorporating plants and deer meat in to their diet. With this degree of prominence, speculation arises regarding its system of government and economy, two facets of the tribe that were never discovered despite months on site. We postulate that the Salatsel Tribe has an advanced form of government beyond that of a primitive hierarchy of power that involves multiple levels of authority and organization. With a city of this size in such an isolated location, the Neo-Falmer must have an elaborate system for bringing in supplies for maintenance, an observation that begs the question as to how they interact with the outside world. Future work into the Salatsel Tribe is absolutely obligatory, and this city is most likely our best avenue to finally bridging the link between.

Our expedition made way for Salatsel shortly after finishing work in Blackreach, a task that left us pessimistic about our findings at our next site. Even though we uncovered great deals of information at Blackreach, its results were not transformative to academia; modern scholars decades ago had theorized that the major Neo-Falmer settlements would be as culturally advanced as the Blackreach Tribe but simply lacked the empirical data to back their claims (we don’t believe that our work was insignificant, but we acknowledge that our work has helped fill in the gaps that anthropologists had previously theorized). Our findings at Salatsel, however, have brought with it entirely new ideas regarding Neo-Falmer culture and the degree to which it has advanced.

The Salatsel Tribe has established itself amongst the ruins of an ancient Snow Elven citadel, the namesake of the tribe itself, and has expanded its borders to the valleys that surround the ruins. The settlement itself is the oldest among all Neo-Falmer populations observed, with magic dating putting the oldest chitin fragments at approximately 2E 700 +/- 50. The age of the city has given it time to develop and increase its population, which our estimates put at about eight and a half thousand. Even despite its large population, it has the lowest individual to house ratio seen of all Falmer (1.6:1), meaning that cultural advancements have pushed the building of a house beyond traditional family roles and that there exists extrinsic motivation for such. Connecting these houses is a massive network of bridges and roads, a degree of infrastructure seen nowhere else in the Neo-Falmer.

While not having the most diverse diet as compared to the Blackreach Tribe, the Neo-Falmer here have greatly expanded their agriculture, to the point where they have incorporated non-mushroom plants into their diet. With constant access to the surface without pressure from civilization, they are able to hunt deer and harvest flours and grains for consumption. These changes in diet have already had physical changes to the Salatsel Tribe, as all individuals from children to adults appear much healthier. Their extra-fungi diet still remains minimal, but these changes are a first step in a cultural transition that may lead to further advancements for their society.

From our field observations, the Salatsel Tribe has made great strides in societal advancements, possessing the most egalitarian culture recorded so far in Neo-Falmer settlements. Females own their own property and Chaurus, showing that they can act as autonomous individuals in society without connection to males. There is also a more balanced division of labor, as females only comprise around sixty percent of adults tasked with caring for children (this compares with nearly one hundred percent in the Blackreach Tribe and other observed Neo-Falmer), and there are significantly less occupations that skew towards one gender or the other (it should be noted that there is still a very heavy skew towards males that work with Chaurus chitin). Because there has yet to be any documentation of the Salastel power structure, it is unknown whether females have been granted access to positions of authority. We postulate that, despite the cultural advances of the tribe, this division of government between males and females is unlikely or is minimal.

The topic of blindness in this tribe is truly an anthropological mystery. Despite centuries of living above ground and with access to a diverse diet beyond mushrooms, there has yet to be evidence that they are transitioning towards sight. These findings have brought life to theories put forth ages ago about the cause of their plight; scholars postulate that it was not the mushrooms but rather the Dwemer Tonal Architecture that drove the Falmer to blindness, a metaphysical curse that has doomed them ever since. We believe that this idea is still in its infancy stages with insufficient evidence to support as of now, and we postulate that there has yet to be any driving selection force that prefers Neo-Falmer with sight, as their other senses have been greatly elevated and their vision has been rendered obsolete.

Our initial observations at Salatsel have opened up countless avenues of future research, a finding that has defined Neo-Falmer anthropology. The Salatsel Tribe defies all expectations of their development as a species and the potential culture they could possess. Again, a greater understanding of the Neo-Falmer languages is absolutely necessary if we are to establish a line of communication with the settlements, a possibility that becomes infinitely more likely with a culture that has shown as much advancement as the Neo-Famer at Salatsel have. Learning the history of the Salatsel Tribe may be instrumental in our understanding of the Neo-Falmer as a whole, and the possibilities are nearly endless for their research.