Editing Kulmorost Divided (section)

====Of Different Human Tribes====
Excerpt from, ''“On the different tribes of Men.”'' (Dra-Bul-Naz, 818 ME)
Published by the University of Valkenburg Print Press.

"Of all of the erroneous assumptions made in anthropology in the last 300 years, none has been more pervasive than the conceptualization of humanity as a single ethnic race. This could not be farther than the truth. In human tribes, there exist four distinct elements: economic, political, ethnic, and religious. Different tribes subscribe to different mixes of these elements, sometimes tolerating multiply ideologies at once.

"It is a theory of the author that Humanity as it exists now did not prior to the expulsion of men from the south. If anything, what little archaeological progress has been made in recent decades has revealed that different Mannish civilizations expressed wildly different architectures, scripts, art, and cultures. Indeed, a convergence only appears towards the beginning their exodus north.

"It is with the above in mind that one must understand that a common Mannish tongue, an amalgamation of seemingly incongruent linguistic features, has not (and will not truly exist). Linguistic differences, although seemingly split amongst ethnic lines, are the primary divider of tribes. Although some level of mutual intelligibility does exist, more often there would be difficulty in communications between two humans born on different coasts of the Northern Wastes.

"Consider the Valkgarians: a centralized tribe eking out an existence on what little green coast of the Northern Wastes there is remaining. Medium to tall of stature, with a wide variety of hair color, and with a gambit of eye colors; this tribe speaks a dialect of Mannish that does not posses grammatical cases. Nor does it have tonality. Intonal, with little inflection, their tongue relies heavily on auxiliary verbs and word order to convey meaning.

"Contrast the Vends people, possessing the same stature and similar hair to the Valkgarians, but with primarily darker eye colors and hair. Their tongue has six-to-seven cases and features complex consonant clusters.

"Theoretically, if you sat down a Vend and a Valkgarian, the two would be able to understand a word or there, but would otherwise have trouble maintaining a conversation.

"Linguistic drift is not a uniquely human phenomenon. Mankind, however, exhibits this tendency alarmingly often – more so than any other peoples."