Starting with nothing
When Rei first encounters the Deucadons in the middle part of Rome's Revolution, he is briefed on their back story. The original Deucadons were passengers aboard the Ark III whose main target was 82 G. Eridani. Actually, in the original long-form version of Rome's Revolution, I had their target as Beta Hydrii but I was forced to move them because of the Ark Lords and the "stealth" Ark.
Anyway, they crash-landed on Deucado and lost the ability to go back up into space and retrieve the cargo section of the Ark. As they were fond of saying, all they had were the clothes on their back. So how long would it take a society to go from nothing to a full-blown, technological civilization?
I don't know the answer. I figured 500 years was about right. After all, Leonardo da Vinci was at his peak around the year 1500. He invented the telescope, helicopters and a bunch of other things but it took 500 years to bring his ideas to fruition, more or less.
The only thing the Deucadons had was knowledge that such things could be done. They didn't even have any paper to write stuff down. So the knowledge had to be passed down from generation to generation via memorization until they became sophisticated enough to record it. So much knowledge was lost, it would have taken a long time to recover. Not even 100 years after they landed, every one of the original colonists would have been gone so the only information the remaining tribe retained was that handed down by their forefathers. A lot of it was oral.
So let's figure the first 100 years were just getting oriented and surviving on a new planet. The next 100 years would be spent getting the level of sophistication to something like the Old West. At some point, the Deucadons make the decision to move underground because of the constant bombardment by meteors, asteroids and the like. That probably set them back a bit. The next 100 years might have been spent getting their level matched but done underground. At that point they would proceed to an industrial age and finally, they'd get back to the Space Age, right around the time the Vuduri showed up.
That did not go well as the Vuduri slaughtered the Deucadons the few times they encountered them. In any event, by the time Rei caught up with them, much of their technology was on a par and in some cases ahead of that brought from Earth.
It makes for an interesting mix, that's for sure.
Anyway, they crash-landed on Deucado and lost the ability to go back up into space and retrieve the cargo section of the Ark. As they were fond of saying, all they had were the clothes on their back. So how long would it take a society to go from nothing to a full-blown, technological civilization?
I don't know the answer. I figured 500 years was about right. After all, Leonardo da Vinci was at his peak around the year 1500. He invented the telescope, helicopters and a bunch of other things but it took 500 years to bring his ideas to fruition, more or less.
The only thing the Deucadons had was knowledge that such things could be done. They didn't even have any paper to write stuff down. So the knowledge had to be passed down from generation to generation via memorization until they became sophisticated enough to record it. So much knowledge was lost, it would have taken a long time to recover. Not even 100 years after they landed, every one of the original colonists would have been gone so the only information the remaining tribe retained was that handed down by their forefathers. A lot of it was oral.
So let's figure the first 100 years were just getting oriented and surviving on a new planet. The next 100 years would be spent getting the level of sophistication to something like the Old West. At some point, the Deucadons make the decision to move underground because of the constant bombardment by meteors, asteroids and the like. That probably set them back a bit. The next 100 years might have been spent getting their level matched but done underground. At that point they would proceed to an industrial age and finally, they'd get back to the Space Age, right around the time the Vuduri showed up.
That did not go well as the Vuduri slaughtered the Deucadons the few times they encountered them. In any event, by the time Rei caught up with them, much of their technology was on a par and in some cases ahead of that brought from Earth.
It makes for an interesting mix, that's for sure.
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Tales of the Vuduri
Tidbits and insights into the 35th century world of the Vuduri.
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