Neira

Geographical map of Neira, Holocene epoch

This article is a Community Project The author(s) behind this project have opened editing and development of this article up to the greater community. Please respect other people's content when editing This page was last edited on 2/11/2017 by NecrusIV

Neira (^?/ˈniː.rɑ/) is an insular landmass located in the northern hemisphere and the world's smallest continent, painted in broad strokes of plains, tundra and snow between huddled forests, with its northeastern arm being dotted with several mountain ranges. Some historical texts classify it as part of Cymlun rather than a continent in its own right.

Human settlement

The first human species to migrate to Neira were the Homo neirai in 120,000 BCE, who moved from Cymlun after the continent suffered from a series of crippling droughts. The H. neirai quickly adapted to the colder climate and soon migrated across much of modern day southern Variyako, dominating the continent in a short space of time, forming hunter-gatherer societies. Around 80,000 BCE modern humans migrated to Neira and started to displace H. neirai through interbreeding and fighting over hunting grounds, with H. neirai dying out soon afterwards. Around 10,000 BCE Neiran people's began to develop new agricultural techniques, herding livestock and growing primarily cotton, which would become a key Neiran export throughout history. First records of trade can be traced back to 7000 BCE when Cymluni merchants traded ploughs with Neiran tribes.

Hypothetical map of Neira during the Pleistocene epoch, with modern landmansses overlaid in white. The land that now forms the modern Omere Channel was flooded by melting ice caps around 6,500–6,200 BCE

Etymology

Due to the Neiran peoples’ long, willing isolation from the rest of the interconnected world, the continent of Neira has long been without a well-established name. For millennia, it has been given a various number of titles by whatever far-reaching explorer, merchant or missionary encountered its shores. In modern eras however, with the global spread of capitalism connecting all corners of the globe, localised forms of the long-used native Wunal endonym have widely been adopted as the official name of the island continent, with only a few countries and cultures retaining old exonyms, most especially, the few nations with long established historical ties to the continent and its people.

The Atraelish word Neira is derived from the Old Xhequan pronunciation of the Wunal endonym "Nela" (ኔለ, pronounced [ɴe.ɾa], lit. "world") where, in the correct Wunal phonology, the letter l is pronounced with an alveolar flap, a sound percieved by speakers of Atraelish to be an equivalent of an R. Comparatively, the continent is known as "Yeda" ([jɘ.d̼æ]) in Flaigalish, "Njeda" ([nʲe.da]) in Seonmi, and "Yeedạ" ([ʲy.ɖa]) is Yashurhieli, all of which are also local interpretative pronunciations of the original Wunal word. Other central and lower Cymluni languages outside of those listed have also followed this trend of adopting and changing the original name to suit local vocabularies; though Amleian languages have instead adopted the Atraelish pronunciation, largely due to Atraeth’s cultural influence upon the continent vastly overshadowing the influence of what few exchanges between the Amleian and Neiran peoples that have occurred throughout history.

The Yieshyiud Jaaqate, as well as the modern ethnically Yumeran nations of Umren and the Omlyiud Jaaqate, know the continent by a different name, "Tsammata", which is a Tzolkese loanword derived from the original Tzolkese endonym Tŭsa'mutŭ (Tzolkese: ጣሠ᎐ሙጣ, lit. “River Land”). This is largely owed to many centuries of cultural and mercantile exchange between the Yumeran and Tzolk people - not to mention countless Yieshyiud raids - to the point where the culture, language and even genetic lineage of both populations have acquired noticeable similarities.