Culture of the Proto-Ñyqy People

While the Proto-Ñyqy is the most well attested cultural and linguistic family, the temporal distance between the Proto-Ñyqy people and us makes it extremely hard to reconstruct anything. The various branches of the Ñyqy family evolved over the past eight to twelve past millenia, and some changed pretty drastically compared to their ancestors. Therefore, do not expect an in-depth description of what their society was like, but rather what could be considered an overview compared to some other culture descriptions.

The Name of the Language

First, it is important to know where the name of this language came from. Since it has such a wide spread in this world, giving it a name based on where its daughter branches went would give it a very long name, or with a shorter one we would have very boring or limited names — the “Proto-Northern-Southern” language doesn’t sound very good, and the “Proto-Mojhal-Andelian” language leaves other major branches out, such as the Pritian branch which we cannot ommit, just as the Mojhal and Andelian branches. So, researchers went with the reconstructed word for the inclusive we: *ñyqy. It itself is a coumpound word made up of *ñy, which is the first person pronoun, and *qy which is sometimes used as a grammatical morpheme indicating a plural — it also means six, as we will later on, the number system of the Proto-Ñyqy people was a bit complex.

Geographical Location

It is often very hard to find the location of very old reconstructed languages, such as the Proto-Mojhal language itself which location is still not clearly known despite its name. But when it comes to the Proto-Ñyqy people, we have a surprisingly good idea of where they were: in the hot rainforests of the northern main continent, most probably near nowadays’ Rhesodia. We know this thanks to some of their reconstructed words which are typical for the other people that lived or still live in hot rainforests, and these terms are older than the split between the northern and southern groups. For instance, both groups have a common ancestor word for bongo, *zebec, as well as for the bonobo, *pœwec, which are only found in these rainforests.

Society

The Proto-Ñyqy was a matriachal society, led most likely by older women who had an important spiritual role. This cultural trait is found in numerous daughter branches of the Ñyqy family, and it would be unreasonable to think a large amount of them would change in the same way despite many branches being most likely disconnected from one another, and the patriarchal branches almost all retained women as their spiritual figurehead, even if political power passed in the hands of men.

Religion and Beliefs

This question might be the hardest of all to answer, as we can only speculate based on the religions the daughter cultures of the Ñyqy family had, as well as the few hints we can get through the Proto-Ñyqy vocabulary. Through this keyhole, dusted by millenia of cultural and linguistic changes, we can offer an initial answer. It seems the Proto-Ñyqy reveered several gods, with however one god or goddes above them called *Qiisci, that might have been to them some form of queen or some sort of god for the gods themselves. We can find for instance this figure in the Mojhal patheon under the name of Kísce. Other than the parental figure of this divinity, their role is vastly unknown.