In my last article I covered the possible locations of earth-like planets. In this article I address culture. We determined that our planet, Rhyannon, has intelligent native-life. Now, we develop their culture. Human cultures arise from dissident ideals engendered by the divergent realities of terrain, climate, mineral availability, and economics, combined with the catalyst of ethnocentrism. Whether or not these forces motivate the Rhyannons would depend on their life-form, and Rhyannon's morphology.
One might expect a humanoid, carbon-based life-form to be similar to ours in the forms their cultures take. However, Rhyannon has several major differences from Terra. Most differences between we Terrans come from the differences in Terra herself. On Rhyannon there are no deserts, large oceans, high mountains, nor other natural barriers to isolate small groups, so genetic-drift is unlikely.
Rhyannons are one race, with one language, and in general terms have the same culture planet-wide. In all probability, they would be largely hunter-gatherers with a few scattered herders and agriculturists.
Rhyannon has a mild climate, aside from the polar regions which are covered with permanent snow. She is so nearly uniform, there is minimal advantage in one location over any other. Therefore, the natives never had reason to fight over territory. Their attitude is that they belong to the land, rather than the land belonging to them.
The individual Rhyannon have so much in common, ethnocentrism never had any soil in which to root, until humans arrive. With no territorial arguments, no differences in appearance or culture to distrust, the Rhyannons have no warfare experience. Then come the neurotic human-race.
In building a fictional culture we have cultural histories by the thousands from which to choose our beginning model. Changes have to be made in our cultural model to fit Rhyannon and the Rhyannon-natives we develop. Cultures clashing, bringing culture-shock as a catalyst for change on both sides, is a well-trod route our story could take as its main plot-line.
Star traveling societies are likely to be highly regimented, centralized cultures, much like the Roman Empire at its height. With a few changes we can take the first century A.D. Britons as models for the Rhyannons. The Britons were a warrior society, so that would be an immediate major deletion.
The Britons were highly individualistic and clannish. The Celtic people had nothing more populous than small villages and detested the Roman idea of cities. This we keep.
To the celts, if you gave someone something it was a gift. Their economic concept didn't have loans and interest rates. The Celtic and Roman sexual role models conflicted drastically. To the first century A.D. Romans a woman was property with no rights. With the celts, women held equal status. Celtic women were as likely as any man to be leaders. How high you rose depended partly on birth, but far more on ability. Contrary to popular misconception, there were female druids as well as bards, war-chiefs, clan and tribal leaders.
This free-form versus rigidity extended into contrasting Celtic and Roman art forms. Celtic literature was verbal. Romans had a written language, and depended less on good memories. Celtic sculptures and jewelry were symbolic. The Roman arts were structured on realism.
Finally, conflicts over moral codes, lifestyles, and particularly the Roman abuses of power over the Celtic peoples, resulted in a massive revolt. Unfortunately, individualism has no chance against organized tactics in war. The Celts charged their enemies as an undisciplined mob, rather than as an army. Every man and woman was for themselves.
The Romans worked as a unit, guarding each other's back. Also, when possible they chose their battlegrounds carefully. Consider the extreme advantages a space-technological specie has against a planet-bound stone-age race in choosing battleground. In our story, war would not necessarily come about. More on that in part four.
What if the Rhyannons are not humanoid, much less hominid? What if they are not even carbon based? It is entirely possible for life, even intelligent life, to evolve from a silicon base. In all probability, a crystalline life-form would not at first be recognized as such.
An alien life-form is not likely to take kindly to its citizenry hacked into small stones for jewelry. Would such hacking destroy them? Or would they recombine with other fragments, using the metal setting for synapses, thereby surviving as a new entity? This, of course, assumes that each structure is an individual. It is equally possible for each edifice to be a colony of related individuals, much like coral.
Intelligent life-forms - by definition - need to communicate, at least with their own specie. How might such a life-form communicate? Telepathy? Tonal emanations?
Would they be small stones scattered in and a top Rhyannon? Or would they be towering edifices sinking their roots far into Rhyannon's depths? It is unlikely such edifice-beings would have mobility, but not impossible. One method is teleportation. Humans might think a second time if a silicon tower were to frustrate mining attempts by suddenly vanishing.
Whatever form the Rhyannon natives take, there would be conflict between Rhyannons and Terrans. Why the conflict happens, largely depends on the human motivation for making the trip in the first place. Part four covers human star-travel motivations.