An Overview

This huge island is the bridge between three continents: huge Continent 1 to the north (see the high-orbital photo below), and two smaller lands sharing a flooded continental platform to the southeast (lower right), Continent 4 and Continent 5. The not-quite-landbridge is dead center. The coast of Continent 2 is visible on the left horizon, with Continent 3 to the lower left.

All these numerical names are of course mere placeholders; create an intelligent species and you get to name their homeland and its geographical features!

This huge island is rather like Sumatra or Papua New Guinea. It straddles the equator in a hot rainy zone between two huge peninsulas with similar climate. Clearly both island and mainlands will be rainforest so dense that land animals adapted for the temperate, opener north and south will have trouble surviving at ground level. It's dense, gloomy and mucky down there. Most animal life will be arboreal, up in the canopy.

So if there are intelligent arboreals up there, they sure won't be the same species as the creatures adapted for the savannas and prairies of Continent 1 and Continent 4... unless they're winged immigrants. Who are they, how do they live? Fruit and nut eaters like parrots, omnivorous opportunists like ravens, greens-munching gorillas, omnivorous sometimes-hunters like chimps or humans? But they're unlikely to be flightless arboreals; fliers have such an advantage getting around this maze of land and sea.

Another way to get around here: be semi-aquatic. A second species of people might fish these coral-lined inlets and sounds--something like a huge otter would love it here. And even Earth's small ones use tools...

Maybe the natives aren't otters but creatures we'd think of as merely an otter's lunch: lobsters or crabs. Earth has tree-crabs; here, too, forests march down to the sheltered water... maybe arboreal crabs get larger... and as smart as octopi. Or maybe they come out of the water, learn to climb trees and pick fruit... Hm, fruitarian squid?

The straits separating the island from the Continent 1 and Continent 4 are both quite shallow and not that wide--mere rafts might be enough, and certainly any fliers could easily cross; land would always be in sight.

In ice ages, the island is a wide land-bridge leading to Continent 4 and Continent 5, which themselves fuse into one big desert-hearted continent--sort of a super-Australia. Though these aren't pleasant times for arboreal creatures--the forests shrink to hug the coasts and equatorial belts--ground animals may in such eras cross to the expanded (if dry) savannas and semiarid grazing lands of this Super-Australia. But in the current era, only winged peoples and mariners can use the 1-4 bridge.

The gazetteer: will have a full index of native placenames, with descriptions--once the contests's over and we have natives to name them.

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sh - Si-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites