Szeth's Crusade Complication

[Wreith he/him]

5 minutes ago, Corax said:

I'm a little late to the party, but I thought it might be worth saying.

Perhaps we are reading too much into ethnicity... people coming from Ashyn could be a wide and varied people. Indeed, I'd argue that they should be a widely varied people. I mean, we're all from the same planet, and just look how wonderfully varied we Earth humans are.

Was this maybe supposed to go on the Aboshi and Mountain Spren thread? I'm not sure where ethnicity comes into this conversation.

But to respond,
I'm pretty sure there's a WoB that says there's less variation in the Cosmere because most humans were patterned on the same model (Yolen?) but a quick search didn't find it.

That said, we can identify at least three distinct-ish human ethnicities on Roshar namely, Shin, Alethi, and Irialli
iirc, all other Rosharan peoples are decended are some combination of human groups and Listeners.

This is the best description we've gotten for the races I think

Quote

reddidaccount1

In Sanderson's most recent lecture (50:25 in) to his BYU Writing Class, he mentions that Alethkar natives resemble Asians. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, especially since I always imagined the Shin as the "Asians" of that world.

Brandon Sanderson

It's a little more complicated than I might have made it seem. Alethkar natives other than the Shin have the epicanthic fold, but the Alethi wouldn't look strictly Asian to you--they'd look like a race that you can't define, as we don't have them on earth. I use half-Asian/half-arab or half-asian/half-Polynesian models as my guide some of the time, but Alethi are going to have a tanner skin than some of those.

Some Horneaters might look Caucasian to you--but then, most will not. They'll seem like something alien, and not all of them have light skin; they tend to walk a spectrum between pale and coppery. Reshi and Herdazians will look closest to something like an indigenous Bolivian.

Shin would look the closest to Caucasian to you, but again, they're not an Earth ethnicity. So you might not be able to place them either.

A lot of the fanart has done a good job with this, and if you search through it, it might help you get an idea.

source

 

[Calderis he/him]

4 minutes ago, Wreith said:

That said, we can identify at least three distinct-ish human ethnicities on Roshar namely, Shin, Alethi, and Irialli

Makabaki as well. And the only group we have confirmed as coming separate from the initial migration are the Iriali. 

Which leaves a fairly wide variety of humans. Not a lot of people running around with Metallic gold hair and a sheen to their skin anyways 

[Corax]

On 8/30/2018 at 10:35 AM, Wreith said:

The WoBs on Ashyn and the Iriali do kill the separate human worlds portion of my theory.

So I'm left without an explanation of the epicanthic fold distinction between Shin and non-Shin.

I can agree with parts of your theory, but at this time I don't believe Odium was actually the Ashyn humans' god.
I think the Listeners just believed he was because he followed humans to Roshar proper.

This is the initial thought I was responding to. In any case, even if all other Cosmere humans are all directly or indirectly patterned off of Yolish humans, I would still expect that said Yolish humans would be as diverse a bunch as real life humanity. But I don't want to sidetrack the conversation. 

[Greywatch she/her]

4 hours ago, Corax said:

This is the initial thought I was responding to. In any case, even if all other Cosmere humans are all directly or indirectly patterned off of Yolish humans, I would still expect that said Yolish humans would be as diverse a bunch as real life humanity. But I don't want to sidetrack the conversation. 

I don't think that's wrong, but I also think that a lot of the places in the cosmere have definitely spent enough time in their own lands that distinct people groups would have developed; while we don't have much confirmed about the original migration, the modern Rosharan landscapes are definitely their own things.