Writing Colonies XXXV: The Culture of Tauron

Caprica itself is, basically, modern-ish America but with hats.  Sagittaron, we know from Galactica, is largely made up of religious types who eschew medicine.  But, thanks to Caprica, Tauron is the world with the richest depictions among the Twelve Colonies.  

Of course, as I'm writing, I'm including all sorts of aspects of the culture we've seen, and I have to fill in some blanks, too.  This means I also have to tackle the origins of some of this stuff.  Not to worry; I won't be giving Taurans tattoos, mourning gloves, the "dirt eater" epithet, and ancient Greek as a language in one fell swoop like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade did (wherein Indy got his whip, his chin scar, his hat, and his fear of snakes in one day).

Let's hit a few of the big points and I'll give you a peek at how it's handled in Colonies of Kobol - Book Twelve: Tauron.  After the JUMP.

TATTOOS

Tattoos are very common among Taurans, especially with the Ha'la'tha (their mafia).  (A character says in Book Thirteen: "Are you familiar with that phrase from geometry?  'All squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares?'  Well, all Ha'la'tha are Taurons with tattoos, but not all Taurons with tattoos are Ha'la'tha.")  If you want an explanation of how tattoos worked among the Ha'la'tha with a particular emphasis on Sam Adama's tattoos, this is a great article with info from writer and producer Jane Espenson.

The tattoo tradition doesn't begin in my story.  The first part of it takes place about three hundred years after the Virgo and Leo came to Taurus, and because the "natives" were frequently displaced, they took to tattooing their families' stories on their bodies since they often had few possessions or were taken from their homes.

GLOVES

From the Caprica pilot: "Gloves are symbolic. They're to keep us away from the world during mourning, or something like that.  I don't even know why they do it.  It's an old custom."

You will see the origin of this tradition in Book Twelve.

"DIRT EATER"

This racist epithet is used against the Adamas in the episode "Gravedancing," and was expounded upon further in SyFy's companion faux news site, The Caprican.  I gave the origin of the phrase in one of the Messenger "interviews" that I use throughout the book, and the Messengers spoke to the man whose desperation originated the term shortly after the Virgans first came to the world:

"She just opened the gate to the city and collapsed.  Dead."  He released a long breath and said, "The Virgans walked in a few minutes later.  They just looked around at everyone, laughing."

"They didn't bring you water or food?"

"No."  He repositioned himself, "I was lying against the wall for the whole morning as their soldiers came past.  The first time anyone came to me, they took away my rifle and knife.  That was all.  I couldn't move.  I couldn't go look for a rat or paper, but my stomach."  He winced.  "Hunger is bad enough on its own, but there is a pain that comes when it is empty.  When it has stayed empty for too long.  I saw that my hands had the spots and I knew the end was coming for me soon, but I just wanted the pain in my belly to end.  I reached down beside me and picked up a cracked piece of dry soil.  It was red, of course.  I knew it would be gritty, so I didn't look forward to its feeling on my tongue or on my teeth.  When I hesitated, my stomach spoke again and I put the soil in my mouth.  My tongue was too dry to even wet it.  I chewed, I think, and I swallowed.  Then I remembered hearing laughing again.  They stood there, looking at me, laughing.  They kept saying, 'drós etere,' but I don't know what that means."

The female voice sighed and said, "It means, 'dirt eater.'"

"Oh."

The male voice spoke softly, "You weren't the first Tauran to eat dirt.  As the empires laid siege to your world, settlers all across the Plain turned to eating anything to fill their stomachs, including the soil.  You were simply the first one seen doing so by the Virgans."

LANGUAGE

Oh, brother.  This is a big one.

Everyone knows that the Taurans speak ancient Greek.  Homeric Greek, more precisely (it's a little different).  

"Well, that's easy.  You took ancient Greek in college and still have those textbooks laying around."

I did and I still do, but ... yeah.  There's a problem.

Some of the Tauran words we were introduced to right off the bat have no relationship with Greek at all.  For example, "guatrau."  A "godfather," if you will, but there is no "guatrau" in Greek.  "Gua" and "trau," too.  Nothing that I could find in either ancient or modern Greek.

Also, "Ha'la'tha."  We were told it means "always faithful to the soil."  Nope.  Even if I want to say that each syllable of the word is the first couple of letters of the Greek words, it doesn't work.  In ancient Greek, "always faithful soil" becomes "aei pistos gi."  Even using synonyms (like "forever true dirt") doesn't help.

This is when I realized that the writers had the key words first, (guatrau, Ha'la'tha, etc.) words in the script that just sounded cool, and then came up with the Homeric Greek thing later.

OK.  So what about me and the book?  What am I to do?

Well, to honor the father figures of the universe, Edward James Olmos and Esai Morales, it had been my intention to use ancient Spanish cities and names for old Tauron.  Because of that plan, I turned to Old Spanish (aka Medieval Spanish or Old Castilian).  Resources for that language online are very, very slim, so I decided to then marry elements of other Iberian languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan.  Despite this, I can't quite make "Ha'la'tha" work, but I decided to fudge the words a bit more.  In Spanish, "always faithful to the soil" is "siempre fiel a la tierra."  Through my fudging, it will become "haempre lael a tharra," thus, "Ha'la'tha."  As for "guatrau," "gua-" is similar to the common Iberian word "guerre/guerra" meaning "war."  So perhaps "guatrau" could be Old Tauran for "warlord."  Because the Ha'la'tha started as a resistance organization against the Tauran government, I think it's fair to suggest that their leaders may have taken the word for "warlord" from their old nearly forgotten tongue.

I justify it by saying the old tongue of the Taurans was corrupted by the Virgan of their invaders (as the old tongues were corrupted by Vulgar Latin on Earth and became Old Spanish).  Plus, the Ha'la'tha are formed nearly a thousand years after the switch from Old Tauran to Olympian (Greek), so maybe these resistance fighters and gangsters screwed some of it up?  Who can say?  (The second part of Book Twelve deals with the Tauron Civil War and the rise of the Ha'la'tha against the Heracleides regime.)

By the way, the adoption of Olympian by Tauron at large as their language does happen in the course of the first part of the book, and there's a reason for it.

ODDS & ENDS

What is that thing?  It's the Adama household's idol.  A statue with three faces of the three gods worshipped most by their family.  Jupiter is the largest because Adama is a lawyer and Jupiter's all about order.  In Sam's house, Mars is larger because he stabs people for a living.

In Book Twelve, I make it clear that this form of worship is unique to Tauron.  Each home chooses the three gods they honor most and through them and their priests, all the Pantheon is satisfied.  The carving itself is called a "deus talla" in Old Tauran ("gods carving").  By Book Thirteen, the name has become, in Olympian, "theougalma" ("gods statue") or "oikogalma" ("home statue").  It wasn't given a specific name in the show, Caprica.

Tauron does not have flowers.  Virgans bring some of their own to spruce up the place a bit. ... The large ringed moon, Minos, provides a lot of light at night when it's in the right phase. ... The city of Minos is called Taurus/Tauron City by offworlders largely because they don't want to confuse it with the name of the moon.

That's about all I have for now.  Thanks for reading.