#archaean

[vickysaurus]

The Prehistoric Nature mod for Minecraft had an update that greatly improves the Precambrian! Now instead of a simple two-biome world where Ediacaran critters live under Cryogenian ice, there's loads of different biomes from different parts of the Precambrian to explore. Unlike the other dimensions the mod adds, the Precambrian dimension has very few actual mobile creatures going about, and all of those seem to be in the Ediacaran biomes, so it feels suitably lonely. I'll put a bunch of screenshots below the cut in whatever order I end up encountering stuff.

Neoproterozoic Microbial Plains are covered in microbial crusts, which break when you walk over them, making them quite crunchy. The little pools that dot the landscape have both red and green algae living in them.

Hadean Volcanic Wastes are suitably fucked up.

The Cryogenian naturally has both the land and sea entirely frozen over. However, underwater there's more going on than in the biomes depicting earlier eras!

Paleoproterozoic Regolith, a quite martian-looking biome showing a time before any trace of life on land.

The Ediacaran biomes are much more lively than the others, with the seas covered in Charnia and its friends, while there's even some cretures crawling around between them and jellyfish swimming. I quite like these underwater chasms running through the biome I found.

Archaean tide pools have signs of life here and there in the form of stromatolites and microbial mats. Due to the lack of oxygen, the sky ranges from red to yellow depending on the weather. There's full Archaean sea biomes to be found as well.

Mesoproterozoic Carpet has plenty of Tawuia, Grypania, and of course stromatolites.

[mostly-history]

Modern stromatolites growing in Shark Bay (Western Australia).

Stromatolites are sedimentary rocks formed by the growth of layers of cyanobacteria, single-celled photosynthetic microbes. Stromatolites have been found as fossils in Early Archaean rocks from around 3.5 billion years ago, in South Africa and Western Australia. Their numbers increased during the Archaean, but began to decline during the Proterozoic Era, and are not common today.

[earthstory]

Dales Gorge Formation These redbeds are found in Western Australia near the northwestern corner of that continent, in the Pilbara region near the iron mining community of Pannawonica. They are all part of the Dales Gorge formation, one of the major sources of iron for mining in Australia and one of the classic Banded Iron Formations associated with the rise of oxygen on the planet.

When the planet first formed, its atmosphere was nearly oxygen-free. Instead, it contained components such as methane, carbon dioxide, and sulfur-species. It took life nearly a billion years to figure out a process to take energy from sunlight, and that process that we now call photosynthesis began releasing oxygen as a byproduct. When oxygen levels in the atmosphere were low, iron and several other metals existed in reduced oxidation states. Iron, for example, was found with a +2 charge, compared to the rusted iron with a +3 charge that you see in the hematite of these rocks. When iron has a +2 charge, it is able to dissolve in water, so prior to the arrival of oxygen in the atmosphere, the oceans likely had a whole lot of iron dissolved in them. Once those little bacteria started putting out extra oxygen, a chemical reaction was triggered – the iron oxidized to a +3 charge, and as a consequence it could no longer dissolve in the ocean. The iron precipitated, creating ooze layers that accumulated like gel at the bottom of the ocean. Over time, layer after layer of sediments were stacked on top and the pressure squeezed out the water, eventually compacting them into solid layers. These rocks, formed 2.48 billion years ago, are thought to have been one of the last layers to form before oxygen began fully building up in the atmosphere. Banded Iron Formations, like this one, also have bands of siliceous material – minerals with the same chemistry as quartz, but in microcrystalline formats that we call chert. These cherty layers formed when something about the conditions in this basin changed – either the water chemistry, sediment supply, or maybe even the temperature. If more siliceous material entered the basin, the sediments were more cherty, and iron was deposited when there was no silica to get in the way. As you see in the close up view, these layers also come in packages – alternating between siliceous and iron rich. When we see packages like those today, we often suspect that they are driven in part by climate changes associated with wobbles in Earth’s orbit and release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Recent work studied the packages of layers in these rocks and found that, if they are driven by wobbles in the Earth’s orbit, the timing was very different from that found today – meaning these packages may tell us a story of how Earth’s orbit has been stabilized over time by the influence of the Moon’s gravity. -JBB Image credits: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pilbara_dales_gorge_formation.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Banded_iron_formation_Dales_Gorge.jpg https://flic.kr/p/24RxcJ2 References: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.precamres.2019.04.007 https://bit.ly/3gWAXdo https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0372-0

[sarah-bbee]

Archaean Concept Art

~*~ Centuries of fortified safety have allotted the people of Archaea generous time and resources to build the city into what it is today--to research aether and learn about the leylines changing our world. Archaean's deep reverence for magic has made Archaea the only place where both education and magic understanding are taught with equal emphasis at their schools, where a witch can study, practice, and hone their innate aetherial talents. With ancient archives built throughout the city, they have a wealth of knowledge at their disposal to choose what to make of their skills in life. When a citizen becomes of age, they either go on to lend their abilities to the Hunters Guild, study within the Alchemist Guild, or enlist in the Archaean Army, which operates more as a guard against internal and external forces rather than on hunting the spawn from leylines.

~ Concept art for the ‘Archaean’ Bloodline

My RPG, The Hunters, is currently in beta testing and undergoing draft-revision, but you can find news, updates, and more info on our facebook page: www.facebook.com/thehuntersrpg! :)

~ PRINTS available at sarahmillercreations.com! & Look for more from Sarah Miller Creations on: ArtStation | deviantART | facebook | and YouTube

[chocobutt-trash]

So... If you had to guess... Who among the astrals would be the one associated with fertiliy, etc? Cuz I'm not saying Titan but I totally am

Fertility gods, now there’s an idea. Thank you for this ask, it’s a great one.

*some ridiculously fun religious meta incoming*

I’d be tempted by either Titan or Ifrit, honestly. And I’m glad you suggested Titan, because it would have been too easy for someone to suggest Shiva or Leviathan based on nothing more than their femininity, which is a common mistake.

Let’s start by looking at Ifrit.

Quite often there’s a crossover with fertility gods and gods of life and death, so for example a lot of gods of the underworld tend to share fertility properties. Osiris, for example, the Egyptian god of the underworld, was also a fertility god, and showed a great love for Isis, to the point that he was seen as a god of love too. His gifts to the Nile, the flooding and recession that allowed the region’s crops to flourish, was seen as another indication of his supreme love, and this can be seen as mirrored in FFXV’s Ifrit mythos, in his love for Shiva and in his love for humanity during the Solheim era, bestowing humans witht he gift of fire to allow them to flourish.

Cernunnos, the Celtic horned god, who also held dominion over the underworld, was in addition a god of fertility and life. The prominence of his horns, his association with powerful wild animals, makes me consider Ifrit as an analogue for him, based on that physical property.

There’s also the fact that Ardyn, as Ifrit’s partner-in-crime, summons Cerberus, the Guardian of the Underworld and Hades’s pet.

So Ifrit’s a pretty strong contender, based on this.

What about Ramuh? Superficially, his name is a reference to Rāma, or Ramachandra (moon that shows beauty in darkness), the seventh avatar of Vishnu the Maintainer. There’s not really much here that suggests fertility, and the focus of Rāma is one of someone who’s pure of character rather than focussed on creating life. Furthermore, Ramuh’s role in FFXV’s mythos is one of gatekeeping and judgement, so it doesn’t really fit.

And then you have gods like the Egyptian crocodile god Sobek, celebrated as both a god of war and a fertility icon. So with this logic, maybe Bahamut could be a contender. but I doubt that’s likely. Bahamut shares more in common with Mars or Ares. Again, a god of judgement, but more so one of war and physical prowess.

Leviathan, if seen as an analogue for the Cambrian Explosion (as she could well be, being a giant fish), could potentially be seen as a fertility goddess, but her focus is largely on war and conquest. So I’mma go with a no for her.

Now on to Titan. Being a god of the earth, he still remains a strong contender. His honorific name is the Archaean, which not only means beginning or origin in Greek, but is also a reference to one of the earliest geological aeons.

Now, if you go one geological era back and you reach the hadean aeon. This was the first geological aeon to ever exist, and with the clear reference to underworld, you might be tempted to think, well, maybe the god most associated with underworld and suchlike in FFXV would be the strongest contender, bringing you back to Ifrit.

But wait - let’s return to the Archaean aeon. This was actually the period in the earth when cyanobacteria evolved - the first proper evidence of the birth of life on earth. Whereas the Hadean was the period where the earth was literally an ocean of magma, the Archaean was when the continents first rose proper and water was introduced (interestingly, a lot of current scientific thinking does include comet influence for that), and thus, the first bacteria.

So if Titan, the Archaean, is a reference to that geologial aeon in any way, it fits in quite well with him being a reference to fertility and birth of life. Also, his role in the game as holding up the meteor that tried to destroy earth puts him in the role of both Atlas and Gaia. He both is the earth and supports it, and I think this makes clear he’d probably be the one most likely worshipped as a god of fertility.

I mean, Titan’s pretty rock-solid (heh) and I can totally imagine the locals of Duscae wearing little Titan charms just like the Romans wore Priapus charms. You should look those up, they’re rather entertaining.

Furthermore: reasons I definitely don’t think Shiva is a fertility goddess: During the Archaean, and the Proterozoic, there were a couple of what we refer to as ‘snowball earth’ events. They are hypothesised but extremely likely - basically massive events where ice covered the whole earth and threatened life to a severe degree. Again, some forms of bacteria with extremophile properties survived this (and research into this, coincidentally is why some people hypothesise there may be bacteria living under the ice on the moon Europa, but I digress). But yeah, ice came very close to killing our planet a few times before.

What’s also interesting on this note is that the spell used to finally beat Titan in his arena is blizzard.

So there we have it. Titan (or possibly Ifrit. But mostly Titan).

———–

Bonus round: if Verstael had succeeded in becoming truly immortal, then he’d probably be the closest to a fertility god in this game. Giant phallic symbol in the form of a huge-ass worm: check. Evidence of mass-production of thousands of children: check. Control over life and death through experimentation with the Starscourge: check.

[nelmyrion]

[stuckinapatriarchalbullshitland]

Archaean by Juxmouse

Summary:

"Mother, don't you see? He is waiting to be brought back to this beautiful world. And what better way to start our tour of the Earth, than to begin in this little town of Purgatory?"

After Waverly's possession, it became clear that there were a few more inconveniences than just Revenants and closet monsters. But with her lineage being questioned and her purpose becoming blurred, how can she hope to help her sister take on this new form of evil? On top of that, where did Nicole come from before deciding to become a cop?

Set a bit after Season 1.

I have to say that what I love of this story is that Nicole is an angel... sort of. I can see her as an angel considering that seems that no one hear when she is in a room and she only shows up magically. The main characters have special abilities so why no Nicole? I mean they are in Purgatory the place between heaven and hell,  It's would sounds amazing if she were actually an angel. I don’t know if the writer of this fanfic have a tumblr account but I hope she liked it.

[vickysaurus]

This is a 2.8 billion year old banded iron formation. The red lines are iron oxide being deposited by the ocean. Now what makes that special is that this time, at the end of the Archaean eon, is when these start appearing, because this is when cyanobacteria evolved and produced the Earth’s first free oxygen! For a long time, all the oxygen they produced simply reacted immediately with other atmospheric gases or minerals like iron, but eventually it exhausted all those oxygen sinks and became a major part of the atmosphere.