@Callan
I guess I'm still just missing something. I mean by that logic then, Bakker would basically be saying that people with Arabic features are somehow naturally inclined towards Islam-esque religions and living in the desert?
Other way around - arabic features are naturally inclined to show up in latter generations as the best performing features in that environment.
And also forming languages similar to Arab tongues? And this also applies to every other race?
Now that I'm not sure about. Keep in mind though that the Inuit (Eskimo's?) in real life have about 40 different names for snow. That's certainly language shaped by environment.
What do we have in the books that shows a direct similarity between arab tongues and the Ketyai?
Like I said earlier, we already have examples of this not being true on Earth. You say that Earwa has deserts, and so we get desert people. If that's the case, then why aren't all of earth's desert people almost identical? Why do they have such a range of cultures and beliefs? I mean obviously certain behavioral systems would remain, but again, taking that all the way into language and culture, and up to the point of events as specific as the Vulgar Holy War or the Circumfix...I just don't get it.
Again, the other way around - your perception of arabic features - why couldn't that one come up as much as any other? If Bakker had chosen another race of RL desert dwellers for the features, would you argue why is this race the only type of desert race? Pot luck. Well okay, the author chose it, but chose it on the basis of it being pot luck in the world. Or so I hypothesize.
I'm not sure why your saying the destruction of the vulgar holy war
is super specific somehow? Nor the circumfix - it's not a perfect cross, and it revolves around the human body (when not dismembered), so it has to conform to some similarity to any other device one might pin a person upon. Ironically there ideology must condition itself to the enviroment that is the human body (when not dismembered!)
Like I said earlier, I think you and I just have very different opinions on how this sort of situation would play out. Given this set of circumstances:
A:) A large group of humans of different races (though race really doesn't even matter at this point).
B:) Placing them onto an only vaguely Earth-like environment, in the sense that there are similar climates, but with a very different terrain that also contains many wildly exotic features (magic, gods, non-human intelligences).
C:) Taking said humans and erasing all memory of their history...
...And then, after several thousand years, having all of that reorganize itself into a set of civilizations that racially, culturally, and linguistically mirror the same set of events based on the planet and history that the races initially evolved on, despite all of the environmentally unique factors of Earwa...just makes no sense to me. And, as I've said, it's not like these are broad strokes. It comes down to some incredibly specific points: very similar religions (a bible analogue, a christ analogue, a crucifixion analogue, several biblical character analogues), and then specific historical movements of those religions and cultures, then extremely specific events within those specific historical movements -- I mean, what's the likelihood that not only would a Holy War happen, but also another Vulgar Holy War (I.E. the People's Crusade, which the VHW was based on)? And, again, I cite the fact that we have evidence that this
doesn't happen here on earth. I don't really get your arguments against that particular point (why didn't people living in temperate regions all across the earth develop so similarly as you propose they would when put on earwa?). So given all of that, I'm assuming we're just approaching this from very different points of view. Which is fine, nothing wrong with that.
For what's it worth, since this thread is actually about trying to guess what the overall end-result of the setting is, I actually think the Bakkerverse will become more like our world, rather than starting from our own and working forward. In other words, my wager is that, somehow or someway (likely through some pseudo-victory of the Consult, or otherwise through the efforts of Kellhus), the universe becomes disenchanted, cutting off the Outside and "dis-ensouling" (there's a word) all life within, thus rendering the humans therein applicable to his blind-brain theory. And, of course, eliminating sorcery.