Discussions Could there be anything left from the culture of the Kumumgah on Tatooine?

Wonder how much Kumumgah culture changed and how much of it might be left in the Jawas and Sandpeople. And how the change may have exactly happened and over which amount of time?

And could there be anything left at all from their beautiful cities on Tatooine?

 

Not likely, the kumumgah evolved into two distinct subspecies, while the world they inhabited was completely destroyed by the Rakata.

 

I doubt that the Rakata glassed the entire planet. No one and nothing could have survived, in that case. Guess there must have been at least a few regions that weren't destroyed by the Infinite Empire.

That's why i wonder if there are possibly still some artefacts and hidden ruins from the Kumumgah on Tatooine.

 

And how long would it have taken for the Kumumgah to become Sandpeople and Jawas?

What happened during this period and what was the process being like?

 

Great topic idea!

Well the answers you seek are basically in ANH itself already:

The Kumumgah as you already noted survived the Rakatan onslaught on their world barely. Where and how we do not know, but I guess some went underground or were offworld and returned after the nuclear mayhem. Maybe the Rakata made the Kumumgah watch the destruction from space and only later some Kumumgah slaves returned to Tatooine after the slave revolts ruined the Rakatan Infinite Empire.

We know Tusken and Jawas exist offworld, but due to later parties moving them off Tatooine. Like using Jawas for junk reduction on other worlds, or the Tusken tribe that lived on Sullusts moon Sulon from the Dark Forces: Jedi Knight game. Maybe others existed elsewhere and evolved into a different species since the Rakatans took them off as slaves?

On Tatooine, there were two groups of survivors that evolved separate from each other due to lack of contact and different survival strategies. Those Kumumgah that went underground seeking shelter in caves deep in the crust evolved into the Jawas. Diminished height and glowing eyes for nightsight being their prime evolutionary differences due to having existed in darkness for centuries if not millennia before returning aboveground when radiation levels dropped. By nature of living underground they only had limited tech they could have brought with them down there, so scavenging and recycling everything is necessary for survival and became their prime trait. There is no replacing any of the tech if they lost some.
Those who survived aboveground in far remote regions that saw less dense bombardment evolved into the Ghorfa, later nicknamed Tusken Raiders and Sand People by the settlers that invaded their space and Tatooine for they raided Fort Tusken. The Ghorfa sought shelter not underground but on mountaintops where nothing of interest probably lead to less bombardment by the Rakata. Living high up and farming what they could they were peaceful as the lower lands were full of radiation, glass and through erosion slowly more and more sand. When settlers from offworld came to their Tatooine, taking more and more than they were offerend in trade, they fought them and became unwillingly Raiders and stigamtized as warriors they originally were not at all. These are a native american analogue and only through betrayal had to go to war, not by nature. Not all clans went to war either, some remained remote from the settlers living their lifes. These Tusken Raiders, Sand People, Ghorfa, kept the height of the Kumumgah and in order to survive radiation and the increasing winds and erosion had to cover their skin shielding them from the sun and heat. Their culture evolved accordingly developing traditions around the covering and uncovering, as well as survival in the sands, farming it even, as even their mountains got eroded and sand reached up high to cover them.
When Ghorfa and Jawas made first contact, they barely recognised each other as the same species but it may have dawned to them over time maybe. Still they kept mostly apart unless they intruded in each others territories or needed something to survive.

Whatever is left of the Kumumgah is burried either deep in the sand, or has been altered by time and necessity with their cultural changes.

The tv show "The 100" shows in some seasons nicely how a planet and people change and evolve.

Spoiler

Some survived in bunkers underground, others on top adapted to radiation
it even ends with Earth a Tatooine like environment.

 

Thank you!

Depending on the material they used to built their cities, i think it may be possible that erosion and geological changes may not have destroyed everything in possibly unharmed regions. Some ruins might still exist under the dunes.

Another clue that not the entire planet was destroyed lies in the fact that there's still a functional ecosystem and that the Banthas for example are herbivores.

But i wonder, in the case the Kumumgah used a material as stable as plasteel or duracrete, in what condition these ruins or whatever is possibly left of these cities might be, considering that apparently there are still foundations from early buildings on the lowest levels of Coruscant for example.

 

This occurred over a process of 26,000+ years. In evolutionary terms, that's very brief but does allow potentially for speciation into distinct subspecies.

 

That's true. But there's still another thing i wonder about.

Wouldn't at least some of the survivors have the knowledge and the technical skills to repair and maintain the buildings? At least enough for people to live in them?

Considering that there are towns from later periods, when the colonists arrived, that are still around after millennia like Anchorhead for example.

 

Well consider that the rakatan empire collapsed, disconnecting Tatooine off from the galaxy, also consider that the bombardment was devastating enough to wipe out oceans, turning them to sand. Leaving a biosphere that was probably reduced by more than 99%(frankly it’s amazing banthas and krayt dragons survived at all).

The Kumungah would have had an existence at the margins, with no room for error or luxury, as resources were scarce and every day a fight just to live.

The Tuskens became nomadic, and the Jawas seemed to cluster in caves and crevasses, my guess is any technology that wasn’t annihilated was cannibalized and it’s use stretched out beyond its limit.

Building towns and holding on to any knowledge or technical skills that were not absolutely essential-would have been suicidal, in such conditions. So I suspect any tech or knowledge the Kumungah had, or the overwhelming majority of it, was lost.

 

By the way, considering that Old Republic anthropologists knew a bit about the Kumumgah, their culture, their advancements and their conquest by the Rakata, were there possibly some successful archaeological digs on the planet and what might they have found during these excarvations?

 

I don’t see why not, but given Tatooine was outside of the republic and the world and its region of space not the most safe, I suspect that any research into the planet’s history or that of its people was fairly limited.

 

Found this artwork of the Kumumgah city, seen in DotJ, on the internet. Seems to be fanmade. I like it a lot!


https://64.media.tumblr.com/1c1119e.../f058bb8ddc1898a46322cbbc17b8627e1cc65b27.png

 

Here's a new and better working link to the artwork:

 

One thing that gets me though is where the water went...

I mean, I am sure most people would say it was vaporized by the bombardment and sure, but thing is vaporized water doesn't just vanish into nothingness. It is still water, just a gas state. So either it should have condensed and come back down as water eventually, or Tatooine would be covered in massive clouds of steam.

Only things I can think of are:
A) Somehow the devastation of the world trapped a lot of the water underground.

or

B) The Rataka used their terraforming tech to steal the vaporized water as a final insult to any survivors and to use on other worlds they controlled.

Ah, so it is like fallout with the jawas as the vault dwellers and tuskens as the surface survivors? I love it.

Myself as well.

 

I imagine the Kumumgah culture, which was quite Earth like at the time of the Rakatan invasion, to represent a "what if" version of Earth with native american and shamanic cultures evolving in harmony and balance with their surroundings despite the increase in technology. They always struck me as this kind of people, even before the fallout. Thus a stark contrast to the plundering Rakata and their reaping of worlds.

While the Tusken as survival strategy even wanted less technology than they had before, sticking fully to nature providing against all odds and climate change, the Jawas out of necessity needed technology and to adapt it as well as lost their symbiotic ways with nature in order to survive.

Tatooines water is, I think, in part subterraneous like we see from the rare occurences of hot springs and caves with some greenery the Banthas and others may feed in. Kinda like on Hoth with caves with food for Tauntauns. But just pumping up water is not possible on Tatooine as the sand has it all turned ultra-salty and makes keeping any foutain wells free near impossible as well as costly. Hence moisture farming is required which is a combination of farming it out of atmisphere via vaporators and farming actual fruits like the black melons below the sand that naturally contains some of Tatooines water. There is an entire underground ecosystem like the black melons that animals can sniff up and dig for. Human settlers upon figuring that out, easily could farm the sand like it is not possible in other planets climates due to Tatooines unique water-in-sand makeup mix. So moisture farmers are actual farmers and moisture collectors.

But I think the Rakata also just filled their barges with Tatooines water before glassing the remainder of it. Stealing it thus.

 

The rakata didn’t plunder Tatooine though? They bombarded the planet in reprisal, as they believed the Kumungah were responsible for the plague stripping them of the force, and because well their empire was collapsing and their subject peoples were rising in rebellion(the Kumungah as well).

It wasn’t an act of greed, or callous imperialism, but the spite of a frightful, cornered empire that perceived the Kumungah as architects of one of the causes of their rapidly escalating downfall.

 

The question remains, were the Kumumgah responsible? Or were they just blamed to be? And if they were responsible, how did they do it? What does that tell of their knowledge about the Force, Force-technology and other advanced stuff neccessary to pull this off, let alone incite the slaves rising up. IF the Kumumgah were responsible indeed, they are a far larger power and more influential than previously thought, if not territorially then at least technologically.

Were the Rakatans stripping of the Force, the plague, actually a stripping or rather like what Zonama Sekot did to the Vong, shifting the spectrum to a new frequency? This paralell between Rakata and Vong actually makes me wonder, was Tatooine like Sekot, alive and able to do that before it got glassed? A true "celestial" planet, one of the last remainders of a bygone "celestial" era of living worlds the Rakata defeated/ended?

Did Tatooine once have a hypergate or likewise even? As it seems a lot of the slaves rising up needed to coordinate and ships or lanes were still scarce in that era, or rather slow by comparison. Even with Force Astrogators.

Guess the galaxy screamed "Son of the Suns" long before Luke and Anakin already... with a previous Chosen One amongst the Kumumgah freeing them from the Rakata.

 

Even after the Rakata devastating Tatooine, i think there must be a lot more water on the planet than most people assume. How else could the Kumumgah and all the animals native to Tatooine have survived all these millennia before the settlers arrived and established moisture farms?

 

These are all very interesting questions. It should be noted of course that the Rakata’s downfall was not an immediate process, it seems to me at least centuries of decline were involved. Long enough for all the things you speculate on to have occurred in some form or another.

As for the Kumungah and the plague…maybe? We don’t really know much about the Kumumgah’s own moral and philosophical outlook, if they had a capacity to design a such a plague, surely they could have designed an Alpha Red sort of plague to simply kill the rakata, not take away their connection to the force. I suppose Tatooine’s seeming cosmic importance could imply the world itself was responsible, and the Rakata simply attacked the beings who lived on that world. But we don’t know, and we don’t have any evidence of living worlds in the GFFA prior to Zonama’s arrival.

I’d presume underground reservoirs, oases, and springs existed accessible by caves and perhaps even digging for a long time. Maybe they still are. Also the oceans may have not turned to sand immediately, they may have boiled slowly over hundreds or thousands of years as a result of the bombardment. It’s hard to say.

 

Deep beneath the layer of vitrification, there might be some shining relics of the long-gone Kumumgahs.