# Transporting Information: Sending Messages in Low Tech Societies The first roads were little more than game trails. Early infrastructure concerned itself more with stopping travel than facilitating it. With civilization, though, comes a need to transport *information*, and history presents us with thousands of years of inspiration for creating messenger systems in fiction. > Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of > their appointed rounds. Couriers like the brave men employed by the American Pony Express are a common trope of Wild West fiction. Pony Express riders delivered messages through territories that were often hostile and mostly lacked any real infrastructure. Despite how often they appear in Westerns, through, the Pony Express only operated for about a year – the establishment of the telegraph put them out of business, and they never did prove to be financially viable. Yet many people don’t know that the famous quote (above) predates the founding of the United States by over two thousand years. The historian Herodotus penned those words about the Persian courier system in approximately 430 BCE. ## Highways The Achaemenid Empire was so enormous that a lot of people think it resulted in communication difficulties between the throne and the provinces. It is really easy for even scholars to assume that an empire’s size is inversely proportional to its centralized control, but in reality even mountainous regions with challenging geography can maintain a network of infrastructure that allows for official communication. The Achaemenid Empire used a postal relay system called the *pirradazish* that functioned similarly to the American Pony Express, although the Persians had the advantage of roads, rivers, canals, and homing pigeons. In Persia, only important roads were paved, or roads near cities. Most probably had a gravel surface with curbstones and a ridge down the middle to divide the road into lanes.[^2] Some ancient roads, though, were cut right through the sides of mountains. But even when a road is naturally paved – by virtue of being carved from stone – there’s more work to be done. Irrigation channels keep roads from washing out and eroding away. It’s an extremely labor-intensive process in a pre-industrial society, but that didn’t stop ancient empires from doing it. Creating a road isn’t enough, though. Roads need to be maintained. The Persians under Darius I employed people called road counters to measure the roads and presumably create accurate maps. They were also probably responsible for erecting milestones. Workmen travelled with the road counters in order to make repairs. In the Incan Empire, roads and bridges – typically made out of rope – were maintained by local populations as part of their tithes.[^13] The Andean Royal road was over 5,000 kilometers long, longer than the longest Roman road. Andean civilizations dug stone steps into the mountainsides and built stone walls to keep sand from drifting over the roads in the lowland deserts. The messengers, called *chasquis*, had no horses and no wheeled vehicles. Young men selected for their strength and fitness, they traveled on foot with only the occasional llama to help carry goods. *Chasquis* lived in cabins along the roadside and kept watch for their fellows, running out to greet tired messengers and become the next link in the chain. Traveling on foot alone, the chasquis were able to carry messages over 400 kilometers per day.[^14] By contrast, the most common reason attributed to the Roman Empire for building and maintaining its extensive road network is to allow for the swift movements of its legions, a good Roman courier could carry a message about 80 kilometers per day. [^1] > For a great example of how important a good roads are for facilitating the transportation of information across a fantasy world, check out L. E. Modesitt’s Spellsong Cycle. The protagonist, Anna, spends a significant chunk of the second book building a network of roads to facilitate troop movements, and the postal mail system she implements is a direct driver of the plot. ## Animal Power A good horse, ridden hard but not to the point of collapse, can travel about 20 kilometers in an hour – which is about as far apart as relay post stations were typically spaced. It would have taken an unmounted person most of a day to travel that far on foot. There’s good evidence that ancient couriers followed the Pony Express model of changing horses at every station and then changing riders daily. In Mongolia, the Khans created supply and message routes called “yams” that leveraged settlements and relay stations to transfer messages quickly and effectively. Mongolian message riders covered up to 300 kilometers in a day at their peak. Stations offered supplies and shelter, although many official messengers also just stopped at villages to rest and change horses. [^11] When the Khans conquered much of Central Asia and implemented formal postal systems, and these postal stations were instrumental in combatting insurrection. Of course, the Khans weren’t the first to set up mail systems in China. As early as 1600 BCE, the Shang and Zhou dynasties used land and water routes to send mail.[^12] The Qin dynasty implemented the use of horses, along with vehicles like palanquins and litters, to speed up bulk mail delivery. They also allowed government officials to use the post-houses in lieu of privately owned inns when they travelled. By contrast to horses and humans, ancient homing pigeons could cover about 160 kilometers in a day, although they didn’t require nearly as much fodder as a horse. Of course, they can’t carry as much, either – and they don’t provide the personal touch of a human messenger, who often did double duty as spies. Still, Pigeons have been domesticated since at least 3,000 BCE and they were definitely used to carry messages since at least 2500 BCE.[^3] By the 12th century CE, the Persians had developed a complex messaging system with pigeons carrying messages between cities. Pigeons are bred and housed in dedicated facilities called dovecotes. In Egypt and the Levant they were often built from mud brick and had thatched roofs, although individuals could keep pigeons in something as simple as a clay pot. Pigeons were useful for more than just messages, too; as with many other domesticated animals, their excrement makes good fertilizer and their meat makes for good food. > The imperial messenger birds in Miles Cameron’s Traitor Son Cycle are well-integrated into the series and several key plot points turn on the importance of swift communications between distant leaders trying to stay coordinated against the enemy. Dogs are often underutilized as messengers in fiction, but historical leaders made it work. The Romans used dogs as beasts of burden when their horses foundered and died, and Rottweilers were used as scouts and messengers during WWII.[^4] ## Drums Messages don’t need to be written down on paper to be relayed, though. Multiple pre-industrial societies around the globe have used drums to communicate over long distances. Some people in Papua New Guinea still use wooden slit drums, known as *garamuts,* to send messages[^5]. Slit drums were used throughout Africa, Southeast Asia, and Oceania throughout history. In Africa, slit drums work particularly well for sending messages, as many African languages are more tonal than phonetic. The natural acoustic properties of rivers and valleys help drum messages remain audible over 10 kilometers away.[^7] This is coincidentally enough a good approximate distance between towns in most agricultural settings with moderate industry. [^6] > The quintessential example of drum communication in second-world fantasy is Pern. Anne McCaffrey’s Harper Hall trilogy does a beautiful job of bringing to life the role of communication drummers in an agricultural society. Piemur, the protagonist of Dragondrums, learns the secret codes used to send messages across great distances via drums and relay stations called drumheights. ## Beacons Fire – light and smoke – offers useful ways to convey messages, as well. Lighthouses flash their lights in a particular rhythm to provide location information to sailors. People in the Netherlands signaled information based on the orientation of local windmill blades. The Greek historian Polybius invented an encrypted communication system that mapped torches to letters around 150 BCE. > The most well-known fantasy example of signal beacons probably comes from Lord of the Rings, when Gondor’s signal beacons were lit to signal the siege of Minas Tirith and summon aid from Rohan. Smoke signals have served as long-distance visual communication in ancient civilizations on at least four continents. Chinese soldiers manning the Great Wall could send word of impending attack hundreds of kilometers in mere hours.[^8] Beacon towers relayed “all clear” signals each morning and other important military information as needed. Beacon platforms were designed so that bonfire smoke or torch flames could be seen clearly at the next watchtower. They often contained chimneys or flues to encourage the smoke to rise straight up. Despite what you’ll read on the internet, though, the soldiers probably didn’t burn wolf dung as a matter of course, although sulfur and saltpetre were used after the Ming dynasty to help clarify the signals. North American Plains Indians communicated simple messages across distances using smoke signals. Since smoke signals are difficult to keep hidden, each tribe had its own set of signals, and messages were only able to convey information on a few topics. For example, “enemies here!” or “all’s well” or “we found game.” However, individuals or groups could pre-arrange other signals. On the open plains, puffs of smoke could be seen for upwards of 80 kilometers. Complex messages are possible using dot-and-dash systems similar to Morse code. The indigenous people of Australia built signal fires on hills and used fire and smoke to signal good fishing spots, travel advisories, news about births or deaths, and more. [^10] ## In Combination Authors aren’t limited to using only one of these methods to ensure their created cultures can communicate. Most low-tech civilizations utilized more than one method of transporting information over distances. The Inca and the Chinese both used signal fires to augment Imperial roads and postal systems. The Egyptians and the Romans certainly would have paired messenger birds with their regular couriers. When considering how preindustrial civilizations communicated over distances, remember too that created worlds don’t necessarily face the same limitations as the ancients. Just because something didn’t happen on Earth doesn’t mean the conditions aren’t ripe for it in a fantasy land. Dogs make perfectly effective messengers even though we don’t have any evidence that the ancient used them that way. Encryption cyphers on drums are perfectly viable ways of communicating even if drum talking societies rarely bothered to encode messages. And once you add magic into the mix, the possibilities are endless. ## References: [^4]: Sloane, Charles F. “Dogs in War, Police Work and on Patrol.” *The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science*, vol. 46, no. 3, 1955, pp. 385–395. *JSTOR*, www.jstor.org/stable/1139438. Accessed 22 July 2020. [^2]: Colburn, Henry P. “Connectivity and Communication in the Achaemenid Empire.” *Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient*, vol. 56, no. 1, 2013, pp. 29–52. *JSTOR*, www.jstor.org/stable/43303512. Accessed 22 July 2020. [^1]: Eliot, C. W. J. “New Evidence for the Speed of the Roman Imperial Post.” *Phoenix*, vol. 9, no. 2, 1955, pp. 76–80. *JSTOR*, www.jstor.org/stable/1086706. Accessed 22 July 2020. [^3]: Clarke, Carter W. “Signal Corps Pigeons.” *The Military Engineer*, vol. 25, no. 140, 1933, pp. 133–138. *JSTOR*, www.jstor.org/stable/44563742. Accessed 22 July 2020. [^5]: Watson, Amanda H. A., and Lee R. Duffield. “From Garamut to Mobile Phone: Communication Change in Rural Papua New Guinea.” Mobile Media & Communication, vol. 4, no. 2, May 2016, pp. 270–287, doi:10.1177/2050157915622658. [^6]: Why Cities Are Where They Are, uploaded by Wendover Productions, Jan 3 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PWWtqfwacQ [^7]: Finnegan, Ruth. *Oral Literature in Africa*. 1st ed., vol. 1, Open Book Publishers, 2012. *JSTOR*, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vjsmr. Accessed 23 July 2020. [^8]: “Wolf Smoke Signals War.” *China Heritage Quarterly*, China Heritage Project, the Australian National University. June 2006. http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/articles.php?searchterm=006_wolf.inc&issue=006. Accessed 23 July 2020. [^9]: Ojibwa. (2019, July 25). Indians 201: Smoke Signals and Mirrors. *Daily Kos*. Retrieved July 23, 2020, from https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/25/1874226/-Indians-201-Smoke-Signals-and-Mirrors [^10]: Aboriginal Smoke Signalling and Signalling Hills in Resistance Warfare. (2016, February 21). Retrieved July 24, 2020, from http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/aboriginal-smoke-signalling-and-signalling-hills-resistance-warfare [^11]: Shim, Hosung. “The Postal Roads of the Great Khans in Central Asia under the Mongol-Yuan Empire.” *Journal of Song-Yuan Studies*, vol. 44, 2014, pp. 405–469. *JSTOR*, www.jstor.org/stable/44511248. Accessed 24 July 2020. [^12]: Zijin, W. (n.d.). Posthouses and Delivering Post in Ancient China (C. Zhiping, Ed.; T. Chang, Trans.). Retrieved July 23, 2020, from https://en.chiculture.net/index.php?file=topic_details&old_id=0905 [^13]: Cartwright, M. (2014, September 08). The Inca Road System. Retrieved July 24, 2020, from https://www.ancient.eu/article/757/the-inca-road-system/ [^14]: Inca Roads and Chasquis. (n.d.). Retrieved July 24, 2020, from http://www.discover-peru.org/inca-roads-chasqui/