/lit/ - Literature

Why do fantasy authors make up entirely new lands, languages, and histories for their stories instead of using an obscure segment of real world history which most readers have never even heard of?

For example, why make up a new language for your story instead of using some obscure language like Navaho, Aramaic, Mande, etc?

It's a lot of wasted effort, and the result is bound to be cliched and shallow compared to a rich and unpredictable real world history of some ancient civilization. With the internet, researching even the most obscure of subjects is easy. Even if the author doesn't master the subject and takes creative license, the vast majority of readers won't have a clue. They already run into the problem of paling knowledge compared to a master in any given area, such as swordplay, economics, or biology. This would improve the worldbuilding of the novel by giving it more realistic qualities and depth than an author alone could dream up, and would make the creative process easier for no longer must the author pull all this out of his ass and create a seemingly-viable language from scrap. This would allow him to put his efforts towards what matters--the substance. And if you want to throw dragons in, why not? A realistic land only with dragons can not be less believable than a shallow cobbled-together land with dragons.

And hey, the author and audience might even learn something.