Pseudo-History And The Hyborian Age

[Tonguez]

The Map shows the Hyborian world superimposed over a modern map of Europe/Africa and pretty much shows the analogues. Important to note that the western coast of Africa is underwater and that at the time land occupies the areas of both the Mediterranean (Argos and Shem) and North Sea (Cimmeria, Pictish Wilderness, Vanaheim)

I'm re-reading Queen of the Black Coast right now and the Sons of Shem (who inhabit the land of Shem) are described as "horsemen with blue-black beards and hooked noses..."

 

[Aurumvorax]

I was on Santorini a couple of years ago, just before Greece started experiencing its financial woes, and I learned that Plato speculated that the myth of Atlantis started there, on that island, in the Aegean Sea. If you google "Santorini Atlantis", you'll find some info about it.

At somepoint, the story of Atlantis got transplanted to the Atlantic.

Some researchers argue that mistranslations of Plato's hypotheses placed Atlantis in the Mediterranean when it would realistically be in the Black Sea. Recent research of debris found in Spain coupled with Plato's writing and historic accounts of natural disasters suggest there was an ancient coastal city completely destroyed by a tsunami located near Spain.

"Atlantis" could have been anywhere from the actual Atlantic all the way to coastal Turkey. All legends are based on some fact, I guess.

 

[Water Bob]

Here's another superimposed map showing the Hyborian Age along with the Modern Age. Click on it to blow it up and see a lot of detail.

Note that the Hyborian Age is colored green over Modern Day land and water--you've got to look closely to see Modern Day. See the boot of Italy starting in Ophir, through Koth, and into Shem? And, the North, with Vanaheim, Asgard, and Cimmeria--it's all islands, including Britian. You can see how the Vilayet shrinks into the Caspian. It looks like the entire western half of Africa rises up out of the Atlantic. And so on.

 

[Dykstrav]

I've always enjoyed the pseudo-historical implications of the Hyborian Age myself. That's also one of the things that I've enjoyed about the various World of Darkness games.

Maybe it's slightly off-topic, but it's fresh in my mind because of the recent release of the 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire: the Masquerade. In my version of the World of Darkness, I assume that the Hyborian Age happened.

The antediluvians actually existed in ancient Hyboria, and while not the literal rulers, were mighty creatures thought to be demigods or perhaps powerful sorcerers. The Setite antediluvian was in Stygia, the Ventrue antediluvian made its haven in Aquilonia, the Tzimisce antediluvian was in Brythunia, and so forth. I was always careful to give them proper names with no ties to the clan names in order to preserve a bit of the mystery for my players... "Lobod" was the Salubri antediluvian, and "Katathardes" was the Ventrue antediluvian, for example.

Caine, the First City and all of that happened during the Thurian Age. In the Hyborian Age, the antediluvians believed that Caine (known then as "Heiyinn") would eventually grow lonely and return to the world of men, and this was the first stirrings of Gehenna mythology. They were largely divided into three camps: those that wanted to present themselves as vassals to Caine in a vast, supreme empire (lead by the Ventrue antediluvian), those that wanted to strengthen themselves to defeat Caine and were fiercely independent (lead nominally by the Tzimisce antediluvian), and those that wanted to atone for their condition (officially lead by the Salubri antediluvian, although often debated as between the Cappadocian, Malkavian, and Salubri antediluvians). Through this, I wanted to showcase the first stirrings of sect conflict and the Jyhad, as well as the major vampire philosophies.

In World of Darkness games that I've ran, I've occasionally hinted at things that occurred during the Hyborian Age. For example, a Tremere sees ancient artifacts from a temple of Mitra in an elder's haven, or a Malkavian finds a fragment of the Book of Nod that's traced to an unidentified ancient language (from Shem and Stygia), but he's inexplicably able to translate it while in a trance.

Sorry if this was a bit off-topic, I just thought I'd share.

 

[Mercurius]

I'd love to see someone try to parse together Howard's Hyborian Age with Tolkien's Middle-Earth. The "feel" of both is rather different and obviously there would have to be some fiddling, but considering that Tolkien said that the Third Age ended around 6,000 years ago we plop at least the 2nd and 3rd Age inbetween the end of the Hyborian Age and the beginning of recorded history. Then we can throw in the Mayan Calendar and we get the following:

Before 10,500 BC - Hyborian Age and/or 1st Age
10,500-7,100 BC - 2nd Age
7,100-4,000 BC - 3rd Age
4,000-1,000 BC? - 4th Age?
1,000 BC-2,012 AD - 5th Age?
2,012 AD+ - 6th Age?

The main problem is that Tolkien's 1st Age, "The Elder Days," is nothing like the Hyborian Age. I would suggest that one way around this paradox would be to transport the Hyborian Age to the lands east of Lonely Mountain so that the Hyborian Age is what was going on in the East and South when the First Age events as detailed in The Silmarillion were taking place in the West.

I was on Santorini a couple of years ago, just before Greece started experiencing its financial woes, and I learned that Plato speculated that the myth of Atlantis started there, on that island, in the Aegean Sea. If you google "Santorini Atlantis", you'll find some info about it.

At somepoint, the story of Atlantis got transplanted to the Atlantic.

Actually, the story of Atlantis has a wide variety of sources, not only Greek. Check out this page. For instance, the Aztecs spoke of the island of "Aztlan" and ancient Indians spoke of "Atala, the White Island."

There are a huge number of myths that talk about some kind of Flood and the sinking of some kind of island or continent and the end of a Golden Age. "Atlantis" is just the name that Plato used; what it was actually* called is secondary.

(*If it existed, of course, although the weight of myth points to some kind of pre-Flood/Ice Age/Cataclysmic civilization or world, at least in some form or fashion; these myths have recently been supported by the work of Graham Hancock and many others. Hancock, in his book Underworld, pointed out that the further back you go, the more you find land that has sunk into the ocean; given that people tend to live near the coasts, there is good reason to believe that there may not be just one "Atlantis" but many...that is, prior civilizations taken in by the ocean).

 

[S'mon]

Hancock, in his book Underworld, pointed out that the further back you go, the more you find land that has sunk into the ocean; given that people tend to live near the coasts, there is good reason to believe that there may not be just one "Atlantis" but many...that is, prior civilizations taken in by the ocean).

It's certainly possible that there were fairly developed agrarian coastal societies flooded around 8,000 BC; we now have evidence of upland farming from earlier than that. And (smallish) cities seem to have been coterminous with or (in the near East) even slightly predating agriculture.

 

[Water Bob]

I've always enjoyed the pseudo-historical implications of the Hyborian Age myself. That's also one of the things that I've enjoyed about the various World of Darkness games.

Maybe it's slightly off-topic, but it's fresh in my mind because of the recent release of the 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire: the Masquerade. In my version of the World of Darkness, I assume that the Hyborian Age happened.

I think that it is interesting that the Hyborian Age and Cthulhu have a shared history. Many of the monsters are inspired by Lovecraft's work, and in the official Cthulhu background/timeline, the Hyborian Age did exist.

Caine, the First City and all of that happened during the Thurian Age. In the Hyborian Age, the antediluvians believed that Caine (known then as "Heiyinn") would eventually grow lonely and return to the world of men, and this was the first stirrings of Gehenna mythology.

Interesting. There are vampires in the Hyborian Age. I believe Conan fights one, 10,000 year old Princess Akivasha, in the story, Hour of the Dragon.

 

[David Howery]

(*If it existed, of course, although the weight of myth points to some kind of pre-Flood/Ice Age/Cataclysmic civilization or world, at least in some form or fashion; these myths have recently been supported by the work of Graham Hancock and many others. Hancock, in his book Underworld, pointed out that the further back you go, the more you find land that has sunk into the ocean; given that people tend to live near the coasts, there is good reason to believe that there may not be just one "Atlantis" but many...that is, prior civilizations taken in by the ocean).

I don't want to start a big historical debate on here, but Hancock has been widely criticized and debunked... read "Ancient Mysteries" by Peter James and Nick Thorpe, which has several entries that discuss Hancock's works and the people who dispute them. That said, if you're running some kind of modern RPG where it's necessary for there to have been a 'Hyborian' age in the past, then Hancock is a good place to start...

 

[rgard]

I always found it curious that we've been anatomically human for 100,000 years, but we only figured out civilization in the past 6,000 to 8,000 years maybe a little further back with Jericho.

This place has historians totally baffled:

Göbekli Tepe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dating back 11,000 years, it was built by people we thought were non-agrarian hunters and gatherers. This goes against grain of traditional thought as to at what point in our societal development we are able to take on large building projects.

 

[S'mon]

I always found it curious that we've been anatomically human for 100,000 years, but we only figured out civilization in the past 6,000 to 8,000 years maybe a little further back with Jericho.

This place has historians totally baffled:

Göbekli Tepe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dating back 11,000 years, it was built by people we thought were non-agrarian hunters and gatherers. This goes against grain of traditional thought as to at what point in our societal development we are able to take on large building projects.

Civilisation seems to have started as soon as climate warmed at the end of the last ice age, although we don't really know what was going on beneath the now-flooded coastlines, and there was a setback for the re-chilling of the Younger Dryas. After that there was a long warm period when civilisation & agriculture became firmly established.

Before about 10,000 BC/12,000 years ago the Ice Age climate may have been too dry, cold, and erratic for civilisation to get a good start in the areas best suited for it, such as the Middle East & the Yellow River basin.

Although there were anatomically modern humans in Africa more than 100,000 years ago, we now know that humans who left Africa 60-80,000 years ago interbred with archaic human populations in Eurasia, it's possible that they captured alleles which would eventually be useful for creating civilisation, but that the environments they were in would not be suitable for civilisation until much later. And it may have been that the disease load in sub-Saharan Africa was always too high for the population densities necessary for civilisation - most of Africa was drier and cooler during the last Ice Age though, whereas the Sahara was wetter and more temperate, so I'm not sure how likely that would be.