Hyboria - More of the same?

[Desdichado]

I think that can definitely be a problem. When people decide that Aquilonia = France or Khitai = China and shoehorn in elements to fit these conceptions you lose the mood & feel of the setting IMO. Howard's world is not a place, it's a mood. Khitai is not China, it's ruined temples in verdant jungles where brass cymbals clash and yellow-robed monks chime out the endless hours. Aquilonia is a thousand plate-armoured knights crossing Thunder River to do battle with the painted Pictish host. Zamora is sleepy, lotus-drugged towers of spider-haunted mystery, and so on.

That's true, but at the same time, Howard wanted Khitai to resonate as a "China-ish" location, the same way Asgard and Vanaheim were clearly Norse, and the same way Stygia was clearly Egyptian in primary influence. Howard really liked writing historical fiction, but he felt constrained by actual history. The Hyborian age, in some ways, was his attempt to write having a blank slate. And as I said earlier, he didn't want to get bogged down describing what a Stygian was; so the fact that Stygians worship Set and have some clear "markers" that resonate with us as "Egyptian" was purposeful, but not meant as a limiting factor. It certainly didn't mean that Stygians had to follow a rigorous comparison to Egyptians in any meaningful way.

So, it's true and at the same time untrue that the Hyborian nations were meant to resemble real nations that we know. Although Aquilonia = France?! C'mon, that's obviously much more Roman-esque!

 

[S'mon]

Hi Joshua - yes, I agree with your point. The Aesir & Vanir are clearly resonant of the historical Norse, but they are not the Norse; they seem to worship Ymir the Frost Giant for one thing! So a "Conan Northern Reaches" book that had them worshipping Thor & Odin would be wrong, as would making Khitai a vast centralised bureaucratic empire resembling Imperial China at its height - Howard's Khitai is evocative of "the Orient" as a land of Fu Manchu, inscrutable monks, powerful magics and ancient secrets. I think it was Vincent Darlage pointed out to me that Khitai in the stories is always 'jungled', and a closer real-world parrallel would be Thailand or Burma. I've read a lot of rather bad Marvel comics that do this equivalency thing unthinkingly, with 'Japan' and 'China' appearing in Conan's Hyborean Age, and I find it a bit annoying.

edit: I've also seen "Aquilonian Legionaries" as Roman-style soldiers straight out of 'Gladiator', which didn't seem right at all.

 

[Teflon Billy]

So does Cimmeria=Germany (roughly)?

 

[Desdichado]

So does Cimmeria=Germany (roughly)?

Nope, the Cimmerians were supposed to be Celtic. Howard wrote in an essay once, discussing the various Hyborian nations, that the Cimmerians were supposedly the antecedents of "the Gaels." He was also operating under the prevailing belief of the time that the historical Cimmerians were somehow Celtic in nature (they're actually unknown, but widely assumed to be "Scythian" or Iranian in nature.) Cimmerian characters (referred to; Conan is the only one ever seen on screen) tend to have Irish names, as do the gods (other than Crom) who are mentioned from time to time. Conan himself bears an Irish name. That doesn't mean the Cimmerians were really supposed to be Celtic, but their culture does bear some superficial similarities to a mythic Celtic culture; kinda a Slaine-like Celtic "Golden Age."

What's also kinda interesting is that that same essay calls the Cimmerians the descendents of the Atlanteans, of whom King Kull was a member. He also had the extremely strange notion that the Cimmerians had "devolved" to the level of ape-men, and then "re-evolved" into the Cimmerians we know from the Conan stories. That concept was a little weird, even for Hyboria, IMO.

 

[S'mon]

He also had the extremely strange notion that the Cimmerians had "devolved" to the level of ape-men, and then "re-evolved" into the Cimmerians we know from the Conan stories. That concept was a little weird, even for Hyboria, IMO.

Well, current genetic evidence indicates that chimpanzees & gorillas, who share 99% of our DNA, 'devolved' from a common bipedal hominid ancestor with homo sapiens (us) only a little over 3 million years ago*, by switching back on the maturity process that in our case doesn't kick in, causing humans' body form to essentially remain forever that of overgrown babies. Ie, chimps' mutual ancestor was much more like a human than like a chimpanzee to outward appearance. So the idea of apes (d)evolving from men is a lot less unlikely now than it seemed 30-40 years ago. Although I expect it would take more than 10,000 years or so to produce Howard's man-apes, it takes far less genetic change than outward appearances might indicate.

Paleontological support for this theory is 'negative' in that there are no non-bipedal non-modern ape bones found in Africa, although there are the remains of bipedal hominids back to ca 12 million years ago when we probably arrived from Asia.

*given that the rate of change in DNA markers is highly constant, this event can be dated to within a million years, and must have occurred 3-4 million years ago.

See eg Gribbin/Cherfas "The First Chimpanzee".

 

[Iron_Chef]

So does Cimmeria=Germany (roughly)?

No, Nemedia = Germany (geographically, although there is little else by way of comparison).

 

[Teflon Billy]

No, Nemedia = Germany (geographically, although there is little else by way of comparison).

I thought Nemedia was Spain?

 

[Teflon Billy]

Wait, I'm thinking of Zingara

 

[Desdichado]

Well, current genetic evidence indicates that chimpanzees & gorillas, who share 99% of our DNA, 'devolved' from a common bipedal hominid ancestor with homo sapiens (us) only a little over 3 million years ago*, by switching back on the maturity process that in our case doesn't kick in, causing humans' body form to essentially remain forever that of overgrown babies. Ie, chimps' mutual ancestor was much more like a human than like a chimpanzee to outward appearance. So the idea of apes (d)evolving from men is a lot less unlikely now than it seemed 30-40 years ago. Although I expect it would take more than 10,000 years or so to produce Howard's man-apes, it takes far less genetic change than outward appearances might indicate.

Paleontological support for this theory is 'negative' in that there are no non-bipedal non-modern ape bones found in Africa, although there are the remains of bipedal hominids back to ca 12 million years ago when we probably arrived from Asia.

*given that the rate of change in DNA markers is highly constant, this event can be dated to within a million years, and must have occurred 3-4 million years ago.

See eg Gribbin/Cherfas "The First Chimpanzee".

Neotony, or the retaining of "juvenile" characteristics, isn't a devolution, it's just a form of evolution. Some folks consider that modern humans developed from more primitive humanoids via the same process as it is. Even if this theory about the origin of chimps pans out and garners any more support, it's nothing like men turning back into man-apes, and then back to men again. That'd actually be the exact opposite of neotony, which isn't any type of documented process at all.

Really, what it has to do with is the former idea of the Scala Naturae in which evolution started at a base point and then "perfected" creation toward humanity. Evolution as it's concieved today has no such assumption. Of course, Howard wouldn't know that, but the idea is still rather strange.

But as someone mentioned above, Howard wasn't really an academic, so he can I guess, be forgiven this logical faux pas easily enough.

 

[Yokiboy]

Khitai is not China, it's ruined temples in verdant jungles where brass cymbals clash and yellow-robed monks chime out the endless hours. Aquilonia is a thousand plate-armoured knights crossing Thunder River to do battle with the painted Pictish host. Zamora is sleepy, lotus-drugged towers of spider-haunted mystery, and so on.

Dang S'mon, you make me wanna play Conan the RPG even more than before, and wonder why the heck I'm posting on EnWorld instead of actually reading the book?!