REH was Right, Again

The concept of the world of Conan, by Robert E. Howard, is that civilization rises and falls many more times than history tells us. This, worlds of advanced culture and adventures untold of exist to be explored.

Evidence for that proposition continues to appear.

REH was not alone, of course; not even the first.
The modern man looking at the most ancient origins has been like a man watching for daybreak in a strange land; and expecting to see that dawn breaking behind bare uplands or solitary peaks. But that dawn is breaking behind the black bulk of great cities long builded and lost for us in the original night; colossal cities like the houses of giants, in which even the carved ornamental animals are taller than the palm-trees; in which the painted portrait can be twelve times the size of the man; with tombs like mountains of man set four-square and pointing to the stars; with winged and bearded bulls standing and staring enormous at the gates of temples; standing still eternally as if a stamp would shake the world. The dawn of history reveals a humanity already civilized. Perhaps it reveals a civilisation already old.

8 comments:

E Hines said...

From the link: Previously we would not have dared to think a cuisine 4,000 years old was so advanced.

The alternative is that cooking/cuisine hasn't made much progress at all these 4,000 years. Just like our science has been so abysmally slow in advancing, for a species that pretends to intelligence. We have, after all, been throwing things for 10s of thousands of years, having thereby ballistics and junior high algebra shoved in our faces all that time. And throwing things at moving game, we've been solving three-body problems all along, too.

Yet here we are. Planet-bound.

Still, I'd admire to try the outcome of some of those recipes, even though the animals that are the source of those meats no longer exist.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

Since the tastebuds have probably changed but little, and the beer and wine is as old as Babylon, it wouldn't be too surprising to discover they had sophisticated recipes.

On the other hand, major changes do occur. The addition of hops to ale, producing what we often now call beer, is a late change -- circa 1500, I think I remember. So it's not as if there have been no advances at all.

ymarsakar said...

Next thing you'll hear is that they are digging up some ancient civilization under Antarctica's ice shelf.

Anonymous said...

I hope not. Howardian cultures I'd be interested in. Lovecraftian? No, thank you!

LittleRed1

Christopher B said...

Yet here we are. Planet-bound.

Andrew Morgan, Alexander Skvortsov, Luca Parmitano, Oleg Skripochka, Jessica Meir, and Christina Koch might view that a little differently.

I don't think the problems are as much technical as they are logistical. It is a long ways to even our closest neighboring planet, which is probably uninhabitable, and even longer ways to any place that might be even within the realm of possibility of supporting humans. Without a compelling need to vacate Earth it's just not worth the effort at this point in time.

E Hines said...

I don't think the problems are as much technical as they are logistical.

Except that logistical problems, like all of our problems that aren't strictly moral ones, are technical: first (physics) theory, then engineering.

Regarding the worthiness of the level of effort, "Elbow room!" laughed Daniel Boone. And to get out of the nest and start growing up.

And the same reasons that prompted generations of our forebears--for hundreds of thousands of years, not just the petty 10s of them--to go somewhere else apply today to getting off planet. Every single one of those reasons.

And we won't know what benefits, or mere goodies, are out there for us unless we go out there and see.

We haven't sent anyone past the moon, ever; we haven't even been beyond Earth orbit for decades. That's pretty much planet-bound. It's an additional mark of how planet-bound we are that so many, in all seriousness, think the solar system is outer space.

And, according to some authorities, we're all going to die in 10-12 years, so we need to get cracking. [/snark]

Eric Hines

ymarsakar said...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/british-republican-group-calls-for-referendum-on-monarchy-when-queen-dies-a6993216.html?fbclid=IwAR1OJdSSCCY_gXXzhNJ5prWES9bO_vrtxkqILlAFhw-QAnt9Wql3y1lQAT8

Speaking of empires that fall...

This is a sign that the Deep State Dracos are collapsing sooner or later.

Texan99 said...

Logistical problems have been the obstacle to every migration that ever happened in the last 4 billion years. When push comes to shove, living creatures solve logistical problems.