Do you take Robert E. Howard's historical theory for real?, page


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reply posted on 3-9-2011 @ 03:09 PM by Metaphysic
reply to post by truthordeath


Well the reptilians are in the movie. The introduction to the comic is what I refer to. But anyways Its always nice to find someone who still loves old school movies



reply posted on 3-9-2011 @ 03:42 PM by 13th Zodiac
Originally posted by Metaphysic
reply to post by truthordeath


Well the reptilians are in the movie. The introduction to the comic is what I refer to. But anyways Its always nice to find someone who still loves old school movies


Ha! I liked it so much that Conan is the name of my son.
Reading the link now.
edit on 3-9-2011 by 13th Zodiac because: (no reason given)



reply posted on 4-9-2011 @ 12:33 PM by Byrd
Originally posted by DragonsDemesne
I don't think REH himself took it for real... I've read some of his works, and I read somewhere that the reason he used the ideas of Atlantis and other familiar names from legend and history was basically so that he didn't have to do as much research. People would know what he was talking about when he used many of these terms, so he didn't have to give as much background in his stories, and his stories were set far enough in the past (something like 10000BC) that he didn't have to worry about getting very many of the details right. This was important because most of his work was short fiction, and so he didn't have a lot of space in his writings to devote to setting all that up.


That's it exactly. I'm a longtime REH fan and have read everything I could that he wrote. He was also friends with a number of "pulp" writers (including Clark Ashton Smith) -- and they all used and reused similar themes. See the Wikipedia article on him -- I've been to his birthplace and to Cross Plains (where they have a section devoted to him in their library, including some letters.)

THEY didn't believe this alternate history. They were well educated (better than most people today) and very well read (most of them could recite classic poetry as well as you can recite your favorite song lyrics, parts of the Bible (correctly, I might add)) and they knew how to research in greater depth than most people do today.

Because they were writing for people with similar education, they had to put in convincing cultural tidbits when they made up a culture (see Kipling's poetry and stories for kids on "neolithic age." FAR more sophisticated than many writers of this age, who slather stone knives and bearskins on modern culture and sentiments and call it "a picture of caveman times."

That "research deeply" characteristic of writers has been lost with the advent of the Internet. People pick information that is convenient and not necessarily information that's accurate.
edit on 4-9-2011 by Byrd because: (no reason given)



reply posted on 4-9-2011 @ 03:25 PM by Noinden
reply to post by SumerianSoldier


One thing I'm going to have to correct here, is that Howard saw the Cimmerians as the precursors to the Celtic Peoples (amoungst others) he wrote an essay on the peoples of the Earth. So while it sounds like Sumerian, indeed I think that Howard was reading some old archalogical texts. The Cimmerians were also a real people (en.wikipedia.org...)


reply posted on 5-9-2011 @ 01:49 AM by DragonsDemesne
reply to post by Noinden


Yeah, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about, though as to that specific example I had no idea that a people called Cimmerians ever existed. Howard took real historical names and wove a framework of fiction around them. There really were a Pictish people (I think from Scotland?) and there is a real place called Aquilonia, and things like Atlantis and the Styx (root of the word Stygian) exist in mythology.


reply posted on 5-9-2011 @ 07:47 AM by Gargarean
reply to post by DragonsDemesne


Yep, like a good author he took history and mythology and merged them together. The name, Picts, is a Roman invention, but in Howard's world he described them as being 'dark or black', (the Aztec influence is from latter authors and comic books.) Anyway, my point is there is some historians that suggest that before the Celts arrival to Britain their live native people of black decent, like the Ainu people of Japan.

This is interesting because Howard either knew or guessed this. He was obviously a man of anthropology, history and myth.
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