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

For those who are unfamiliar with this name , he is the creator of Conan the barbarian and he has a really good version of history of human kind starting from 25.000BC. He wrote it as introduction to his novel/comic and I accept it as a true history. Check it out and let me know what you think. Its more real than Tolkin's underworld )

hyboria.xoth.net...

Conan the barbarian is one of my favorite movies! especially love the reptillian reference even though I dont believe in that one bit I still think it's pretty cool to have it in a movie that old.

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

I read the books before they were comics/magazines/movies. He has WAY more there than Hyboria. Kull = Atlantis. Soloman Kane = Middle Ages. My favorite, Worms of the Earth = ancient UK region. Picts. Howard may have been a student of history but taking his fiction as fact? I don't think so.

Alot of what Howard references in all his stories is based oh his Hyborian Age, but there are themes he uses all through it that tells you he was following and/or incorporating other histories into his writings. Everyone sees the reptilian thing, Conan is Cimmerian, which sounds an awful lot like Sumerian. Thoth was at one time considered one of the more important deitits of the Egyptian Pantheon. He also references Atlantis when he wrote of Kull, The lush world of the Sahara when he wrote of Bran Mak Morn. He even ties in apocryphal writing with his character Kane. Personally, I think Howard would have LOVED ATS! Lol. I'm sure he had a few good theories of his own that never made it to paper. Definitely one of my favorite writers!

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.

Originally posted by intrepid
I read the books before they were comics/magazines/movies. He has WAY more there than Hyboria. Kull = Atlantis. Soloman Kane = Middle Ages. My favorite, Worms of the Earth = ancient UK region. Picts. Howard may have been a student of history but taking his fiction as fact? I don't think so.

I thought Soloman Kane was a Puritan in the New World.
Never read the worms of the earth...now I think I must.

Originally posted by SumerianSoldier
Alot of what Howard references in all his stories is based oh his Hyborian Age, but there are themes he uses all through it that tells you he was following and/or incorporating other histories into his writings. Everyone sees the reptilian thing, Conan is Cimmerian, which sounds an awful lot like Sumerian. Thoth was at one time considered one of the more important deitits of the Egyptian Pantheon. He also references Atlantis when he wrote of Kull, The lush world of the Sahara when he wrote of Bran Mak Morn. He even ties in apocryphal writing with his character Kane. Personally, I think Howard would have LOVED ATS! Lol. I'm sure he had a few good theories of his own that never made it to paper. Definitely one of my favorite writers!

I don't think we would have had such a breadth of works from a guy that ate a bullet at 35 if the internet were around back then. Agree with you, though, helluva creative author.

I agree. As I type this I longingly glance at my collection of several hundred Conan comics and novels and I smile at a world that could never have been but is so vitally a part of me it might as well have been. LOTR has nothing on Conan. Have you seen the new film? When they went to the skull cave I wept a little. Thank goodness I was wearing my 3d glasses.

reply to post by SumerianSoldier


Cimmerians were nomads known to the Greeks.

en.wikipedia.org...

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.

He's definitely a good author though, and it's a darned shame he took his own life so young... and yet he still managed to leave an awful lot of stories for future generations to read.

Howard was a very learned man, his theories on civilization during pre-history were not new and widely popular in his day. (Nazi search for the Aryans and the development of Indo-European history)
Not to put down his great stories, but they were designed for pulp-fiction. He created a world based on known history out of ease for story telling and freedom of expression. I really like Howard and read a lot into his world, I find the link between Picts and the original inhabitants of Britain to be very interesting. But as a theory for true historic belief… No.

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.

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 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 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.

Big fan of Howard myself and by chance I came across a little known writer who had a similar style. For those needing a Conan style fix I would suggest the Kioga series by William L. Chester. He created a lost world called Nato'wa which was located in the Arctic north of Siberia....