I can already see this is good stuff, but before I read past the beginning, there's another major exception to the Tolkienesque Medieval Fantasy setting, and that's Conan! I'm surprised you didn't mention that, since it's a major example of primordial Western history:
"Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."
Good stuff. I have a hard time with magic but I am an oulier since every religion has elements of it. It probably wasn't necessary for the Titans to hibernate like bears just to stay out of the way. About once a month, scientists discover a species that has supposedly been extinct for 100,000 years. You could make a tale out of the only people who held out against the Aryans, the Basques. A map would help us geeks. Got all the way to the notes before I could confirm the mountains were the Carpathians. I suppose they would look lofty to steppe people. You could make more money if you could cut a package deal that includes a Thesaurus. I have an extensive vocabulary that includes a lot of archaic words but that was something else.
That would be a good tale about the Basque, especially since their genetic profile contains similar levels of steppe pastoralist DNA as surrounding Spaniards, yet their language is likely of EEF origin.
There was a map at the beginning of the book, so I'm confused by that.
Sorry about the map comment. I have the kindle edition so either the map wasn't there or I skipped over it and couldn't easily go back. One of the drawbacks of the kindle but I read fast and travel a lot so it is the only feasible way to have enough reading material. As for the Basques, one could explain this by a lot of raiding and raping but no conquest.
I'm sorry to hear that because I went to great trouble to have an artist draw the map. When I went through the process of converting to eBook Kindle was just a pain in the ass. So many things would not convert.
Overwhelming, is the very best sense, is all I can say.
Oh, I could nit-pick bout definitions of "agriculture" and how different archeologists and anthropologists have (ab)used the term, or mention that the discovery of brone and the proliferation of its usage followed the trade-routes laid down from using copper and the importance of amber in establishing these continent-spanning well-known and well-travelled routes all the way from the Baltic coasts to Greece and beyond, or the very many petroglyphs in the Scandinavian fjells dating from 4 000BC and before, that indicates permanent residents, grazing livestock and some form of "agriculture".
But to burrow into such stuff would be petty and miss the point of your undertaking, and so I just mention it as a way to try and contribute yet another straw to an already mighty stack ("dra sitt strå till stacken" is a Swedish idiom for 'everyone trying to contribute as best as they are able'; literally it means 'add your straw to the anthill') - there's simply too much to include in any re-telling of history.
I especially liked your criticism of historians et cetera and how they claim to know how pre-written records era Ancestors /thought/ - we may well guess, but we will never /know/. It's even an inofficial joke here among some archeologists that is used to be that when they found an object they couldnt explain or understand, it was labelled "unknow object of religious nature" - more than once, a plain worker helping with the actual digging has been able to indentify it as some tool or other, because the modern eq. retains the basic shape.
Which perhaps also fits into your greater narrative of the spiritual/intellectual divide between those happy to be domesticated and kept, and those happy to pay in pain for freedom.
I'm sorry, I'm rambling but as I said, this was overwhelming and humbling.
I feel, from reading the interview, that a new light is lit.
(Spelling-errors galore - Iäll leave them in; my keyboard is wonky and old.)
Fascinating..Bought the book...I wonder if the tale of Otzi "the Iceman" figures in this tale...Otzi carried a copper axe about 5,200 years ago and evidently was quite effective with it, with the blood of at least 4 individuals on his clothes...and was killed as he was fleeing into the mountains by a long distance archery shot, which Olympic archers have been unable to duplicate ....It seems they were more advanced back then than anthropologists ever believed...
The details that archaeologists have been able to get from Otzi is incredible. IIRC they sourced the food in his stomach and pollens in his clothing and stuff like that. I think they were able to determine his home village or area from it, as well as trading patterns. Incredible stuff.
I was hoping the military tech section would get into chariots. The Yamnaya culture seems to have had the two main ingredients-the wheel and the horse. And chariots were invented in more or less the same place and same time. Chariots are generally regarded as a main enabler of Bronze Age conquest. They were eventually obsoleted by horse archers as the superior weapons system so why not jump directly to horse archers. One of the main drawbacks of chariots is the need for large open spaces to deploy-a land for more prevalent in the deserts of the middle east than in the balka and river valley country of the Pontic Steppe not to mention the forests of W. Europe. Perhaps the answer lies in horse genetics. I remember reading somewhere that selective breeding led to horses that could support a rider on the back rather than the rump. The earlier horses could be more easily harnessed than ridden. Or perhaps it was archery tech.
As to whether the conquest of the west was by violence or cultural diffusion, why not both. Assume the Aryan war bands were the vanguards using their superior weapons, organization and culture to conquer. Assuming they behaved like every other conqueror known to history, they would have killed the men and taken the women. This naturally leads to a mixed race population. The women and children of the Aryans would have been following behind but how many were there compared to the more settled farmers of the West. Plus the Aryans would have been conquering an alien environment with who knows what different microbes. Nothing like hybrid vigor. Considering the Germans, cultural diffusion seems like a possibility for them. According to classical writers, their origin was Scandanavia or the lower Vistula (difficult of horse nomads to penetrate), migrating south in historic times. The Goths in particular migrated to that same area N. of the Black Sea.
I think the cultural diffusion thesis ("pots aren't people" as the archaeologists say) is that the replacement of neolithic cultures by artifacts from PIE peoples wasn't evidence of conquest, but could be explained by neighbouring groups adopting new cultural practices.
The genetics are pretty unambiguous, though. It looks like the PIE peoples really did basically just kill all the men and take all the women for themselves. The intuition of early archaeologists that a complete replacement of material culture indicated that an entirely new people had moved in turned out to be correct.
This is almost 100% the case with the Bell Beaker "invasion" of the British Isles between 2600BC-2300BC. In excess of 90% of EEF (Early European Farmer) males lineages disappear from the archaeogenetic record. There's no sugar coating that.
There's a somewhat narrow age-band in which a male child could both a) do useful slave labour, and b) not have absorbed his mother culture to the point that he'll live for Conanesque revenge and the hope of a better life elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the female age range is broader because you can always put them to use making babies, they stay under close supervision by the matrons of your society, and a female "hope of a better life" has tended to be linked throughout time to building her own house on the back of a physically stronger provider and protector. Culturally, thus, the females caught young have been more willing to adapt, even if they remember an old life. We see examples of this even into the 19th century, with white girls captured by North American indigenous raiders.
It wouldn't be necessary to kill off the males to make this happen. Slavery would be quite sufficient as long as the male slaves were employed in some activity like farming, fishing or timbering and kept segregated from women. The female slaves would be part of the conqueror's household and engaged in domestic chores,especially clothes production. It took 20 spinsters to supply one weaver. Life wouldn't be a lot different for either sex except the men would have no sex. The women would be sexually available subject to age and various taboos and thus the next generation would be mixed. Future male slaves could be the boys born to slaves or from the next wave of conquest. There probably as many sociologies of slavery as the are cultures that practiced it which is all of them.
Even if there's 5-6 dominant modes that's a fair amount of diversity of the practice. As you illustrated above, this could be one of the ways it "happened" and it's quite hard to foreclose all the other dominant possibilities and thus draw a robust conclusion.
The DNA would also have to include the female line which as I understand it is easier to track than the male line. Plus there are some elements of material culture that are typically female (pottery?) Would the conquerors take time out from fucking and teaching the boys to fight to tell the women how to make pots. Depends on how long it takes the Aryan women to catch up.
Still puzzled by the Germans. I suppose they could have lived further south to be part of the conquest, migrated north into empty lands before the Romans showed up to write about them and then migrated back south. Or the Romans could have been wrong and the Goths could have always been there north of the Black Sea. I am buried in the Dark Ages now and there is a paleoclimatoligist theory that climate change ( drought) launched the Huns westward setting off that chain reaction. Some ice core analysis of the coming of the bronze age would be interesting as it might explain the wandering of the Germans.
They started as an offshoot of the Corded War Culture that moved north east into the eastern Baltic at first and interbred with some HGs, then moved west across the sea into Scandinavia, defeating the farmers with mixed results, before finally heading south.
As to your point about "why not both" the answer is 'yes', it's a matter of extent and concentration. Even to say it was 70/30 masks critically distinctions. For instance if pastoralists kill only the elite and take their wives while letting non-elites breed as before it will lead to much smaller penetration of R1a/b, yet we know who was calling the shots. In fact this was the case in Greece with the advance of post-Catacomb Culture pastoralists carrying R-M269, including Z2103 and PF7562 subclades. Greece currently has 20% R1b and 12% R1a. The latter are from later Slavic migrations to Greece. The R1b is the Mycenaean contribution and in fact samples taken from the time of the Mycenaean conquest don't show radically different figures. So the Mycenaeans conquered Greece, never influenced more than a small fraction of male lineages yet bestowed their language and culture. Is that demic diffusion at 20%? Or cultural at nearly 100%. I don't know.
Interesting. The missing link in my speculation about the Germans was th material about when seafarers came into being. That links the Aryan expansion with the Roman theories. They came from the east rather than the south as I had speculated and earlier but the effect was the same.
Chariots came much later! Keep in mind that in 3300BC it was still only the beginning of the Copper Age for much of the Pontic Steppe. War chariots were invented by the Sintashta around 2200BC, I wanna say.
This reminds me that Howard described a creature somewhat like the First Born or neanderthal in "Rogues in the House." And when Conan defeats him, he says, "I have slain a man".
From my substack essay Mourning and Battlesong:
"Thak is not a beast, although he’s covered in black hair and his eyes look red, reflecting the light like a nocturnal animal. And he’s not supernatural – he has no special powers: just intelligence and the strength his size and muscles give him. And now, he will be remembered by Conan and his women, like a man."
Ordered it. Haven't read yet. I was conditioned long ago, in college, not to despise historical novels, or prehistorical in this case, as a way to capture the zeitgeist. Good research is critical which seems to be present here both in the interview and the response to the comments.
Many thanks, the problem with research is that there's always one more stone to overturn. At some point you have to draw the line. But I'm satisfied it's a realistic depiction of the time, yet you'll still see the "magic".
Great interview (I enjoyed the book, so more background is very welcome), and points me to further reading I will use to update the list of books my family can mine for xmas ideas.
Brilliant. Shall add to my unfortunately long reading list.
One honorable mention that I was reminded of from this interview was The Malazan Book of the Fallen, which is... ruthlessly raw and also at one point in the series includes a culture with shockingly (to us) historical attitudes to the conquest of villages--and that plot point bares literal fruit later. The setting is as obviously magical as The Toll of Fortune is not, however, but I am curious if the books are familiar to you, JC.
Steven Erickson, who curiously enough is Canadian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen is a 10-book series, of which House of Chains is the fourth book and the one I'm thinking of for introducing the culture referenced above. I will warn that the Malazan series books are almost all en media res, bears no resemblance to Tolkienesque western fantasy, and are much like jumping on a moving train to discover yourself amongst the cars, creatures and carnies of a particularly demented circus.
This book sounds amazing and the discussion is equally so. But please add a spoiler warning (I didn’t even realise it was a book review for the first few paragraphs). So I’m pausing to get the book and read it before finishing the interview.
I was pretty careful not to introduce any spoilers (I think) regarding the details of the overall story. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy it! After reading, let me know if the interview was as spoiler-free as I hoped…
This book was utterly fantastic, I'm simultaneously irritated that I don't have any sequels yet, and grateful to the author for writing it. Go buy copies so he writes the sequels!
Fascinating interview and topic; will definitely order the book. I've done similar research and fictional speculation for an earlier Homo branch, floresiensis (alias Hobbits). The novel Floresia is set at the time of their demise (at the hands of sapiens, presumably), in SE Asia ~50k BCE. So there is another title to consider for the underpopulated genre of "historical fiction set during the primordial age." ;) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1990129331
AJR Klopp may already be aware of- there was extensive copper mining in Kargaly, Russia (in the Ural mountains) from at least 3,300 BC onwards. These were seasonal mining communities which dug pits straight into the earth to mine the copper (over 35,000 shafts discovered), then traveled to trade it with other cultures.
I've read that even in the neolithic there were extensive trade routes, along with mining activity, for specialized minerals such as flint, obsidian, what have you. Going back tens of thousands of years in fact.
The flint, obsidian, amber and salt routes did go back at least to the LGM. I went to the Greek island of Milos one summer and there was an excavation of a 7000 year old obsidian workshop right beside the hotel. There's so much obsidian on that island it's crazy - I actually referenced it in the book.
It may give you a tickle to know that Tutankhamon's royal jewellry contains amber from the Baltic (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia) region, and that amber has been traded from these parts since at least 2 000 BC.
Which means that in order for some one to go dig up the amber (or collect it on the beach) and polish it and make preparations for a journey -
- they already knew beforehand where to go and what path to take, because the Amber Road bypasses the Alps.
Which turn means there simply must have been trade from virtually almost the start of the Cro-Magnons moving into Europe.
It's true and some of this would have made it's way to Europe, but copper is quite common and there were much closer sources of copper (many within Europe). Still fascinating. I love Dan Davis!
Yes, the Western understanding of the impact of this, specific, copper-mining locale is significant. From my reading/watching (without reference to the specific link provided), the Ural mining AND smelting was so substantial and sustained that it must have resulted in major deforestation for firewood--which might explain why the efforts were abandoned. Or, such efforts may have petered out as regional deposits became sufficient for local needs following the bronze-age collapse (~1200 BC).
My recollection of earlier, Western, work on copper flows suggests that at least around the 1960s-70s they calculated that the European mined copper was not sufficient to explain the extent of its use and proliferation. This resulted in theories that there were trade networks into the NA Great Lakes for copper there, however I think now that Ural copper flows might adequately fill the void.
Already out of stock at Amazon but I ordered it anyway. Maybe it’s print on demand and readily available? Excited to read it whenever it shows up. Great interview.
I can already see this is good stuff, but before I read past the beginning, there's another major exception to the Tolkienesque Medieval Fantasy setting, and that's Conan! I'm surprised you didn't mention that, since it's a major example of primordial Western history:
"Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."
- The Nemedian Chronicles.
Conan was formative for me, actually. Grew up on the comics, and the original Howard stories.
Howard was a huge influence. I tried to take it a step further given what we've learned in the past 8 years from genetics.
Well someone has to tell the story of the Sons of Aryas....
And of the wicked Shemites!
Good stuff. I have a hard time with magic but I am an oulier since every religion has elements of it. It probably wasn't necessary for the Titans to hibernate like bears just to stay out of the way. About once a month, scientists discover a species that has supposedly been extinct for 100,000 years. You could make a tale out of the only people who held out against the Aryans, the Basques. A map would help us geeks. Got all the way to the notes before I could confirm the mountains were the Carpathians. I suppose they would look lofty to steppe people. You could make more money if you could cut a package deal that includes a Thesaurus. I have an extensive vocabulary that includes a lot of archaic words but that was something else.
That would be a good tale about the Basque, especially since their genetic profile contains similar levels of steppe pastoralist DNA as surrounding Spaniards, yet their language is likely of EEF origin.
There was a map at the beginning of the book, so I'm confused by that.
As for a thesaurus, that's not a bad idea!
Sorry about the map comment. I have the kindle edition so either the map wasn't there or I skipped over it and couldn't easily go back. One of the drawbacks of the kindle but I read fast and travel a lot so it is the only feasible way to have enough reading material. As for the Basques, one could explain this by a lot of raiding and raping but no conquest.
I'm sorry to hear that because I went to great trouble to have an artist draw the map. When I went through the process of converting to eBook Kindle was just a pain in the ass. So many things would not convert.
It was there but maps convert poorly to Kindle. Not just yours. Perhaps a newer model. Or I could try my laptop.
Overwhelming, is the very best sense, is all I can say.
Oh, I could nit-pick bout definitions of "agriculture" and how different archeologists and anthropologists have (ab)used the term, or mention that the discovery of brone and the proliferation of its usage followed the trade-routes laid down from using copper and the importance of amber in establishing these continent-spanning well-known and well-travelled routes all the way from the Baltic coasts to Greece and beyond, or the very many petroglyphs in the Scandinavian fjells dating from 4 000BC and before, that indicates permanent residents, grazing livestock and some form of "agriculture".
But to burrow into such stuff would be petty and miss the point of your undertaking, and so I just mention it as a way to try and contribute yet another straw to an already mighty stack ("dra sitt strå till stacken" is a Swedish idiom for 'everyone trying to contribute as best as they are able'; literally it means 'add your straw to the anthill') - there's simply too much to include in any re-telling of history.
I especially liked your criticism of historians et cetera and how they claim to know how pre-written records era Ancestors /thought/ - we may well guess, but we will never /know/. It's even an inofficial joke here among some archeologists that is used to be that when they found an object they couldnt explain or understand, it was labelled "unknow object of religious nature" - more than once, a plain worker helping with the actual digging has been able to indentify it as some tool or other, because the modern eq. retains the basic shape.
Which perhaps also fits into your greater narrative of the spiritual/intellectual divide between those happy to be domesticated and kept, and those happy to pay in pain for freedom.
I'm sorry, I'm rambling but as I said, this was overwhelming and humbling.
I feel, from reading the interview, that a new light is lit.
(Spelling-errors galore - Iäll leave them in; my keyboard is wonky and old.)
Hope you read it and enjoy!
Fascinating..Bought the book...I wonder if the tale of Otzi "the Iceman" figures in this tale...Otzi carried a copper axe about 5,200 years ago and evidently was quite effective with it, with the blood of at least 4 individuals on his clothes...and was killed as he was fleeing into the mountains by a long distance archery shot, which Olympic archers have been unable to duplicate ....It seems they were more advanced back then than anthropologists ever believed...
This is kinda crazy, but I never thought of Otzi yet there's a scene where he very well have come from. You'll see.
The details that archaeologists have been able to get from Otzi is incredible. IIRC they sourced the food in his stomach and pollens in his clothing and stuff like that. I think they were able to determine his home village or area from it, as well as trading patterns. Incredible stuff.
It really is amazing what the exact sciences are able to do. Absolute triumph of the human mind.
Excellent. Hope you enjoy it!
I was hoping the military tech section would get into chariots. The Yamnaya culture seems to have had the two main ingredients-the wheel and the horse. And chariots were invented in more or less the same place and same time. Chariots are generally regarded as a main enabler of Bronze Age conquest. They were eventually obsoleted by horse archers as the superior weapons system so why not jump directly to horse archers. One of the main drawbacks of chariots is the need for large open spaces to deploy-a land for more prevalent in the deserts of the middle east than in the balka and river valley country of the Pontic Steppe not to mention the forests of W. Europe. Perhaps the answer lies in horse genetics. I remember reading somewhere that selective breeding led to horses that could support a rider on the back rather than the rump. The earlier horses could be more easily harnessed than ridden. Or perhaps it was archery tech.
As to whether the conquest of the west was by violence or cultural diffusion, why not both. Assume the Aryan war bands were the vanguards using their superior weapons, organization and culture to conquer. Assuming they behaved like every other conqueror known to history, they would have killed the men and taken the women. This naturally leads to a mixed race population. The women and children of the Aryans would have been following behind but how many were there compared to the more settled farmers of the West. Plus the Aryans would have been conquering an alien environment with who knows what different microbes. Nothing like hybrid vigor. Considering the Germans, cultural diffusion seems like a possibility for them. According to classical writers, their origin was Scandanavia or the lower Vistula (difficult of horse nomads to penetrate), migrating south in historic times. The Goths in particular migrated to that same area N. of the Black Sea.
I think the cultural diffusion thesis ("pots aren't people" as the archaeologists say) is that the replacement of neolithic cultures by artifacts from PIE peoples wasn't evidence of conquest, but could be explained by neighbouring groups adopting new cultural practices.
The genetics are pretty unambiguous, though. It looks like the PIE peoples really did basically just kill all the men and take all the women for themselves. The intuition of early archaeologists that a complete replacement of material culture indicated that an entirely new people had moved in turned out to be correct.
This is almost 100% the case with the Bell Beaker "invasion" of the British Isles between 2600BC-2300BC. In excess of 90% of EEF (Early European Farmer) males lineages disappear from the archaeogenetic record. There's no sugar coating that.
There's a somewhat narrow age-band in which a male child could both a) do useful slave labour, and b) not have absorbed his mother culture to the point that he'll live for Conanesque revenge and the hope of a better life elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the female age range is broader because you can always put them to use making babies, they stay under close supervision by the matrons of your society, and a female "hope of a better life" has tended to be linked throughout time to building her own house on the back of a physically stronger provider and protector. Culturally, thus, the females caught young have been more willing to adapt, even if they remember an old life. We see examples of this even into the 19th century, with white girls captured by North American indigenous raiders.
Mexican girls too.
It wouldn't be necessary to kill off the males to make this happen. Slavery would be quite sufficient as long as the male slaves were employed in some activity like farming, fishing or timbering and kept segregated from women. The female slaves would be part of the conqueror's household and engaged in domestic chores,especially clothes production. It took 20 spinsters to supply one weaver. Life wouldn't be a lot different for either sex except the men would have no sex. The women would be sexually available subject to age and various taboos and thus the next generation would be mixed. Future male slaves could be the boys born to slaves or from the next wave of conquest. There probably as many sociologies of slavery as the are cultures that practiced it which is all of them.
Even if there's 5-6 dominant modes that's a fair amount of diversity of the practice. As you illustrated above, this could be one of the ways it "happened" and it's quite hard to foreclose all the other dominant possibilities and thus draw a robust conclusion.
The DNA would also have to include the female line which as I understand it is easier to track than the male line. Plus there are some elements of material culture that are typically female (pottery?) Would the conquerors take time out from fucking and teaching the boys to fight to tell the women how to make pots. Depends on how long it takes the Aryan women to catch up.
Still puzzled by the Germans. I suppose they could have lived further south to be part of the conquest, migrated north into empty lands before the Romans showed up to write about them and then migrated back south. Or the Romans could have been wrong and the Goths could have always been there north of the Black Sea. I am buried in the Dark Ages now and there is a paleoclimatoligist theory that climate change ( drought) launched the Huns westward setting off that chain reaction. Some ice core analysis of the coming of the bronze age would be interesting as it might explain the wandering of the Germans.
There was some mixing for the Proto-Germanic speakers. Read https://nemets.substack.com/ and his post:
https://nemets.substack.com/p/germania
They started as an offshoot of the Corded War Culture that moved north east into the eastern Baltic at first and interbred with some HGs, then moved west across the sea into Scandinavia, defeating the farmers with mixed results, before finally heading south.
As to your point about "why not both" the answer is 'yes', it's a matter of extent and concentration. Even to say it was 70/30 masks critically distinctions. For instance if pastoralists kill only the elite and take their wives while letting non-elites breed as before it will lead to much smaller penetration of R1a/b, yet we know who was calling the shots. In fact this was the case in Greece with the advance of post-Catacomb Culture pastoralists carrying R-M269, including Z2103 and PF7562 subclades. Greece currently has 20% R1b and 12% R1a. The latter are from later Slavic migrations to Greece. The R1b is the Mycenaean contribution and in fact samples taken from the time of the Mycenaean conquest don't show radically different figures. So the Mycenaeans conquered Greece, never influenced more than a small fraction of male lineages yet bestowed their language and culture. Is that demic diffusion at 20%? Or cultural at nearly 100%. I don't know.
Interesting. The missing link in my speculation about the Germans was th material about when seafarers came into being. That links the Aryan expansion with the Roman theories. They came from the east rather than the south as I had speculated and earlier but the effect was the same.
Chariots came much later! Keep in mind that in 3300BC it was still only the beginning of the Copper Age for much of the Pontic Steppe. War chariots were invented by the Sintashta around 2200BC, I wanna say.
Chariots will feature in later books.
Look forward to it
This reminds me that Howard described a creature somewhat like the First Born or neanderthal in "Rogues in the House." And when Conan defeats him, he says, "I have slain a man".
From my substack essay Mourning and Battlesong:
"Thak is not a beast, although he’s covered in black hair and his eyes look red, reflecting the light like a nocturnal animal. And he’s not supernatural – he has no special powers: just intelligence and the strength his size and muscles give him. And now, he will be remembered by Conan and his women, like a man."
Temporarily unavailable
According my printer Amazon has already ordered another batch and it should be less than a week.
It sold out fast, but will restock quickly.
Ordered it. Haven't read yet. I was conditioned long ago, in college, not to despise historical novels, or prehistorical in this case, as a way to capture the zeitgeist. Good research is critical which seems to be present here both in the interview and the response to the comments.
Many thanks, the problem with research is that there's always one more stone to overturn. At some point you have to draw the line. But I'm satisfied it's a realistic depiction of the time, yet you'll still see the "magic".
Excellent. I hope you enjoy it.
One of my aims in the interview was to give Klopp an opportunity to demonstrate the depth of research he did, as an advertisement.
“Unlike Anything Else” – Archaeologists Unearth Massive Bronze Age City After 3500 Years -- https://scitechdaily.com/unlike-anything-else-archaeologists-unearth-massive-bronze-age-city-after-3500-years/
I just saw that!
You could take a first year archaeology course and be on this dig. They need people, its very labour intensive.
Great interview (I enjoyed the book, so more background is very welcome), and points me to further reading I will use to update the list of books my family can mine for xmas ideas.
Awesome! And yes, there's a seasonal reason I held off on this until now…
You got a signed copy too!
Many thanks for your support
This sounds very cool.
I´ve wondered why we don't have fiction about this time....because they are hiding things.
There's less excuse now for anything being "hidden" - especially the parallels with the present.
Brilliant. Shall add to my unfortunately long reading list.
One honorable mention that I was reminded of from this interview was The Malazan Book of the Fallen, which is... ruthlessly raw and also at one point in the series includes a culture with shockingly (to us) historical attitudes to the conquest of villages--and that plot point bares literal fruit later. The setting is as obviously magical as The Toll of Fortune is not, however, but I am curious if the books are familiar to you, JC.
No, I’ve never heard of that particular novel. Do you recall the author?
Steven Erickson, who curiously enough is Canadian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen is a 10-book series, of which House of Chains is the fourth book and the one I'm thinking of for introducing the culture referenced above. I will warn that the Malazan series books are almost all en media res, bears no resemblance to Tolkienesque western fantasy, and are much like jumping on a moving train to discover yourself amongst the cars, creatures and carnies of a particularly demented circus.
Interesting. Never heard of him.
This book sounds amazing and the discussion is equally so. But please add a spoiler warning (I didn’t even realise it was a book review for the first few paragraphs). So I’m pausing to get the book and read it before finishing the interview.
I was pretty careful not to introduce any spoilers (I think) regarding the details of the overall story. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy it! After reading, let me know if the interview was as spoiler-free as I hoped…
Nah, he doesn't spoil anything... just gives you a little taste.
This book was utterly fantastic, I'm simultaneously irritated that I don't have any sequels yet, and grateful to the author for writing it. Go buy copies so he writes the sequels!
Fascinating interview and topic; will definitely order the book. I've done similar research and fictional speculation for an earlier Homo branch, floresiensis (alias Hobbits). The novel Floresia is set at the time of their demise (at the hands of sapiens, presumably), in SE Asia ~50k BCE. So there is another title to consider for the underpopulated genre of "historical fiction set during the primordial age." ;) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1990129331
Brilliant! I'll be looking at that. Great cover art.
Thanks. The face was tricky to visualize, from scant evidence. I wanted her to look at least "human" enough to relate to. :)
AJR Klopp may already be aware of- there was extensive copper mining in Kargaly, Russia (in the Ural mountains) from at least 3,300 BC onwards. These were seasonal mining communities which dug pits straight into the earth to mine the copper (over 35,000 shafts discovered), then traveled to trade it with other cultures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQZxgzA-Uak
That's incredible.
I've read that even in the neolithic there were extensive trade routes, along with mining activity, for specialized minerals such as flint, obsidian, what have you. Going back tens of thousands of years in fact.
The flint, obsidian, amber and salt routes did go back at least to the LGM. I went to the Greek island of Milos one summer and there was an excavation of a 7000 year old obsidian workshop right beside the hotel. There's so much obsidian on that island it's crazy - I actually referenced it in the book.
It may give you a tickle to know that Tutankhamon's royal jewellry contains amber from the Baltic (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia) region, and that amber has been traded from these parts since at least 2 000 BC.
Which means that in order for some one to go dig up the amber (or collect it on the beach) and polish it and make preparations for a journey -
- they already knew beforehand where to go and what path to take, because the Amber Road bypasses the Alps.
Which turn means there simply must have been trade from virtually almost the start of the Cro-Magnons moving into Europe.
It's true and some of this would have made it's way to Europe, but copper is quite common and there were much closer sources of copper (many within Europe). Still fascinating. I love Dan Davis!
Another occupation for male slaves. The Athenians sent them to the silver mines where there were no OSHA rules
Yes, the Western understanding of the impact of this, specific, copper-mining locale is significant. From my reading/watching (without reference to the specific link provided), the Ural mining AND smelting was so substantial and sustained that it must have resulted in major deforestation for firewood--which might explain why the efforts were abandoned. Or, such efforts may have petered out as regional deposits became sufficient for local needs following the bronze-age collapse (~1200 BC).
My recollection of earlier, Western, work on copper flows suggests that at least around the 1960s-70s they calculated that the European mined copper was not sufficient to explain the extent of its use and proliferation. This resulted in theories that there were trade networks into the NA Great Lakes for copper there, however I think now that Ural copper flows might adequately fill the void.
Already out of stock at Amazon but I ordered it anyway. Maybe it’s print on demand and readily available? Excited to read it whenever it shows up. Great interview.
Thanks! I assure you it will be back in stock soon. Your order will help prod Amazon to increase it's inventory as well.
Wow!