It is good to reread a Poul Anderson text and find points to discuss but earlier questions about the time corridors are still bugging me.
There is a two-page Andersonian fight scene when Lockridge escapes. Anderson liked his action.
I used to work with a guy who tried my patience beyond its limits. One of his stunts was as follows. Some of us were eating our sandwich lunches in a workplace staffroom. I had a copy of The Corridors Of Time lying on a table. This guy picks up the book, opens it, reads aloud a paragraph from Lockridge's fight scene in a sarcastic tone of voice, puts the book back down and walks off, totally oblivious to what he has just done. Someone else asks me, "That's not yours, is it, Paul?" The book has just been mocked on a basis of total ignorance.
The mistreatment of Auri is the spur that motivates Lockridge to go on the attack, quickly disposing of several antagonists with his future combat techniques and thus making the remaining warriors back off. They cannot discern his moves in the dark and, crucially, still think that he is a wizard. Thus, Anderson makes this escape plausible. And I need not add here that there is much more in this book than just this fight scene.
Why does the text call the invaders Indo-Europeans, not Aryans?
(Searching the blog, I find that I have been annoyed enough about that staffroom incident to post about it before. See here.)
22 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
You reminded me of how a friend asked me why I would reread books like Anderson's FLANDRY OF TERRA or Stirling's THE PESHAWAR LANCERS more than once if there was no mystery or surprise left to be discovered. And she was far nicer than the man who mocked THE CORRIDORS OF TIME, being genuinely curious.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: Indo-Europeans is the general term. "Aryan" refers to the -eastern- Indo-Europeans, who were an offshoot of the Corded Ware/Battle-Axe culture.
We know more about the Indo-European migrations now, btw, due to genetic research and decades of archeological investigation.
For example, we know they started much earlier than was thought when Poul wrote THE CORRIDORS OF TIME -- by 1500 BCE, they'd been in Scandinavia for over a thousand years.
NB: the "Aryans" (meaning "Noble Free Ones") were a backwash of the Corded Ware/Battle Axe culture, not the original Yamnaya migrations into Europe. Some of the Yamnaya moved north over the Carpathians in around 3000-2900 BCE and interbred with the locals.
Then they expanded explosively, in about 500-600 years all the way from Ireland to east of the Urals, which is where the Sintashta culture, the original Aryans, arose.
So they actually did originally look like central/northern Europeans, originally.
Thank you.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I enjoy these mini essays you write. And your comments reminded me of how a Chinese spy in THE LORDS OF CREATED reflected that her bosses would not be pleased at the evidence being found that these eastern Aryans introduced technological innovations to Shang Dynasty China. Because it contradicted the Party Line about the Chinese independently inventing them.
Ad astra! Sean
I thought of "Indo-European" as a term referring only to languages.
Paul: well, if you go far enough back, it's a culture -- the Yamnaya.
You can tell a good deal about it from the reconstructed vocabulary and grammar; savagely warlike, mobile, patriarchal but not extremely so. (Graves show that women sometimes became warriors too, though that was a distinct minority.)
As to the warlike bit, young men went through a stage in late adolescence when they moved into the wilderness and lived in 'packs' by plunder. That was one of the means the Yamnaya used to expand.
For example, from about 2500 BCE the indigenous male Y-dna lines of the Iberial population just vanished, replaced by central/northern European ones, ultimately traceable to the Yamnaya. R1b, mostly.
I doubt the indigenous males 'down south' were so impressed by the tall blond coolness of the newcomers that they couldn't get it up anymore. That was a mostly make migration.
About the same time, steppe-derived Indo-European speakers migrated to Britain from what's now the northwestern Netherlands, and both male and female genetic lines in the whole British Isles underwent a 93%+ replacement, in no more than a few centuries and possibly as little as one.
That's when the 'source' population of the British Isles arrived, and it's hung around ever since, though modified by subsequent migrations.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Ha, re that "...tall blond coolness..."! The invaders exterminated all or nearly all the males in the British Isles and Iberia, and grabbed the women. With most native women in the former also wiped out. It's simply what human beings do, in both bad and good ways.
Ad astra! Sean
Genetic research is a big addition to history.
Stirling:
"both male and female genetic lines in the whole British Isles underwent a 93%+ replacement, in no more than a few centuries and possibly as little as one."
What evidence is there for how much was violence & how much was disease in the vast reduction of the previous population?
In the cases of population replacement that happened recently enough for written records, disease did most of the dirty work, with significant contributions from violence.
Kaor, Jim!
Yes, but we are talking about events that happened 4000 or 5000 years ago, among peoples which had no organized, formalized states. We are talking about times when the general rule was "kill or be killed," where invading clans, war bands, or (at most tribes) exterminated everyone in territories they coveted.
Also, populations were so much lower in those days and peoples were much more mobile than they later became. Meaning I don't think diseases like measles or smallpox either existed then existed or had much chance to kill many people.
Ad astra! Sean
Jim: the survival of human remains from that long ago is a matter of luck.
Sean: there is evidence of plagues in late Neolithic Europe, but then, large settlements were also common then, which would create ideal conditions. The Indo-European populations which replaced them were much more mobile and small-scale.
Note: in 1300, the population of England was over 4 million -- estimates range from 4.5 to 5 million. Then famine and the Black Death struck, and by 1450 it was down to 2 million again. It didn't -consistently- exceed the 1300 total (which was about the same as the late Roman province of Britannia, btw) until the 18th century.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I sit corrected, I thought almost everybody in Europe 5,000 years ago were members of small wandering bands of hunter/gatherers. Large settlements, along with bad hygiene, creates conditions ideal for plagues.
Yes, the Black Death and famines devastated not just England, but huge parts of the rest of Europe.
It was fortunate Anderson set THE HIGH CRUSADE in 1345. If the Wersgor had landed at Ansby in 1346-47, Baron Roger and most of his people would probably be dead, killed by the Plague.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: farming entered Europe via migrations from Anatolia by people who looked pretty much like today's Turks. Nobody knows what language(s) they spoke. By 3000 BCE they were in place all over the continent.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
A pity we know so little about these peoples. But, no surprise, not being literate they left no written records of any kind. And they may not have known anything about metallurgy.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: they used copper, which you can get naturally in fairly pure form, but their tools were mostly stone and wood. The early Indo-Europeans probably spread bronze technology, though they were very early in the places they settled.
They probably looked rather like Sardinians -- that's the area of Europe with the greatest degree of genetic continuity from the Neolithic. Otzi the Iceman was one of them.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I sit corrected, late Neolithic peoples knew how to use copper. It's interests me that genetically they still have surviving descendants on Sardinia.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, Sardinia escaped most later waves of migration. Sort of undesirable and out of the way.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Out of the way, undesired turf can be useful if you want to survive.
Ad astra! Sean
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