The news as Sci-Fi

I have always enjoyed Science Fiction stories because it is like reading historical fiction where all the facts are made up.

Sometimes it is worthwhile to attempt that since all prediction is essentially an exercise in science fiction, or counter-history fiction. I have dipped into The Next Decade by George Friedman where he attempts to do that for the next 10 years. I may not go any further into it, but the attempt at least looks interesting.

And then there is this wonderful bit of prediction as 'history' in today's Washington Post by Jeff Greenfield entitled "What Happens to American Politics if We Default? Hello, Third Party." I think he may be right, if not immediately than in the long run.

If Sentenciae has a theme, it is that all American elites have disgraced themselves in the first decade of the 21rst century. The nutters in the Tea Party have gotten that part right and they are the first clear reaction to it. I think that essentially we are experiencing the birth pangs of a new civilization which is never easy. Western civilization is trying to give birth to a new syncretic civilization the same way Hellenic civilization gave birth to Hellenistic civilization.

We live in interesting times.

Westernistic? Occidentalistic?

Slavery, the Civil War, and our need for myths

I tell my classes, when I am in the mood to, that almost all they know about the Civil War is wrong, including their idea of a Rebel Yell. Yet we all need our comfortable little myths. The Old South has more than its fair share (Gone with the Wind and "Birth of a Nation" just for starters).

Here is an attempt, probably unsuccessful, on the part of the Washington Post to demythify some of it.

"Heritage not hatred" is the latest motto of the unreconstructed. I know better.

History as it never happened

History that never happened

Down in the cellar the Gestapo was licensed to practice what the Ministry of Justice called "heightened interogation." The rules had been drawn up by civilized men in warm offices, and they stipulated the presence of a doctor.

...

Inside, beyond the SS sentries and the creaky revolving door, the board announced the current state of terrorist alert. There were four codes, in ascending order of seriousness: green, blue, black, and red. Today, as always, the alert was red.

Random quotes from The Fatherland by Robert Harris. It was published in 1992, a work of imagination about 1964 that never could have happened. It never did happen.

The Value of History

From The Fatherland, a dystopia about a victorious Third Reich.

Clio, the Muse of History, guarded the Reichsarchiv: an Amazonian nude designed by Adolf Ziegler, the "Reich Master of the Pubic Hair." ... Behind her, a sign had been carved above the entrance to the archive, gold leaf inlaid on polished granite. A quotation from the Fuhrer: FOR ANY NATION, THE RIGHT HISTORY IS WORTH 100 DIVISIONS.

Later, the hero March enters the archives with an archivist, Halder.

"'The right history is worth a hundred divisions,' remember? That's the place where the wrong history goes. Shit. Look out."

Halder pulled March into a doorway. A security guard was coming towards them, bent like a miner in an underground shaft, pushing a metal cart. March thought he was certain to see them, but he went straight past, grunting with the effort. He stopped at the metal barrier and unlocked it. There was a glimpse of a furnace, a roar of flames, before the door clanged shut behind him.

And such is the value of honest history.

He lied like an eyewitness

Supposedly that is an old Russian expression from the time of Stalin. Probably not, though it perfectly captures something too many historians forget: never trust an eyewitness.

On Andrew Sullivan's site there is a reminder of why. Memory is a construct, a fond hope, and a lie. Read the whole thing but here is the best part:

Less than a year after a cargo plane crashed into an Amsterdam apartment building in 1992, 55 percent of the Dutch population said they had watched the plane hit the building on TV. Many of them recalled specifics of the crash, such as the angle of descent, and could report whether or not the plane was on fire before it hit. But the event had not been caught on video.

I have lots of childhood memories that are clear as a bell - but I know that they are not based on anything I actually 'remember'. They are based on my mental reconstructions of stories told to me about myself when I was too small to remember much of anything. I have other memories, equally clear, that when I check with other people or written records simply are impossible. And so it goes.

I was going to say some further brilliant things but now I can't remember them.

It must be true ... I read it in a history book!

Well, no. A lot of what passes for history is to history what a factoid is to a fact. They look similar, but one's a total fake. So read this little article from Salon.com on history, its uses and abuses.

especially if you fancy yourself a brawny Scotsman with a clan kilt in your closet.

1066 and all that.

British TV, Channel 4, has produced a film epic of "1066: The battle for Middle Earth." Judging from the trailer, it may be very good. It attempts to tell the story from the POV of some of the less important participants.

now if I could just figure out how to get Channel 4.

Update: members of Mediev-L who have now seen it tore it to shreds. The costumes were not accurate, and the less said about the 'medieval' fighting styles the better. Oh well. At least it sounded promising.

A Living History Site

One that should not be missed. It is about an obscure bit of economic history from the last century. Untold effort and research went into creating this site so please take a look at it. You almost feel as if you had been there.


Amazing.

History of the Ossetians Part III: From Alans to Ossets

Let's see. The Alans were either absorbing or pushing Sarmatian tribes into Europe while dominating the European and Central Asian steppes during the late Roman Empire. They seem to have been tough, skilled warriors, less reliant on the armor of the Sarmatians and perhaps more reliant on archery in combat rather than the heavy lance. They did not know the use of the stirrup.

The Alans themselves were disrupted in the late fourth century when a Turkic people, the Huns from even further East, hit them. Many of the Alans became part of the Hunnish confederation. Others moved westward into the Roman Empire where they were often recruited into the Roman military. They were particularly good as a type of mounted rural police keeping an eye on rebellious peasants. Some were sent into southern France, some to Brittany, leaving a trail of towns across the French map with names like Alainville or some such. Alan became a popular name among the Breton aristocracy. The Emperor Gratian was particularly fond of his Alanic guards corps, even going so far as to imitate their customs and dress. This is understandable since their customs seem to involve a lot of hunting and drinking (they had a great influence on the early Slavs too). At the great battle of Chalons in AD 450 when the Romans defeated Attila's Huns, Germans, Alans, Sarmatians etc. the Alans fighting for the Romans actually formed the center of the line and held that point all day (despite a great deal of misinformation we get from Jordanes, a Goth).

The Alans are a much under appreciated people. They provided the cavalry for almost every germanic horde that entered the old Empire. They made up an important part of the so-called Visigothic nation. Even before the Visigoths settled into Spain, Alans had seized a major portion of the Iberian peninsula as part of the Vandal confederation (see Un. of Idaho). Some even ended up in North Africa. There's one of them waving at you in the picture above. We think he's an Alan because the horse bears a typically Alanic brand on its hindquarters.

Alans remained a powerful force out on the steppes once the Hunnic confederation was destroyed. They continued to serve the East Roman Empire all through the middle ages. Eventually they met a people as tough and even better organized than they were: the Mongols of Genghis Khan (see the movie "Mongol"). Still noted as warriors (Alan women were also noted for their beauty) the Mongol khans recruited an entire regiment to serve as guardsmen back in Mongolia. To this day there is a Mongol tribe that claims to be descended from these soldiers. Another regiment was sent deep into China as the Mongols conquered that country.

Nevertheless the Alanic nation was in decline. Little by little they were forced to seek refuge up along the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains. Eventually Alan settlers pushed over the crest and down into the areas inhabited by the Christian Georgians and other peoples. As their economy and social structure changed in the new environment they became virtually a new culture: the Ossetians, divided into North and South by the mountain crest. They still speak an Iranian language ultimately descended from the first horse tamers from 4500 BC or so via the first charioteers of around 2100 BC. They still remember who they are and who they were.

Jack even tells me that there is a plan to unite the two Ossetias into a new province/republic: Alania. And that is all I can remember about it. Hope you enjoyed this little excursion into the life of an obscure people who might get a chapter in modern history books yet.

Every now and then history not only does not change, it gets medieval on you.

History of the Ossetians - as I remember it.. Part I

(which means this may end up like 1066 and All That)

Let's see. Around 7000 years ago, there was a scatter of tribes farming along the big river valleys just north of the Black Sea. We have no idea who these folks were, but some of them at least were Proto-Indo-Europeans, or PIE people. They domesticated the horse and headed on out, all over Eurasia.

Some ended up way north in Russia. Way north. So far north that they were cut off from the PIE homeland and began to develop their own dialect of PIE - becoming proto-Indo-Iranians. (Are you following all of this?) Then they discovered that if you hooked a couple of their cute little horses up to a two wheeled cart you had a super fast little vehicle that impressed everyone, especially attractive young women. A revolution was in the making. Especially when they started using new composite bows from their little carts to shoot down anyone that got in their way: they had invented chariot warfare.

So after about 2000 BC they migrated south with these little carts and passed through a band of civilized settlements stretching between the Caspian and the mountains of Afghanistan- these were the BMAC People (sounds almost like Big Mac People). There the cart driving bowmen learned things like how to make bronze weapons and snort Soma. Some then went south east and ended up becoming the Aryans who settled into India and wrote the Rig Veda and all that other stuff, telling about all the fighting and thinking they had been doing among the BMAC folk. Apparently they had done of lot of both.

Another wave took their little battle carts and composite bows and realized that they had useful services to sell to the civilized powers of the ancient Near East, who like all civilized powers needed to control trade routes for vital resources, tin and copper in this case. Soon these new "military advisors" in the new style warfare did what powerful warrior elites often do - they took over, sometime around 1600 BC.

This led to the creation of the great chariot empires of the bronze age: the Mitanni, the Hyksos, and even the long lost cousins of the PIE People, the Hittites (who were really the Nesli). (It is possible that some of them went East and arrived just in time to teach the Shang Chinese how to use chariots). This lasted until everything fell apart in c. 1200 BC for reasons unknown (the siege of Troy and the fall of the Canaanite cities to the Hebrews were probably all a part of this).

BUT, there was still a group of the Indo-Iranians, minus the 'Indo-' who stayed out somewhere around the Caspian. They figured out better riding techniques, bred bigger horses, and decided they could ditch those clumsy battle carts and just fight as mounted archers. These Aryans then entered the Persian plateau where the word Aryan became Iran, the source of the country's name today. One tribe was the Medes and the others the Persians. They were, of course, a great people and later their king Koresh, or Cyrus, would be hailed as a Messiah by the Hebrews (but that's another story).

We want to go back out to the Aryan tribes north of the BMAC. They stayed out there on the steppes of Central Asia and Southern Russia for a LONG time, perfecting their riding skills and inventing long pants (something the Romans regarded as effeminate - real Roman men wore mini-skirts).

(stay tuned for Part II - the Horsemen)

South Ossetia!!

Never heard of it? Shame on you. Actually there are only three people in America who know the full history of the Ossetian people*. I know all three of them personally. One is retired, one is crazy, and I myself have forgotten all the details.

BUT, South Ossetia is the proximate cause of the Russian invasion, no no- incursion... no, visitation into Georgia by the Russian army, no no - para-military forces - uh, no, custom officials, into Georgia that nearly reached the Georgian capital**.

AND as a public service to any of you who have Russian relatives (or Russian colleagues) demanding to know why the Western press won't tell the truth about the Ossetian mess, here is a brief attempt to tell what might be called the truth (for lack of a better term) in something that passes for the Western Press. Actually, it's Wired Magazine.

No, No. No need to thank me.

*They're Iranians.
** It is a scurrilous lie that McCain demanded to know why we let Russians march through Atlanta. It was Sarah Palin.

Vikings! The true story

Well, I am back from that steaming hellhole to our south, just a few steps ahead of the hurricane. Now, at least for a few days, I will be all tied up with school work. But I have discovered a wonderful explanation of the Viking invasions, right here.

It's as convincing as anything else I can think of.

next week, by special request from Mr Sobrino, Viking kitties!

.

Medieval Criticism

Carmen loves the "Get Fuzzy" comic strip. I like it too, but I never thought it would turn to pithy criticism of a work of historical fiction, about the Middle Ages yet. And yes, this is just about the way medieval historians feel about Pillars of the Earth.

This link was actually sent out over the Mediev-L list serve by a professional medievalist.

The Old Gods die Pathetically

At least that seems to be the case in the dialogue Henryk Sienkiewicz' novel Knights of the Cross between two Polish nobles about campaigning in Lithuania. Lithuania had been pagan and only recently converted to Christianity when its prince became king of Poland/Lithuania. If Paris were worth a mass, think how much Poland and Lithuania might be worth! You will notice that neither of the two Christian knights assume that the old pagan gods were imaginary, simply that they had been demoted by Christ. I think Sienkiewicz got to the heart of something important about the faith of Europeans before the modern era.

"We cannot complain," answered Zbyszko [...]. "A part of
our booty, we sold in Krakow and received forty silver _grzywiens_ for
it."

"You don't say so! Why, one can buy an estate for that."

"Yes. There was one Milanese armor which my uncle, expecting to die, sold
for a good price."

"I know! Well, it is worth while to go to Lithuania. I wanted to go there
also; but I was afraid."

"Of what? Of the Knights of the Cross?"

"Ej, who would be afraid of Germans? I was afraid of those heathenish
gods or devils. It seems there are plenty of them in the woods."

"They do not have any other place for shelter, because their temples have
been burned. Formerly they were well-to-do; but now they live on
mushrooms and ants."

"Did you see them?"

"No, I did not see any myself; but I heard of people who had seen them.
Sometimes one of them sticks out a hairy paw from behind a tree and
shakes it, begging for something."

"Macko told me the same," answered Jagienka.

"Yes! He told me about it on the road," said Zych. "Well, no wonder! In
our country also, although it has been a Christian country for a long
time, one can hear laughter in the marshes; and although the priests
scold about it in the churches, it is always good policy to put a dish
filled with something to eat, for the little devils; otherwise they will
scratch on the walls so much that one can hardly sleep. Jagienka, my
dearest! put a dish at the threshold."

Jagienka took an earthen porringer full of noodles and cheese, and placed
it at the threshold. Zych said:

"The priests scold! But the Lord Jesus will not be angry about a dish of
noodles; and a god, as soon as his hunger is satisfied, will protect one
from fire and from thieves."

Begging for a plate of noodles and cheese.  How the mighty had fallen. 

The ever-current Edward Gibbons.

Over on National Review Online's "The Corner" Mark Styn, whose book
America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It is under legal attack in Canada for insulting Islam (or something like that) resorts to the great Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as all educated pundits ought. The key quote is from Gibbon's description of the Battle of Poitiers (aka The Battle of Tours). Gibbon takes a short flight of fancy that Styn thinks is now coming true:

“Perhaps,” wrote Edward Gibbon in The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, “the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.”

You should read the whole thing though. Gibbon I mean. Not Styn. The latter seems a bit overheated (just check out the subtitle of his book).

Flaubert on ancient warfare

I am just about finished with Gustave Flaubert's Salammbo on Project Gutenberg. It is an amazing recreation of a past that never existed. And yet ... and yet ... Flaubert loads his work with so much convincing detail that you begin to believe. Consider this little snippet from his description of the preparations among the Carthaginians for the last battle. I don't know if it bears any resemblance to the actual event, and I've never heard of a military historian noting these little details. But once you read them, you realize that they ought to be true.

The Carthaginians arrived first in the plain. They rubbed the edges of their shields with oil to make the arrows glide off them easily; the foot-soldiers who wore long hair took the precaution of cutting it on the forehead; and Hamilcar ordered all bowls to be inverted from the fifth hour, knowing that it is disadvantageous to fight with the stomach too full.

What a writer, to make it all seem real.

Ancient Carthage and her Gods

I have started reading Gustave Flaubert's Salammbo available free at Project Gutenberg. It is a lot of fun, though it can not be taken as seriously as the author wished as a work of historical research. Nonetheless, Flaubert's creative imagination is at a white hot peak when he wrote this. Consider a brief scene involving the fearsome general Hamilcar Barca as he visits a temple on his return to Carthage. It is rare for an author of historical fiction to attempt to delve into the mind of a pagan fanatic, and even rarer to pull it off. See what you think.

[The chamber] was softly lighted by means of delicate black discs let into the
wall and as transparent as glass. Between the rows of these equal discs,
holes, like those for the urns in columbaria, were hollowed out. Each of
them contained a round dark stone, which appeared to be very heavy.
Only people of superior understanding honoured these abaddirs, which had
fallen from the moon. By their fall they denoted the stars, the sky, and
fire; by their colour dark night, and by their density the cohesion of
terrestrial things. A stifling atmosphere filled this mystic place. The
round stones lying in the niches were whitened somewhat with sea-sand
which the wind had no doubt driven through the door. Hamilcar counted
them one after another with the tip of his finger; then he hid his face
in a saffron-coloured veil, and, falling on his knees, stretched himself
on the ground with both arms extended.

The daylight outside was beginning to strike on the folding shutters
of black lattice-work. Arborescences, hillocks, eddies, and ill-defined
animals appeared in their diaphanous thickness; and the light came
terrifying and yet peaceful as it must be behind the sun in the dull
spaces of future creations. He strove to banish from his thoughts all
forms, and all symbols and appellations of the gods, that he might the
better apprehend the immutable spirit which outward appearances took
away. Something of the planetary vitalities penetrated him, and he felt
withal a wiser and more intimate scorn of death and of every accident.
When he rose he was filled with serene fearlessness and was proof
against pity or dread, and as his chest was choking he went to the top
of the tower which overlooked Carthage.

March of the Emperors!

Do you remember "March of the Penguins?" Before they got Morgan Freeman to do the voiceover it was a French movie (see, them Frenchies CAN do something right) called "March of the Emperor." Which could lead to some confusion.


Courtesy of my favorite Francophile Bonapartist Historian.

Conservatives for Harry Potter

Certainly not all of them since Dobson and other social conservatives of the Evangelical type seem to think they promote devil worship, satanism, and magic. But saner folks over at the National Review, bless them, think the Harry Potter books are great. Here's Mark Krikorian's defense against the Dobsonites:

The absurdity of claims that Rowling's stories somehow promote satanism or the occult was clear from the beginning, but having just finished reading the final book, I have to say that Dobson et al. owe Rowling an apology. It's not just that all the magic is a benign part of the fairy tale, like Cinderella or Snow White; it's not even just that the series "reinforces a core Christian belief that good and evil are not just socially constructed," as the op-ed I linked to says. More than all that, there's no way you can read the finale of the last book and not see it as "unambiguously Christian."

One more reason to read HP VII. Rick Brookhiser provides an historical reason for the hiding of the magical world from Muggles, as portrayed in the books:

I noticed in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that the witches and wizards of England decided to hide themselves from non-magical people in 1689—the year the Whigs nailed down their triumph in the Glorious Revolution.

[I can see the exam question now: Take out your blue books and write a five page essay discussing the significance of 1689 on the world of magic, relating it to the Glorious Revolution]

Krikorian, btw, wonders what the Christian conservatives are going to do when they get a load of a real anti-Christian work like The Golden Compass. Good question since Carmen and I have been wondering for some time if the projected movie will lead to a filming of the whole Dark Materials trilogy, especially the last one where it is clear that they are waging war on the forces of a senile old god named Jehovah. Or something like that.

A Quiz, dedicated to Mora

It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon, I can hear the buzz of lawn mowers in the background, it is not yet time to walk the lummox, and I have another paper to research and write by 10 May. Sounds like procrastination time to me! And, courtesy of not one but two of Claw of the Conciliator's blog buddies, here is a quiz to waste my time on. All answers contain a certain amount of truthiness due to the fact that my lady Carmen reads this blog.


---10 Firsts---
First Best Friend:: Accurate answer: Mike Ball; True answer: David Carpenter (we were intellectually in tune: he grew up to be an ambulance driver, I grew up to be an historian)
First Screenname:: You mean, like 'Clemens'?
First Pet Name:: For me, or my own pet? If the former, Snicker-Doodle. If the latter, Pinkie - my pink and white kitty cat.
First Piercing:: ??? OK - lower back (to remove squashed disc)
First Crush:: Sarah Harper (I think it was her idea)
First CD:: Oh dear. At my age, let's say first LP (that's one of those vinyl discs played on a Hi Fi record player): "Ilya Mourametz" by Gliere (I bought it for the cool medieval Russian helmet on the cover. I had no idea what I was getting into).
First School:: Hamilton Elementary of Hamilton, Virginia
First House Location:: Pleasant Valley Farm, 1 1/2 miles from Hamilton
First Kiss:: Actual kiss, probably Sarah in first grade. First serious kiss, Merry with the Soft Voice in college (no, I didn't get out much).
First Car:: A used olive green 1964 Opel made in Germany (it was my parent's reward to me for surviving hepatitis)

---9 Lasts---
Last Time You Smoked:: Don't smoke, but in 1985 or so I got drunk and smoked half a pack of my best friend's cigarettes in an hour- he's never forgiven me.
Last Food You Ate:: Dannon Strawberry yogurt
Last Car Ride:: home from the reservoir park after walking the beast with four paws.
Last Movie You Watched:: "Letters from Iwo Jima."
Last Phone Call:: to Carmen to tell her I and the beast had made it home alright.
Last CD You Listened To:: "Fork in the Road" by The Infamous Stringdusters - Carmen bought it because they will be performing here for Merlefest next weekend
Last Bubble Bath You Took:: uh... never?
Last Song You Listened To:: dunno - one of the Stringbusters' things - reminded me of Allison Kraus
Last Words You Said:: something incoherently mumbled to Carmen when she left for work this morning.

---8 Have-You-Evers---
Dated A Best Friend:: not once we started dating, no.
Been Arrested:: no, but close once or twice
Been On TV:: yes, along with about 200 other audience members of Johnny Carson's 'Tonight Show'
Eaten Sushi:: You betcha!!
Cheated On Your B/F:: Don't know what this is. I probably didn't cheat on it though.
Been On A Blind Date:: yes - once.
Been Out Of The Country:: Yes.
Been In Love:: A number of times, but only the last time seems to count.

7 Things You Are Wearing---
1:: wonderful fluffy white bathrobe
2:: an earnest expression
3:: thin
4:: zip
5:: nada
6:: rien
7:: nichts

---6 Things You've Done Today---
1:: got up very late
2:: put on a robe
3:: brewed coffee while reading a book
4:: won a hand of spider solitaire
5:: ran through the entire list of 'Face to Face' links on Claw of the Conciliator
6:: wrote this thingy (and plagiarized this last line from die Stille)

Yeah, I know. Pretty pathetic for a beautiful Saturday morning. I can hear Mora laughing at me from the closet.

---5 Favorite Things (not in any order)---
1:: reading
2:: interlibrary loan
3:: translating French poorly
4:: doodling
5:: the color blue (all shades, tones, and hues)

---4 People You Most Trust--- [not in any specific order!]
1:: Dad (if you can count the deceased)
2:: Mother
3:: Carmen
4:: my older brother Jesse, perhaps

---3 Things You Want To Do Before You Die---
1:: learn French
2:: help all my nieces and nephews, real and putative, get through college
3:: take part in the first successful longevity pill experiment, and not get the placebo

---2 Choices---
Vanilla or Chocolate:: Chocolate (are you kidding?)
Hugs or Kisses:: hugs

---1 Person You Want To See Right Now---
1:: Dad. I'd like to ask him how he managed to run a big, fractious personnel department for that unnamed port city to our south. Could have some pointers for me and the history department