Part 63 (1/2)

Aquilonia, as the western-doms, retained frontier traditions equalled only by the dom Its most important provinces were Poitain in the south, Gunderland in the north, and Attalus in the southeast The Aquilonians were a tall race, averaging five feet, ten and three fourths inches in height, and were generally inclined to be rangy, though in the last generations the city dwellers inclined toward portliness They varied in co to locality Thus the people of Gunderland were uniforrey eyed, while the people of Poitain were alarans All were inclined to be dolichocephalic, except a sprinkling of peasantry along the Bossonian borders, whose type had been modified by admixture with the latter race, and here and there in the doinal races still existed, absorbed into the surrounding population The people of Attalus boasted the greatest advances in coh the whole level of Aquilonian civilization was enviable Their language was ues, and their chief God was Mitra At the height of their power their religion was of a refined and iinative type, and they did not practise huely upon their cavalry, heavily arhts Their pikemen and spearmen were mainly Gundermen, while their archers were supplied from the Bossonian dodoreement Its people never considered thereat kingdoenerations in its former state as a separate principality Their ere ruder and more primitively Hyborian than those of the Aquilonians, their main concession to the ways of theirthe adoption of the God Mitra in place of the primitive Bori

a worshi+p to which they returned, however, upon the fall of Aquilonia They were, next to the Hyperboreans, the tallest of the Hyborian races They were fine soldiers, and inclined to wander far Gunderland mercenaries were to be found in all the ardodoms of Shem

Cimmerians These people were descendants of the ancient Atlanteans, though they the evolved by their own efforts from the ape-men to which their ancient ancestors had sunk They were a tall powerful race, averaging six feet in height

They were black haired, and grey or blue eyed They were dolichocephalic, and dark skinned, though not so dark as either the Zingarans, Zamorians or Picts They were barbaric and warlike, and were never conquered, although, at the end of the Hyborian Age, the southward drifting Nordics drove the race, whose Gods were Crom and his brood They did not practise human sacrifice, for it was their belief that their Gods were indifferent to the fate of e raids on their neighbors to the east, north, and south

349

The Hyborian Age

The Hyborian Age

(Nothing in this article is to be considered as an attempt to advance any theory in opposition to accepted history It is siround for a series of fiction stories When I began writing the Conan stories a few years ago, I prepared this ”history” of his age and the peoples of that age, in order to lend hireater aspect of realness And I found that by adhering to the ”facts” and spirit of that history, in writing the stories, it was easier to visualize (and therefore to present) him as a real flesh-and-blood character rather than a ready- about hie, I have never violated the ”facts” or spirit of the ”history” here set down, but have followed the lines of that history as closely as the writer of actual historical-fiction follows the lines of actual history I have used this ”history” as a guide in all the stories in this series that I have written)

Of that epoch known by the Nee, little is known except the latter part, and that is veiled in theof the Pre-Cataclysdoms of Kamelia, Valusia, Verulia, Grondar, Thule, and Co a codoms, equally civilized, but inhabited by different, and apparently older races

The barbarians of that age were the Picts, who lived on islands far out on the western ocean; the Atlanteans, elt on a small continent between the Pictish Islands and the main, or Thurian Continent; and the Lee islands in the eastern heions of unexplored land The civilized kingdoh enormous in extent, occupied a comparatively small portion of the whole planet Valusia was the western- dom of the Thurian Continent; Grondar the eastern-hly cultured than those of their kindred kingdo the less arid stretches of desert, in the jungles, and a the es Far to the south there was a mysterious civilization, unconnected with the Thurian culture, and apparently pre-human in its nature On the far eastern shores of the Continent there lived another race, human, but

350mysterious and non-Thurian, hich the Lemurians from time to time came in contact

They apparently ca somewhere east of the Le; their arely of barbarian enerals, their statesdoms, and the wars between Valusia and Commoria, as well as the conquests by which the Atlanteans founded a kingdoends than accurate history

Then the Cataclysm rocked the world Atlantis and Lemuria sank, and the Pictish Islands were heaved up to form the mountain peaks of a new continent Sections of the Thurian Continent vanished under the waves, or sinking, forreat inland lakes and seas Volcanoes broke forth and terrific earthquakes shook down the shi+ning cities of the empires Whole nations were blotted out

The barbarians fared a little better than the civilized races The inhabitants of the Pictish Islands were destroyed, but a great colony of the the mountains of Valusia's southern frontier, to serve as a buffer against foreign invasion, was untouched The Continental kingdom of the Atlanteans likewise escaped the common ruin, and to it ca land Many Lemurians escaped to the eastern coast of the Thurian Continent, which was comparatively untouched There they were enslaved by the ancient race which already dwelt there, and their history, for thousands of years, is a history of brutal servitude

In the western part of the Continent, changing conditions created strange forles covered the plains, great rivers cut their roads to the sea, wild mountains were heaved up, and lakes covered the ruins of old cities in fertile valleys To the continental kingdom of the Atlanteans, froes ape-men and apes Forced to battle continually for their lives, they yet hly-advanced barbarism Robbed of metals and ores, they became workers in stone like their distant ancestors, and had attained a real artistic level, when their struggling culture came into contact with the powerful Pictish nation The Picts had also reverted to flint, but had advanced more rapidly in the matter of population and war- science They had none of the Atlanteans' artistic nature; they were a ruder, more practical, more prolific race They left no pictures painted or carved on ivory, as did their enemies, but they left remarkably efficient flint weapons in plenty

These stone age kingdoms clashed, and in a series of bloody wars, the outnuery, and the evolution of the Picts was halted Five hundred years after the Cataclysdoes the Picts carrying on continual warfare with tribes of savages the Atlanteans The

351Picts had the advantage of numbers and unity, whereas the Atlanteans had fallen into loosely- knit clans That was the west of that day

In the distant east, cut off froanticof a chain of vast lakes, the Le as slaves of their ancient masters The far south is still veiled in mystery Untouched by the Cataclysm, its destiny is still pre-human Of the civilized races of the Thurian Continent, a re the low mountains of the southeast the Zhemri Here and there about the world are scattered clans of apish savages, entirely ignorant of the rise and fall of the great civilizations But in the far north another people are slowly co into existence

At the ties, whose development was not much above that of the Neanderthal, fled to the north to escape destruction They found the snow-countries inhabited only by a species of ferocious snow-apes huge shaggy white aniht and drove beyond the arctic circle, to perish, as the savages thought The latter, then, adapted themselves to their hardy new environment and throve

After the Pictish-Atlantean wars had destroyed the beginnings of what ht have been a new culture, another, lesser cataclysinal continent, left a great inland sea where the chain of lakes had been, to further separate west from east, and the attendant earthquakes, floods and volcanoes completed the ruin of the barbarians which their tribal wars had begun

A thousand years after the lesser cataclysles and lakes and torrential rivers A bands of ape-e of fire or the use of implements They are the descendants of the Atlanteans, sunk back into the squalling chaos of jungle-bestiality froo their ancestors so laboriously crawled To the southwest dwell scattered clans of degraded, cave-dwelling savages, whose speech is of the most primitive form, yet who still retain the na uish them from the true beasts hich they contend for life and food It is their only link with their fore Neither the squalid Picts nor the apish Atlanteans have any contact with other tribes or peoples

Far to the east, the Lemurians, levelled almost to a bestial plane themselves by the brutishness of their slavery, have risen and destroyed their e civilization The survivors of that civilization, who have escaped the fury of their slaves, have codo their own culture, doia, and remnants of the older nation seemed to have survived, and even been worshi+pped, after the race as a whole had been destroyed

352

Here and there in the world sns of an upward trend; these are scattered and unclassified But in the north, the tribes are growing These people are called Hyborians, or Hybori; their God was Bori so who led thereat Cataclysm, which the tribes remember only in distorted folklore