Re: re:Alakorings and Heortlings

From: Bryan Thexton <bethexton_at_...>
Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2001 18:22:12 -0000

>
>
>
> The problem with this is that the rivers and lakes of the Iroquois's
> area are not navigable by anytyhing but a canoe -- and often you
have to
> portage. Bryan's familiar with portaging. Its not fun... and it
really
> cuts down on your cargoes.
Usefully, most things you might sieze in a raid will be fairly small, high value items, that will fit nicely into a canoe :) I think that canoes--being fairly easy to build and just right for transportation of small groups--will tend to emphasize certain cultural traits, whereas somewhere with easy land trails, or good sea routes, will emphasize certain other traits entirely. But this goes off topic.

>
> > But consider if we view the Iroquois as a model for early esrolian
> > culture, and then add metalworking, permanent instead of semi-
> > permanent settlements etc. we could move towards Esrolian culture.
>
> When you put it that way, it seems plausable -- and probably as
good an
> evolution as any for a culture.

I agree--the iriquois may make a decent model of how things were way back when. The Esrolians, unlike terran cultures, seem to have kept the female dominance even once they moved to intensive agriculture with most of the muscle provided by the men. Of course, the importance of their crop magic could well have made the difference.

> > find any books by Evans on a quick search of Amazon, only
critiques
> > of his position.
>
> I'd be interested in hearing more of this as well. Bryan? Peter?
>

I'm at work, without any references in front of me, but really briefly.....
If you've ever read any older work about Minoan civilization, it was probably based on Evan's work. He dug up "palaces" with "mazes" in their foundations on Crete in the late 1800s (I think around 1890? Don't have a reference handy), and came up with a whole model of moderately enlightened minoan civilization that helped explain the whole minotaur in the maze bit. His version was taught and accepted and expanded upon for decades, and you may well know his version of things yourself.

The only problem being, he took a few facts, a few myths, and then based a whole "history" around them. As more facts have come to light, it gradually became apparent that he was wildly off base. Not just that he was wrong in certain areas, his whole interpretation was more romance than reality, from the ground up. Not just his original work is affected, all of the stuff from the archeological record that was interpreted in light of his theories are also probably mostly wrong. I'm not an expert in this area, but my understanding is that there is a lot of people going back to first principles and looking at things from scratch, right down to "is this symbol really representing a bull? Or is that actually a crescent moon?" (yah, bulls may have been much less central of Minoan mythology than was suggested by Evans).

This is all just what I've picked up in passing reading my wife's old history text books and reading bits and articles in history and archeology magazines. I'm sure my version of events is less than perfectly accurate itself.

So, if you want to read his version of things, find a book on the history of ancient greece, or minoan culture, or Crete, that was published at least a generation ago, and you will probably get mostly that view of things. Just don't believe that it is correct.

--Bryan