Give me liberty or give me alternative history!
For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga is one of the best alternative history science fiction novels written in the 20th century. It is literally encyclopedic. A fully realized alternative timeline, the novel takes the form of a narrative history! I don’t know if one can say that the world depicted […]
American folkways & American pedigrees
St. Augustine Historic districtOver ten thousand years after the first Americans settled the New World, from the Arctic to Patagonia, a new people arrived on these shores. From “deep history” to colonial history. Before Plymouth, before Jamestown, even…
A shock is a surprise because it’s a shock
Reading Thomas Childer’s The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany reminds me a lot of reading The Red Flag: A History of Communism. These strange and extreme ideological systems seem likely to be eternally marginalized…until they aren’t. The dream of revolution is a fantasy until it isn’t. The rot within these societies, their anomie and […]
Most people have always thought human sacrifice was bad
A few days ago a minor controversy about the cultural context of human sacrifice in Mesoamerica cropped. A writer at Science, wrote a piece, Feeding the gods: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital. The article was good. But it elicited some emotional responses from readers. As one sees in […]
Midnight’s Descendants: A History of South Asia since Partition
I recently read John Keay’s Midnight’s Descendants: A History of South Asia since Partition. Like his earlier books on the history of India and China, this is a work written by a journalist, not an area specialist (though Keay seems to take a particular interest in South Asia judging by his oeuvre). To be frank … Continue reading “Midnight’s Descendants: A History of South Asia since Partition”
Why the world before 1450 matters
It is no surprise that I am not excited by the proposal to focus AP History in the United States on the period after 1450. Overall I agree with many of the comments made in T. Greer’s tweet thread. Though I have a concurrent opinion with many history teachers who oppose the change, my opposition […]
The days of the All-Fathers
Citation: Zerjal et al.“A man’s greatest joy is crushing his enemies.”— Genghis KhanThere are many apocryphal quotes attributed to Genghis Khan. And there’s a reason for that — in a single generation he led an obscure group of Mongolian tribes to conqu…
The invention of Hinduism 1,000 years ago by a Muslim
On of the most annoying tropes in modern intellectual discourse, in particular of the postcolonial variety, is its Eurocentrism. That is, the focus on the Western colonial experience is so strong and unwavering that operationally the rest of history becomes prehistory, a formless period which we are ignorant of, when humans were different in fundamental … Continue reading “The invention of Hinduism 1,000 years ago by a Muslim”
Gene Expression 2018-06-09 00:09:44
One of the major conclusions of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s The Reformation is that Protestantism only captured societies with finality when the most powerful temporal leader pushed for the change from above or maintained the pressure. The “magisterial” Reformation succeeded in those nations where the king or the most powerful aristocrats defended Protestantism and made it their […]
Gene Expression 2018-06-09 00:09:44
One of the major conclusions of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s The Reformation is that Protestantism only captured societies with finality when the most powerful temporal leader pushed for the change from above or maintained the pressure. The “magisterial” Reformation succeeded in those nations where the king or the most powerful aristocrats defended Protestantism and made it their […]
The Insight, Episode 17: Patrick Wyman, Barbarian Genetics
This week on The Insight we talk to Patrick Wyman of Tides of History. Patrick is now a professional podcaster for Wondery, but I got to know him originally through comments on this weblog. A historian of Late Antiquity, we originally encountered each other in 2010 after I had just finished a period where I […]
The fall of Rome and the wandering of peoples
The feat of Atilla“…The people of the Huns, but little known from ancient records, dwelling beyond the Maeotic Sea near the ice-bound ocean, exceed every degree of savagery. Since there the cheeks of the children are deeply furrowed with the steel from…
Books on Indian history without recency bias
One of the problems with Indian history is that a lot of the books are strongly biased toward the Muslim and colonial periods. There are numerous reasons for this. People are interested in the Muslim and colonial periods for nationalist and anti-nationalist reasons, if that makes any sense. But some of it is simply source … Continue reading “Books on Indian history without recency bias”
Our Edo period future?
The second season of Westworld has some scenes set in Edo period Japan. To spoil things for you there is apparently a scene-by-scene re-creation of a plot arc from the first season of the show set in the American West. Watching this scene, and comparing it to the earlier version, I can’t but help feel […]
Migration at the roof of West Asia
The figure to the left is from The genetic prehistory of the Greater Caucasus. If you are a regular reader of this weblog, or Eurogenes, you can figure out what’s going on, and keep track of the terminology. But in 2018 I think we’re getting to the end of the line in making sense of […]
India as the hydra against Islam
In some versions of the legend of the Hydra, every time you cut off one of the heads of the monster two more grow in its place. I have been thinking about why and how India remained predominantly non-Muslim despite most of the subcontinent being under Muslim ruling for 500 years (dating from 1250 to … Continue reading “India as the hydra against Islam”
Diaspora culture are often more conservative
Zach made a comment below about conservatism and Diaspora cultures. There are two trends one has to highlight here. One the one hand Diaspora cultures often exhibit synthesis with host cultures and can be quite novel and innovative. But there is another trend which is a cultural universal: Diaspora cultures often exhibit archaism and crystallize … Continue reading “Diaspora culture are often more conservative”
Why Bronze Age steppe people replaced the farmers they conquered
One of the major revisions in my own mind about the demographic and historical processes of the Holocene in relation to humans has been the reality that large and dense agglomerations of agriculturalists could be marginalized by later peoples, to the point of having a smaller genetic footprint in the future than anyone might have […]
Beyond cultural parochialism
A major personal peeve of mine is that the past few centuries of Western colonialism have overshadowed so much that moderns are often unequipped to understand the vast tapestry of human historical and geographical diversity. If you are a modern Indian or Chinese or African person you know your own culture and its history…and its … Continue reading “Beyond cultural parochialism”
The Jewish people: genetic unity in diversity
The Western WallThe religion of the Jews has had a great influence on the history of the world. Both Christianity and and Islam look to the Jewish tradition. Figures such as Moses are iconic in the Abrahamic context as lawgivers, setting a precedent fo…