The Hyborian Age Page 6

What their destiny might have been will notbe known, because another terrific convulsion of the earth, carving outthe lands as they are known to moderns, hurled all into chaos again.Great strips of the western coast sank; Vanaheim and westernAsgard--uninhabited and glacier-haunted wastes for a hundredyears--vanished beneath the waves. The ocean flowed around the mountainsof western Cimmeria to form the North Sea; these mountains became theislands later known as England, Scotland and Ireland, and the wavesrolled over what had been the Pictish wilderness and the Bossonianmarches. In the north the Baltic Sea was formed, cutting Asgard into thepeninsulas later known as Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and far to thesouth the Stygian continent was broken away from the rest of the world,on the line of cleavage formed by the river Nilus in its westward trend.Over Argos, western Koth and the western lands of Shem, washed the blueocean men later called the Mediterranean. But where land sank elsewhere,a vast expanse west of Stygia rose out of the waves, forming the wholewestern half of the continent of Africa.

  The buckling of the land thrust up great mountain ranges in the centralpart of the northern continent. Whole Nordic tribes were blotted out,and the rest retreated eastward. The territory about the slowly dryinginland sea was not affected, and there, on the western shores, theNordic tribes began a pastoral existence, living in more or less peacewith the Cimmerians, and gradually mixing with them. In the west theremnants of the Picts, reduced by the cataclysm once more to the statusof stone-age savages, began, with the incredible virility of their race,once more to possess the land, until, at a later age, they wereoverthrown by the westward drift of the Cimmerians and Nordics. This wasso long after the breaking-up of the continent that only meaninglesslegends told of former empires.

  This drift comes within the reach of modern history and need not berepeated. It resulted from a growing population which thronged thesteppes west of the inland sea--which still later, much reduced in size,was known as the Caspian--to such an extent that migration became aneconomic necessity. The tribes moved southward, northward and westward,into those lands now known as India, Asia Minor and central and westernEurope.

  They came into these countries as Aryans. But there were variationsamong these primitive Aryans, some of which are still recognized today,others which have long been forgotten. The blond Achaians, Gauls andBritons, for instance, were descendants of pure-blooded AEsir. TheNemedians of Irish legendry were the Nemedian AEsir. The Danes weredescendants of pure-blooded Vanir; the Goths--ancestors of the otherScandinavian and Germanic tribes, including the Anglo-Saxons--weredescendants of a mixed race whose elements contained Vanir, AEsir andCimmerian strains. The Gaels, ancestors of the Irish and HighlandScotch, descended from pure-blooded Cimmerian clans. The Cymric tribesof Britain were a mixed Nordic-Cimmerian race which preceded the purelyNordic Britons into the isles, and thus gave rise to a legend of Gaelicpriority. The Cimbri who fought Rome were of the same blood, as well asthe Gimmerai of the Assyrians and Grecians, and Gomer of the Hebrews.Other clans of the Cimmerians adventured east of the drying inland sea,and a few centuries later mixed with Hyrkanian blood, returned westwardas Scythians. The original ancestors of the Gaels gave their name tomodern Crimea.

  The ancient Sumerians had no connection with the western race. They werea mixed people, of Hyrkanian and Shemitish bloods, who were not takenwith the conquerors in their retreat. Many tribes of Shem escaped thatcaptivity, and from pure-blooded Shemites, or Shemites mixed withHyborian or Nordic blood, were descended the Arabs, Israelites, andother straighter-featured Semites. The Canaanites, or Alpine Semites,traced their descent from Shemitish ancestors mixed with the Kushitessettled among them by their Hyrkanian masters; the Elamites were atypical race of this type. The short, thick-limbed Etruscans, base ofthe Roman race, were descendants of a people of mixed Stygian, Hyrkanianand Pictish strains, and originally lived in the ancient kingdom ofKoth. The Hyrkanians, retreating to the eastern shores of the continent,evolved into the tribes later known as Tatars, Huns, Mongols and Turks.

  The origins of other races of the modern world may be similarly traced;in almost every case, older far than they realize, their historystretches back into the mists of the forgotten Hyborian age....