THE HYBORIAN AGE
By Robert E. Howard
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was first published in The PhantagraphFebruary, August, and October-November 1936 issues. Extensive researchdid not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publicationwas renewed.]
(Nothing in this article is to be considered as an attempt to advanceany theory in opposition to accepted history. It is simply a fictionalbackground for a series of fiction-stories. When I began writing theConan stories a few years ago, I prepared this 'history' of his age andthe peoples of that age, in order to lend him and his sagas a greateraspect of realness. And I found that by adhering to the 'facts' andspirit of that history, in writing the stories, it was easier tovisualize (and therefore to present) him as a real flesh-and-bloodcharacter rather than a ready-made product. In writing about him and hisadventures in the various kingdoms of his Age, I have never violated the'facts' or spirit of the 'history' here set down, but have followed thelines of that history as closely as the writer of actualhistorical-fiction follows the lines of actual history. I have used this'history' as a guide in all the stories in this series that I havewritten.)
Of that epoch known by the Nemedian chroniclers as the Pre-CataclysmicAge, little is known except the latter part, and that is veiled in themists of legendry. Known history begins with the waning of thePre-Cataclysmic civilization, dominated by the kingdoms of Kamelia,Valusia, Verulia, Grondar, Thule and Commoria. These peoples spoke asimilar language, arguing a common origin. There were other kingdoms,equally civilized, but inhabited by different, and apparently olderraces.
The barbarians of that age were the Picts, who lived on islands far outon the western ocean; the Atlanteans, who dwelt on a small continentbetween the Pictish Islands and the main, or Thurian Continent; and theLemurians, who inhabited a chain of large islands in the easternhemisphere.
There were vast regions of unexplored land. The civilized kingdoms,though enormous in extent, occupied a comparatively small portion of thewhole planet. Valusia was the western-most kingdom of the ThurianContinent; Grondar the eastern-most. East of Grondar, whose people wereless highly cultured than those of their kindred kingdoms, stretched awild and barren expanse of deserts. Among the less arid stretches ofdesert, in the jungles, and among the mountains, lived scattered clansand tribes of primitive savages. Far to the south there was a mysteriouscivilization, unconnected with the Thurian culture, and apparentlypre-human in its nature. On the far-eastern shores of the Continentthere lived another race, human, but mysterious and non-Thurian, withwhich the Lemurians from time to time came in contact. They apparentlycame from a shadowy and nameless continent lying somewhere east of theLemurian Islands.
The Thurian civilization was crumbling; their armies were composedlargely of barbarian mercenaries. Picts, Atlanteans and Lemurians weretheir generals, their statesmen, often their kings. Of the bickerings ofthe kingdoms, and the wars between Valusia and Commoria, as well as theconquests by which the Atlanteans founded a kingdom on the mainland,there were more legends than accurate history.
Then the Cataclysm rocked the world. Atlantis and Lemuria sank, and thePictish Islands were heaved up to form the mountain peaks of a newcontinent. Sections of the Thurian Continent vanished under the waves,or sinking, formed great in