REH’s ‘The Hyborian Age’

Most are aware of Robert E. Howard‘s character Conan the Barbarian, as he has appeared in numerous stories by REH, further stories by others, as well as in comics and movies. But an interesting element of Conan is that instead of setting him in a historical era, REH created his own prehistoric era for these stories. And further, he created a map and an essay on this historical period, which he called the Hyborian Age.

This essay was worked on for several years and would be published in 1938. The best version of this is a facsimile edition, titled The Hyborian Age, published by Skelos Press in 2015, which you can get off Amazon.

REH’s Hyborian Age may be the best world-building in the pulp world. I am reminded of the world building by J.R.R. Tolkien in his Middle-earth, which spans several ages and includes not just wars and the rise and fall of nations, but also cataclysms with lands raising and sinking. While I doubt that Tolkien was ever influenced by REH, I wonder if anyone had ever shown Tolkien what REH had done?

The Thurian Age

Before the Hyborian Age was the Thurian Age of Kull. This was a pre-cataclysmic world circa 100,000 BC.

In this time, there was the continent of Thuria, which combined Europe, Asia, and Africa, but in a different configuration from what we know during Conan’s time. I wish Howard had created a map of Thuria at this time, but he didn’t. Marvel Comics did it in a Kull comic, but I don’t feel it’s very accurate.

In Kull’s time, civilization was concentrated in northwestern Thuria, in the nations of Valusia, Commoria, Grondar, Kamelia, Thule, and Verulia. There were probably others, but we know little of them. And it seems that these nations were in decline, with Atlanteans and Lemurians in positions of power. And there existed pre-human races, even if small. The serpent people, whom Kull would fight, were one such.

To the west of Thuria was Atlantis. It was not a high-tech civilization, but one of barbaric tribes fighting among themselves and with others. Further west were the Pictish Islands, from which the Picts, the forerunners of the Scottish-Irish, existed. There was a blood feud between the Picts and the Atlanteans. Interestingly, despite the fact the Picts are the forerunners of the Scots, artists in the comics have depicted them as looking like American Indians or Africans.

To the east of Thuria were the islands of Lemuria, where a race of pirates lived who roved around the world.

At some point after the time of Kull, a cataclysm occurred wherein Atlantis and Lemuria sank, Valusia and the other nations were destroyed as Thuria changed (lands sank into the sea or lakes, and mountains rose), and the Pictish Islands became the mountains of a new continent (the Americas). The Picts and Atlantean refugees fled to Thuria but were now stone-age savages, so civilization had to be slowly rebuilt to the time of Conan.

The Hyborian Age

The stories of Conan are set about 10,000 years ago. Thus, between the time of Kull and the cataclysm that followed him, man built the civilizations we see in Conan. Thuria still exists, comprising present-day Europe, Africa, and Asia, but it’s not in the configuration we know. Africa is missing its lower half. There is no Mediterranean Sea, etc. There will be another, lesser, cataclysm to reconfigure Thuria into the shape we know, but it’s not clear when this occurs.

The essay tells us about how those in Thuria worked to rebuild civilization into the various nations we learn of in the Conan stories. It’s interesting that many of them are similar to historical civilizations. Thus we have nations that are similar to Roman, Greek, or Egyptian civilizations.

I thought it was interesting that the essay tells of the collapse of the Hyborian civilizations due to the conflict between Picts and Atlanteans, which occurs after Conan’s time and before the next cataclysm.

Now there are other works on the Hyborian Age. In my collection is Lee Falconer‘s A Gazeteer of the Hyborian World of Conan, published by Starmont House/Borgo Press in 1977. Actually, it is by Julian May. It was issued with The Starmont Map of the Hyborian World. It has never been reprinted, and I don’t know if anyone has re-issued a map of the Hyborian world. I looked for anyone selling online without luck.

These works and others online really help you understand and appreciate the world-building that REH did for his fictional works, and they help give me a better appreciation of that world.