history inspires the best fantasies
Religious institutions throughout history have served functional purposes. Priests heal, advise, judge, keep records, and perform important functions for the redistribution of wealth. It’s not all myths & silly rituals.
Micro-reviews from my recently-read pile: ancient marriage politics, Mediterranean dyes, Hittite architecture & whales throughout the ages.
Micro-reviews of media I consumed recently, articles about powerful women in history, and reflections on travelogues and war.
Ancient Princesses from the Levant region served as advisors, diplomats, and independent religious leaders — unlike their Egyptian counterparts.
Echoes of history reverberate through SFF, parallels that can be hard to pick up on, but which still inform how we think about the world. (published at tor.com)
A wide-ranging reflection on what I learned in January, mostly about the history of fashion, ancient infrastructure, economy and war.
The first roads were little more than game trails. Early infrastructure focused more on stopping travel than facilitating it. With civilization, though, came a need to transport information, and history...
Elissa of Carthage (commonly known as Dido, the wanderer) is one of the more fascinating examples of history becoming myth. History is rife with examples of strong women dismissed as mythology...
There’s an idea floating around that roads, aqueducts, and other large-scale civil engineering projects required Roman-era engineering. This is a false narrative. A fantasy world doesn’t need iron-age technology to...
Henry Olsen wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post about removing monuments in which he claimed: Knocking down or defacing statues of national founders or heroes not only displays ignorance...
