I really enjoy these pieces about books, thank you. Arguably this year there have been three books on the central importance of horses to humans. There is also David Chaffetz's Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires. There are podcast episodes about all three books at thepodcastbrowser.com.
I am reading Eckart Frahm's "Assyria: the Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire", which I suspect I first learned about here or elsewhere in your blog-empire. On p. 160, I stumbled across the following statement:
"The term used for [the Greeks] by the governor [in his letters] -- and also in other Assyrian texts -- is Yamnaya or Yawnaya, that is 'Ionians,' a name from which the designation for Greeks in modern Arabic and Persian, Yunani, is derived as well."
One may imagine how this caught the eye of one of your readers!
(In the original text, the internal vowels in the word "Yunani" have a macron over them. I don't know how to do that)
Interesting (but I guess coincidental) that the Assyrian word is so similar to the word (which is originally Russian?) that we use to designate the ancestors of the Greeks (and so many others).
Great post! Just a few days ago I was reading Rodney Stark's good book on the Crusades. One chapter is on Dark Ages European vs. Moslem progress, and how Europe did better in technology despite being so much poorer. The horse collar is a big example. But it seems from your post that the horse collar went from China to Europe, skipping the Near East, and that it happened between 1000 and 1200, not earlier. I'm not sure what to make of that.
Wow. Thanks for all these excellent suggestions, Razib. So grateful!
My book consumption over the past two-ish years has been comprised almost entirely of audiobooks, and those have consisted almost entirely of escapist fluff. My brain has just not wanted to brain.
But I’m starting to read print books again, and find my craving for stuff of substance returning. This compilation will certainly be an oft-visited resource!
Hey thanks Razib, I appreciate the reply and info, but my comment was in regard to Steppe people, ‘humans’ lol. I probably caused the confusion since I was commenting on a small part of your news letter involving the latest Dan Davis video as well as your writings and podcast on the horse, which helped to trigger that thought in me. Not to mention Steppe people being one of your main fortes.
Thanks as usual for your latest news letter, as well as the history of the horse. I also want to thank you for the link to Dan Davis’s latest video. I may be stating the obvious here to people that follow this history, but something I’m often thinking about and observing, including last night when listening to your podcast on the horse, is the cultural continuity through out the Steppe. Not just in older origins, but also what I believe to be from continuing interactions and gene flow on a bigger, wider and longer lasting scale into later periods. From Northern / Western Europe and across to East, there is just to many similarities in older customs and material culture to be just simple silk road trade, all though that’s an apart of it of course. It also continues bring in to question just how far back some of these inventions and such might go back and on how big of a regional scale in there early inceptions.
I really enjoy these pieces about books, thank you. Arguably this year there have been three books on the central importance of horses to humans. There is also David Chaffetz's Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires. There are podcast episodes about all three books at thepodcastbrowser.com.
wow, thanks for that
I am reading Eckart Frahm's "Assyria: the Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire", which I suspect I first learned about here or elsewhere in your blog-empire. On p. 160, I stumbled across the following statement:
"The term used for [the Greeks] by the governor [in his letters] -- and also in other Assyrian texts -- is Yamnaya or Yawnaya, that is 'Ionians,' a name from which the designation for Greeks in modern Arabic and Persian, Yunani, is derived as well."
One may imagine how this caught the eye of one of your readers!
(In the original text, the internal vowels in the word "Yunani" have a macron over them. I don't know how to do that)
indians called the greeks 'yavanas'
Also, which Indians, i.e., do you mean that is the word in Hindi?
Interesting (but I guess coincidental) that the Assyrian word is so similar to the word (which is originally Russian?) that we use to designate the ancestors of the Greeks (and so many others).
Great post! Just a few days ago I was reading Rodney Stark's good book on the Crusades. One chapter is on Dark Ages European vs. Moslem progress, and how Europe did better in technology despite being so much poorer. The horse collar is a big example. But it seems from your post that the horse collar went from China to Europe, skipping the Near East, and that it happened between 1000 and 1200, not earlier. I'm not sure what to make of that.
Wow. Thanks for all these excellent suggestions, Razib. So grateful!
My book consumption over the past two-ish years has been comprised almost entirely of audiobooks, and those have consisted almost entirely of escapist fluff. My brain has just not wanted to brain.
But I’m starting to read print books again, and find my craving for stuff of substance returning. This compilation will certainly be an oft-visited resource!
Hey thanks Razib, I appreciate the reply and info, but my comment was in regard to Steppe people, ‘humans’ lol. I probably caused the confusion since I was commenting on a small part of your news letter involving the latest Dan Davis video as well as your writings and podcast on the horse, which helped to trigger that thought in me. Not to mention Steppe people being one of your main fortes.
Thanks as usual for your latest news letter, as well as the history of the horse. I also want to thank you for the link to Dan Davis’s latest video. I may be stating the obvious here to people that follow this history, but something I’m often thinking about and observing, including last night when listening to your podcast on the horse, is the cultural continuity through out the Steppe. Not just in older origins, but also what I believe to be from continuing interactions and gene flow on a bigger, wider and longer lasting scale into later periods. From Northern / Western Europe and across to East, there is just to many similarities in older customs and material culture to be just simple silk road trade, all though that’s an apart of it of course. It also continues bring in to question just how far back some of these inventions and such might go back and on how big of a regional scale in there early inceptions.
Thank you:)
the dog/wolf stuff seems to date before the last glacial maximum