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Paul Barnes's avatar

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.

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Razib Khan's avatar

wow, thanks for that

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marcel proust's avatar

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)

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Razib Khan's avatar

indians called the greeks 'yavanas'

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marcel proust's avatar

Also, which Indians, i.e., do you mean that is the word in Hindi?

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marcel proust's avatar

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).

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Eric Rasmusen's avatar

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.

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Stacey Seeks's avatar

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!

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Nov 12, 2024
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Razib Khan's avatar

the dog/wolf stuff seems to date before the last glacial maximum

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