The Hyborian Age

The Hyborian Age
Robert E. Howard

(Nothing in this article is to be considered as an attempt to advance any
theory in opposition to accepted history. It is simply a fictional
background for a series of fiction-stories. When I began writing the
Conan stories a few years ago, I prepared this 'history' of his age and
the peoples of that age, in order to lend him and his sagas a greater
aspect of realness. And I found that by adhering to the 'facts' and spirit
of that history, in writing the stories, it was easier to visualize (and
therefore to present) him as a real flesh- and-blood character rather than
a ready-made product. In writing about him and his adventures in the
various kingdoms of his Age, I have never violated the 'facts' or spirit
of the 'history' here set down, but have followed the lines of that history
as closely as the writer of actual historical-fiction follows the lines of
actual history. I have used this 'history' as a guide in all the stories in
this series that I have written.)
Of that epoch known by the Nemedian chroniclers as the
Pre-Cataclysmic Age, little is known except the latter part, and that is
veiled in the mists of legendry. Known history begins with the waning
of the Pre- Cataclysmic civilization, dominated by the kingdoms of
Kamelia, Valusia, Verulia, Grondar, Thule and Commoria. These
peoples spoke a similar language, arguing a common origin. There
were other kingdoms, equally civilized, but inhabited by different, and
apparently older races.
The barbarians of that age were the Picts, who lived on islands far out
on the western ocean; the Adanteans, who dwelt on a small continent
between the Pictish Islands and the main, or Thurian Continent; and the
Lemurians, who inhabited a chain of large islands in the eastern
hemisphere.

There were vast regions of unexplored land. The civilized kingdoms,
though enormous in extent, occupied a comparatively small portion of
the whole planet. Valusia was the western-most kingdom of the
Thurian Continent; Grondar the eastern-most. East of Grondar, whose
people were less highly cultured than those of their kindred kingdoms,
stretched a wild and barren expanse of deserts. Among the less arid
stretches of desert, in the jungles, and among the mountains, lived
scattered clans and tribes of primitive savages. Far to the south there
was a mysterious civilization, unconnected with the Thurian culture,
and apparently pre-human in its nature. On the far-eastern shores of the
Continent there lived another race, human, but mysterious and
non-Thurian, with which the Lemurians from time to time came in
contact. They apparently came from a shadowy and nameless continent
lying somewhere east of the Lemurian Islands.
The Thurian civilization was crumbling; their armies were composed
largely of barbarian mercenaries. Picts, Atlanteans and Lemurians were
their generals, their statesmen, often their kings. Of the bickerings of
the kingdoms, and the wars between Valusia and Commoria, as well as
the conquests 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
the Pictish Islands were heaved up to form the mountain peaks of a new
continent. Sections of the Thurian Continent vanished under the waves,
or sinking, formed great inland lakes and seas. Volcanoes broke forth
and terrific earthquakes shook down the shining cities of the empires.
Whole nations were blotted out.
The barbarians fared a little better than the civilized races. The
inhabitants of the Pictish Islands were destroyed, but a great colony of
them, settled among the mountains of Valusia's southern frontier, to
serve as a buffer against foreign invasion, was untouched. The
Continental kingdom of the Atlanteans likewise escaped the common
ruin, and to it came thousands of their tribesmen in ships from the
sinking land. Many Lemurians escaped to the eastern coast of the
Thurian Continent, which was comparatively untouched. There they

were enslaved by the ancient race which already dwelt there, and their
history, for thousands of years, is a history of brutal servitude.
In the western part of the Continent, changing conditions created
strange forms of plant and animal life. Thick jungles covered the plains,
great rivers cut their roads to the sea, wild mountains were heaved up,
and lakes covered the ruins of old cities in fertile valleys. To the
Continental kingdom of the Atlanteans, from sunken areas, swarmed
myriads of beasts and savages--ape-men and apes. Forced to battle
continually for their lives, they yet managed to retain vestiges of their
former state of highly advanced barbarism. Robbed of metals and ores,
they became workers in stone like their distant ancestors, and had
attained a real artistic level, when their struggling culture came into
contact with the powerful Pictish nation. The Picts had also