The Hyborian Age | Page 3

complete isolation from other races: a
wanderer into the far north returned with the news that the supposedly
deserted ice wastes were inhabited by an extensive tribe of ape-like
men, descended, he swore, from the beasts driven out of the more
habitable land by the ancestors of the Hyborians. He urged that a large
war-party be sent beyond the arctic circle to exterminate these beasts,
whom he swore were evolving into true men. He was jeered at; a small
band of adventurous young warriors followed him into the north, but
none returned.
But tribes of the Hyborians were drifting south, and as the population
increased this movement became extensive. The allowing age was an
epoch of wandering and conquest. Across the history of the world
tribes and drifts of tribes move and shift in an everchanging panorama.
Look at the world five hundred years later. Tribes of tawnyured
Hyborians have moved southward and westward, con-uenng and
destroying many of the small unclassified clans.

Absorbing the blood of conquered races, already the descendants of the
older drifts have begun to show modified racial traits, and these mixed
races are attacked fiercely by new, purer-blooded drifts, and swept
before them, as a broom sweeps debris impartially, to become even
more mixed and mingled in the tangled debris of races and tag- ends of
races.
As yet the conquerors have not come in contact with the older races. To
the southeast the descendants of the Zhemri, given impetus by new
blood resulting from admixture with some unclassified tribe, are
beginning to seek to revive some faint shadow of their ancient culture.
To the west the apish Atlanteans are beginning the long climb upward.
They have completed the cycle of existence; they have long forgotten
their former existence as men; unaware of any other former state, they
are starting the climb unhelped and unhindered by human memories.
To the south of them the Picts remain savages, apparently defying the
laws of Nature by neither progressing nor retrogressing. Far to the
south dreams the ancient mysterious kingdom of Stygia. On its eastern
borders wander clans of nomadic savages, already known as the Sons
of Shem.
Next to the Picts, in the broad valley of Zingg, protected by great
mountains, a nameless band of primitives, tentatively classified as akin
to the Shemites, has evolved an advanced agricultural system and
existence.
Another factor has added to the impetus of Hyborian drift. A tribe of
that race has discovered the use of stone in building, and the first
Hyborian kingdom has come into being--the rude and barbaric
kingdom of Hyperborea, which had its beginning in a crude fortress of
boulders heaped to repel tribal attack. The people of this tribe soon
abandoned their horse-hide tents for stone houses, crudely but mightily
built, and thus protected, they grew strong. There are few more
dramatic events in history than the rise of the rude, fierce kingdom of
Hyperborea, whose people turned abruptly from their nomadic life to
rear dwellings of naked stone, surrounded by cyclopean walls--a race
scarcely emerged from the polished stone age, who had by a freak of

chance, learned the first rude principles of architecture.
The rise of this kingdom drove forth many other tribes, for, defeated in
the war, or refusing to become tributary to their castle-dwelling
kinsmen, many clans set forth on long treks that took them halfway
around the world. And already the more northern tribes are beginning
to be harried by gigantic blond savages, not much more advanced than
ape-men.
The tale of the next thousand years is the tale of the rise of the
Hyborians, whose warlike tribes dominate the western world. Rude
kingdoms are taking shape. The tawny-haired invaders have
encountered the Picts, driving them into the barren lands of the west.
To the northwest, the descendants of the Atlanteans, climbing unaided
from apedom into primitive savagery, have not yet met the conquerors.
Far to the east the Lemurians are evolving a strange semi-civilization of
their own. To the south the Hyborians have founded the kingdom of
Koth, on the borders of those pastoral countries known as the Lands of
Shem, and the savages of those lands, partly through contact with the
Hyborians, partly through contact with the Stygians who have ravaged
them for centuries, are emerging from barbarism. The blond savages of
the far north have grown in power and numbers so that the northern
Hyborian tribes move southward, driving their kindred clans before
them. The ancient kingdom of Hyperborea is overthrown by one of
these northern tribes, which, however, retains the old name. Southeast
of Hyperborea a kingdom of the Zhemri has come into being, under the
name of Zamora. To the southwest, a tribe of Picts have invaded the
fertile valley of Zingg, conquered the agricultural people there, and
settled