Tag Archives: Ages

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Extinction Events (Special Mention)

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The famous Edwards’ Dodo painted by Roelant Savary in 1626 (after naturalist George Edwards who gave the image to the British Museum after it came into his possession)

 

 

TOP 10 EXTINCTION EVENTS (SPECIAL MENTION)

 

But wait – there’s even more extinction events!

“Estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years range from as few as five to more than twenty. These differences stem from disagreement as to what constitutes a major extinction event, and the data chosen to measure past diversity”.

So more than enough for my usual twenty special mentions, although I don’t quite go so far as twenty extinction events, as I finish up with a few wilder entries – and start with a few more basic ones.

.Speaking of which…

 

(1) EXTINCTION

 

Well, you can’t have an extinction event without extinction!

So my first special mention has to go to the basic concept of extinction, which as it turns out is not so basic after all.

Coextinction, de-extinction, ecological extinction, extinct in the wild, functional extinction, extinction debt, extinction risk, extinction threshold, extinction vortex, latent extinction risk, local extinction, pseudoextinction, quasi-extinction – more than enough for their own top ten.

 

(2) EXTINCTION CAUSES

 

Of course, the Earth getting whomped by a whopping big asteroid will do it.

But apart from that…

As I said, you can’t have an extinction event without extinction – and you can’t have extinction without causes of extinction.

So my second special mention of extinction causes naturally follows from extinction itself as my first special mention – and it turns out that causes of extinction aren’t so basic either, particularly in the Holocene.

Climate variability and change, genetic erosion, habitat destruction, human impact on the environment, invasive species, Muller’s ratchet, mutational mayhem, overabundant species, overexploitation, overshoot, paradox of enrichment – more than enough for their own top ten.

 

(3) HUMAN EXTINCTION

 

For us, this would be the big one – THE extinction event.

You could also argue that it would be the last extinction event. Sure, extinction events would still happen – at least one in the next special mention – but unless another species evolved (or visited) to measure them, then they’d be like so that Zen tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it.

Of course, one might quibble with human extinction as an extinction event, given the former by definition is the extinction of one species, contrary to the high extinction rate of the latter.

Firstly, it’s like the old quip about the unemployment rate – the unemployment rate is 100% to you if you’re the one out of a job. Ditto human extinction for us with extinction rate.

Secondly, given contemporary humanity with its geographic spread and technological resources, I’d wager that any extinction event that can take us all out would have to take out a whole lot of other species as well.

The usual discussion about human extinction is the extent to which it would arise from natural risks – or anthropogenic ones of our own making. The consensus tends to be that the former involve relatively low risk of near-term human extinction, the latter not so much.

Anyway, human extinction is a subject that could have a top ten list of its own, although it largely overlaps one of my favorite recurring subjects that could have many top ten lists – apocalypse.

 

(4) FUTURE EXTINCTION

 

The Earth isn’t done with extinction events either – we know there will be a gauntlet of extinction events in the future, the last of which will ultimately involve a 100% extinction rate for any life living on the planet.

That’s not even including “random celestial events” that “pose a global risk to the biosphere, which can result in mass extinction” – impact by comets or asteroids, near-Earth supernova, and so on.

Of the more predictable long-term impacts, the most substantial is the steady increase in the Sun’s luminosity. In about half a billion years, that will result in atmospheric carbon dioxide falling below the levels required for photosynthesis and hence the extinction of plants.

Any life that does make it past then – presumably simple or microbial life – will face an uber-greenhouse effect with runaway evaporation of the oceans at about a billion years.

Any life that persists in the isolated pockets that remain remotely hospitable for it – at the poles, underground, and so forth – will face an increasingly impossible gauntlet of extinction that will be total at some point or other, whether when the whole planet surface essentially becomes a game of the floor is lava, or when the Sun expands enough to swallow it all up.

It’s a sobering thought to think that Earth only has a window of opportunity for complex life of about a billion years or so – and that we’re presently about halfway through it. At least, that’s what Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee propose in their book The Life and Death of Planet Earth.

Of course, a billion years is a long time, but it is only a small proportion – a twelfth or so? – of the planet’s duration, and even that is punctuated by numerous extinction events.

Even if humanity gets off the planet (taking whatever other life with it), other habitable planets have the same issue – and there’s an even bigger gauntlet of cosmic extinction events to run in the wider universe…

 

(5) BACKGROUND EXTINCTION

 

Extinction is kind of like the Hulk in The Avengers film – it’s always angry.

Extinction is always there as part of the natural evolutionary process – it just hulks out with a higher rate during extinction events. For example, our present Holocene extinction rates are estimated at 100 to 1000 times higher than the background extinction rate, hence qualifying the Holocene as an extinction event.

The background extinction rate is estimated on different scales but one such scale is the lifespan of species. Apparently, on average species typically exist for 5-10 million years before going extinct, but mammal species have a higher rate as typically existing for only 1 million years.

 

(6) SILURIAN – IREVIKEN, MULDE & LAU

(433 MILLION, 427 MILLION & 424 MILLION YEARS AGO)

 

And now we come to special mentions for actual minor extinction events – events that are classified as extinction events but not, ah, extinction-y enough for the Big Five (or Six). Because let’s face it – if it’s not one done by us, the one that killed dinosaurs, or the Great Dying, I mean who cares, really?

Anyway, there were these three minor extinction events during the Silurian Period – basically evolution gunning for the trilobites again. Oh – and other marine species I don’t really know.

 

(7) CARBONIFEROUS

(305 MILLION YEARS AGO)

 

Killing trees, I guess.

But seriously, it’s described as the Carboniferous rainforest collapse – in which rainforests fragmented and shrank from their former coverage, taking their flora and fauna with them.

 

(8) OLSON’S

(273 MILLION YEARS AGO)

 

Dress rehearsal earlier in the Permian Period for the Great Dying at the end – named for the person who identified the hiatus in the fossil record.

 

(9) END CAPITANIAN

(265-259 MILLION YEARS AGO)

 

Another dress rehearsal in the Permian Period for the Great Dying, by smaller volcanic eruptions (the Emeishan Traps) than the latter (the Siberian Traps).

 

(10) CARNIAN PLUVIAL

(234-232 MILLION YEARS AGO)

 

Climactic change event in the Triassic Period, with evolutionary winners and losers – among the winners were the dinosaurs.

 

(11) TOARCHIAN

(183 MILLION YEARS AGO)

 

Extinction event in two pulses during the Jurassic Period, with the second oceanic pulse as the larger one. Didn’t really affect the dinosaurs – or the Park.

 

(12) TITHONIAN

(145 MILLION YEARS AGO)

 

Another Jurassic extinction event towards the end of that period which didn’t really affect the dinosaurs or Park – minor and selective as extinction events go.

 

(13) APTIAN

(116-117 MILLION YEARS AGO)

 

Minor oceanic extinction event in the Cretaceous Period – didn’t really affect the dinosaurs.

 

(14) CENOMANIAN-TURONIAN

(93-94 MILLION YEARS AGO)

 

Minor oceanic extinction event in the Cretaceous Period. Didn’t really affect the dinosaurs – look, you need an asteroid for that.

 

(15) EOCENE-OLIGOCENE

(33.4-33.9 MILLION YEARS AGO)

 

“Large-scale extinction and floral and faunal turnover, although it was relatively minor in comparison to the largest mass extinctions” – in the Age of Mammals but mammals didn’t seem to be much affected.

 

(16) MIDDLE MIOCENE

(14 MILLION YEARS AGO)

 

Minor extinction event of terrestrial and aquatic life from global cooling in, you guessed it, the middle of the Miocene Epoch – more a disruption than an event, hence its alternative title of the Middle Miocene disruption.

 

 

(17) PLIOCENE-PLEISTOCENE

(2 MILLION YEARS AGO)

 

Apparently also known as the Local Extinction Bubble, hypothesized as a spike in extinction for some marine life from supernovae disrupting the ozone layer. Wait a minute – when did megalodon become extinct? (Spoiler – earlier, at about 3.6 million years ago)

 

 

(18) EXTINCTION MASCOT – DODO

 

Dead as a dodo.

Okay, I admit this isn’t really an extinction event, at least for everything else that wasn’t a dodo – it sure was an extinction event for them. As I quipped for human extinction, when you’re the one going extinct, the extinction rate is 100%.

In a sense, though, it was an extinction event for more than just the dodos. This poor flightless bird in the remote island of Mauritius had the unfortunate, unenviable and ultimately unrivalled distinction of becoming an extinction mascot – iconic of our human-driven Holocene Extinction. I suppose becoming extinct so dramatically will do that.

“The extinction of the dodo less than a century after its discovery called attention to the previously unrecognised problem of human involvement in the disappearance of entire species” – the dodo “has since become a fixture in popular culture, often as a symbol of extinction and obsolescence”.

 

(19) DECLINE IN AMPHIBIAN & INSECT POPULATIONS

 

The poster children of the ongoing Holocene Extinction, not least with respect to their own entries in Wikipedia.

I first became aware of the decline in amphibian populations from David Attenborough’s Life in Cold Blood, in which he attributed it to global warming, with their vulnerability in marked contrast to reptile populations.

I became aware of the decline in insect populations from reports of the decline of insect pollinators – no, not the bees! – and of the anecdotal windscreen phenomenon, as in fewer insects smeared on windscreens.

Lack of high profile attention has been attributed to the “comparative lack of charismatic species of insects” (as opposed to mammals and birds) but the insects most affected ARE the charismatic ones – bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, dragonflies and damselflies. (Cue the pun about damsels in distress). I mean, could it not be the insects people don’t like, such as flies or mosquitoes?!

And if we’re going to have a decline in insect populations, could we at least have a matching arachnid one?!

 

 

(20) FERTILITY DECLINE (STERILE INSECT TECHNIQUE)

 

I try to reserve my twentieth special mention for my kinky (or kinkier) entry where the subject permits, so I took that personally – as a challenge when it came to extinction events.

After all, I’m fond of quipping that my preferred cause of death would be from s€xual exhaustion, so why not expand that on a grand scale to cause of extinction? Ideally, extinction from s€xual exhaustion? Now there’s an extinction event I can get behind.

Less extinction events, more s€xtinction events, amirite?

While I could (disturbingly) imagine other s€xtinction events, not all of them as pleasant, the contemporary decline in human fertility was the closest I got, circling back to human extinction – that or the sterile insect technique used to control insect populations. Funnily enough, I learnt of the latter through its most famous example used as a title for James Tiptree Jr’s short story “The Screwfly Solution” – as a scenario of human extinction (from alien invasion).

 

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Bronze Ages / Bronze Age Iceberg (Special Mention)

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Knossos women fresco – reconstruction of a Minoan fresco depicting elite Minoan women, public domain image in Wikipedia “Minoan Civilization”

 

 

TOP 10 BRONZE AGES / BRONZE AGE ICEBERG

(SPECIAL MENTION)

 

But wait – there’s more Bronze Ages!

Or at least more layers to the Bronze Age iceberg, much like the layers of Bronze Age cities archaeologists find that keep going all the way down.

So, here’s my usual twenty special mentions I like to do for each top ten list, where there’s enough entries or layers to the iceberg.

 

(1) MYTHIC BRONZE AGE

 

No, not the one that comes after the Stone Age but the one that comes after the Silver Age.

That is, in the “ages of men” in Greek mythology (according to Hesiod) – stages of progressive decline from the peak of the original Golden Age. Obviously, the Bronze Age is worse than the preceding Silver Age and Golden Age, but still better than the rock bottom to come.

While there is a popular tendency to label peak periods in history or culture as Golden Ages, you don’t see that as much for Bronze Ages. Heck, you don’t see the usage of Silver Age often – and Bronze Age even less so. The only one that comes to mind in somewhat common usage is the Bronze Age of Comics, said to succeed the Golden and Silver Ages.

 

(2) BRONZE AGE RELIGION

 

Bronze Age religion is a surprisingly prolific topic – enough for its own top ten and for its own Wikipedia list in that name.

That is because the Bronze Age played a surprisingly enduring role as the foundation for religions even today.

There’s the Bible and Near Eastern religions in general – hence Bronze Age religion can be argued to underlie the foundation of the Bible and the three major world religions that can be said to originate from it.

But it doesn’t stop there – there’s also the Bronze Age foundations of the third largest major world religion (by size), with Vedic Hinduism.

Not to mention the influence of Mycenaean and Minoan mythology or religion on classical mythology, not least on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

 

(3) URBAN BRONZE AGE

 

The Bronze Age tends to be defined by its cities, particularly in Mesopotamia. Of course, cities preceded the Bronze Age back to the Neolithic – indeed, often the same cities of the Bronze Age were continuously inhabited from then – but cities reached new heights in the Bronze Age, both literally in monumental architecture and figuratively in scale or influence.

Which leads me to…

 

(4) POLITICAL BRONZE AGE

 

Cities might have preceded the Bronze Age but political states only really came into being with all their archetypal features and infrastructure in the Bronze Age, initially as city-states or states formed by cities in their surrounding hinterland – notably in Mesopotamia.

Over time, these states got bigger or came up against other states (or just other people), which leads me to…

 

(5) IMPERIAL BRONZE AGE

 

States might be a definitive feature of the Bronze Age but even more so are empires, as states conquered or controlled other states or people.

Which leads me to…

 

(6) CLUB OF GREAT POWERS

 

The Bronze Age not only saw the emergence of politics in states or empires, but also saw the emergence of international politics in the concentration of power in, and balance of power between, a few predominant empires – something that has remained with us ever since.

In the case of the Late Bronze Age, that has been labelled as the Club of Great Powers – Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, the Hittite Empire, and the Mitanni.

Admittedly, the Wikipedia article of that name notes that it comes largely or entirely from a single source – but I like it, particularly as it is one that could be used throughout history ever since, even today. Also, I occasionally like to imagine it as a metaphor for club as a weapon, used by great powers to club lesser powers into submission.

Speak softly and carry a big club, as it were.

 

(7) SEA PEOPLES

 

Well, you can’t have Bronze Age special mentions without the Sea Peoples, those seaborne barbarians hypothesized to be behind the Bronze Age Collapse.

Which is pretty impressive considering how much about them is hypothetical.

 

 

(8) MIDDLE BRONZE AGE COLD EPOCH & BRONZE AGE OPTIMUM

 

A period of unusually cold climate in the North Atlantic for 300 years from 1800 BC to 1500 BC, essentially from a volcanic winter scenario from various volcanic eruptions – including one of my favorites, the volcanic eruption that destroyed the Minoan island of Thera.

It was followed by the Bronze Optimum of, well, optimal climate from 1500 BC to 900 BC.

 

(9) COPPER & TIN AGE

 

Yes, it’s an oxymoron that the Bronze Age would also be the Copper and Tin Age, given that bronze is an alloy of those two metals – although I understand there’s also an arsenical bronze, which substitutes arsenic for tin and sounds nasty.

I also understand that tin was the bottleneck for bronze in the Bronze Age, as copper is relatively plentiful and easy to access – so that sources of tin were highly prized.

Which leads me to…

 

(10) MERCANTILE BRONZE AGE

 

No doubt trade existed from the Stone Age, at least when inter-tribal interaction didn’t involve killing each other – but the Bronze Age saw the emergence of trade in more consistent and developed form, driven by trade for the tin required for its namesake metal.

 

(11) MONUMENTAL BRONZE AGE

 

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

 

Among the most enduring aspects of the Bronze Age is its monumental art and architecture. Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Egypt created or set the standard features of imperial chic and palace states, including monumental architecture – which was then imitated by Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations.

 

(12) LITERATE BRONZE AGE

 

Even more enduring than the monumental art and architecture of the Bronze Age is its invention of writing, which has been a fundamental aspect of civilization or society ever since.

Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs are the definitive writing systems of the Bronze Age – indeed, they are two of the four independent inventions of writing that are most commonly recognized. The third, Chinese characters, also dates to the Bronze Age China – the Shang Dynasty in particular – while the fourth, the Meso-American writing systems, is the only outlier from the Bronze Age as American archaeology doesn’t include a Bronze Age.

Other scripts were developed by Bronze Age civilizations, but as I understand it, they arose from or were influenced by one of the big three Bronze Age writing systems, particularly Sumerian cuneiform or Egyptian hieroglyphs – ultimately giving rise to the alphabet through the Phoenicians to the Greeks and Latins.

 

(13) LITERARY BRONZE AGE

 

From the literate Bronze Age, we inevitably get the literary Bronze Age – Bronze Age or ancient works of literature as we would recognize it, beyond mere records of government.

The two most famous works of Bronze Age literature – which featured as my two top entries in my Top 10 Bronze Ages – firstly the Bible and secondly Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, are more usually considered to be Iron Age literature writing of the Bronze Age, which may not preclude some components or parts that originate from the Bronze Age itself.

Otherwise, the most prominent works of Bronze Age literature would be Sumerian and Egyptian – with the Epic of Gilgamesh foremost from the former (and indeed the Bronze Age in general) and the Book of the Dead foremost from the latter.

 

 

(14) LEGAL BRONZE AGE

 

From the literate Bronze Age we not only get the literary Bronze Age but the legal Bronze Age – the definitive written codification of laws. Setting aside the religious legal codes in the Bible, the most famous Bronze Age written codification of law is the legal code of Hammurabi.

 

 

(15) BRONZE SWORD AGE

 

If the spear is the definitive weapon of the Stone Age, the sword is the definitive weapon of the Bronze Age and of course endured as the definitive weapon of hand-to-hand or melee combat thereafter.

While you could have bladed stone weapons, they were in the nature of axes or daggers (or arrow or spear heads) – the invention of swords depending on the smelting of metal as occurring in the Bronze Age.

 

(16) BRONZE CHARIOT AGE

 

If the sword is the definitive weapon of the Bronze Age, the chariot is definitive of Bronze Age warfare.

Or more precisely Bronze Age mobile warfare, as chariots effectively played the role of cavalry – actual cavalry being largely precluded by the limitations of the Bronze Age, although there are some indications of horseback riding among military elites.

“The power of mobility given by mounted units was recognized early on, but was offset by the difficulty of raising large forces and by the inability of horses (then mostly small) to carry heavy armor”.

Hence – the Bronze Age was the age of chariot warfare “The Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC is likely to have been the largest chariot battle ever fought, involving over 5,000 chariots.”

Although chariots continued to be used in the Iron Age, that age saw their military capabilities superseded by actual cavalry.

 

(17) BRONZE MIRROR AGE

 

I was tempted to call this the Cosmetic Bronze Age, since the use of cosmetics arose or at least given its definitive form in Egypt during it (albeit probably with some predecessors) – something which is probably not unrelated to the Bronze Mirror Age.

I find it intriguing that up until the Bronze Age, humans almost entirely went about not knowing how they looked – at least for their faces.

Sure, they knew how other humans looked but an individual human did not know how their own face looked, except perhaps by way of artistic representation by someone else.

And sure, there were reflective surfaces or objects capable of being used as mirrors in the preceding Stone Age. Pools of still water for one – I like to attribute the classical myth of Narcissus entranced by his own reflection in water as residual folklore memory harking back to this. Reflective or polished stone surfaces, particularly obsidian, was another.

However, the Bronze Age was where mirrors really came into their own, albeit not of the same quality or commonplace usage as subsequently. Indeed, so much so that there is a Wikipedia article for bronze mirror.

“By the Bronze Age, most cultures were using mirrors made from polished discs of bronze, copper, silver, or other metals”.

It is also tempting to think that this feature of the Bronze Age, by allowing more general accessibility to our own reflections and thereby appearance, may have been more enduring and far-reaching than any other feature of the Bronze Age, for better or for worse. The Mirror Revolution is still very much with us today!

 

(18) BULL & BRONZE AGE

 

Yes, I was going for a somewhat esoteric pun on bull and bear markets, but for the Bronze Age – but I’m joking and I’m serious.

The serious part is that, while humanity seems to have always had some reverence for bulls – at least going by their prevalence in Paleolithic Stone Age art – sacred bulls really seem to have reached new heights in the Bronze Age, aptly enough for my bull market pun.

The Bull of Heaven in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The multiple sacred bulls worshipped in Egypt.

The bulls of Vedic Hinduism, which may well have influenced the persistence of sacred bulls or cows in India.

The various bulls of the Bible – and the Golden Calf for that matter.

The recurrence of bulls in classical mythology.

And perhaps above all, the bulls of Crete or Minoan civilization – including the ritual practice of bull-leaping – which is reflected in the Minotaur of classical mythology.

 

(19) BRONZEPUNK (SANDALPUNK)

 

Like Stonepunk for the Stone Age, Bronzepunk is the retro-futuristic cyberpunk derivative for the Bronze Age.

Sandalpunk is probably the better term as usually it amalgamates the Bronze Age with the Iron Age, particularly Greece and Rome for the latter.

Technically, Bronzepunk is SF extrapolating from the Bronze or Iron Age as the breakthrough point for more advanced technology – say, for example, an Industrial Revolution based in Greece or Rome, given this historical period saw some rudimental development of steam engines and also industrial-style production in Rome.

“It blends speculative continuity and technological anachronism, imagining worlds where empires like Rome, Mycenae, Ancient Athens, the Hittites, Ancient Egypt, and the like, and the like, never collapsed, instead evolving into futuristic superpowers while preserving their ancient cultural identity.”

It might also be argued to extend to SF where a future technological society adapts, imitates or reverts to Bronze or Iron Age cultural aesthetic or social structure.

Or for that matter, a Bronze or Iron Age setting with fantasy elements.

 

(20) ER0TIC BRONZE AGE – HIEROS GAMOS & SACRED PR0STITUTI0N

 

Bow-chicka-wow-wow – as usual, it’s my kinky (or kinkier) entry for my final or twentieth special mention.

And when it comes to kink, thy cup runneth over in the Bronze Age. There’s the Trojan War in the Iliad – a war fought over a woman, but what a woman! There are those topless Minoan girls and the slinky Egyptian ones, the latter lithe and svelte in their form-fitting dresses, with their golden skin and painted eyes who would not look out of place as supermodels on a modern catwalk. As Camille Paglia quipped, ancient Egypt invented style.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Mesopotamia comes out on top for Bronze Age kink – with its hieros gamos or sacred marriage between kings of cities and the high priestesses of Inanna or Ishtar, consummated with gusto.

And there’s the controversial topic of sacred pr0stituti0n – also termed temple pr0stituti0n, cult pr0stituti0n, or religious pr0stituti0n (or sacred s€x or sacred s€xual rites where no payment was involved), “purported rites consisting of paid intercourse performed in the context of religious worship, possibly as a form of fertility rite or divine marriage (hieros gamos)”.

 

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Bronze Ages / Bronze Age Iceberg

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Gold death-mask known as the Mask of Agamemnon from Mycenae, Greece 1550 BC, photograph by Xuan Che used as image in Wikipedia “Bronze Age” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

 

 

TOP 10 BRONZE AGES / BRONZE AGE ICEBERG

 

After the Stone, comes the Bronze – and my Top 10 Bronze Ages!

Yes, it’s another one of my (mostly) tongue in cheek top ten lists where I look at a subject which has a fundamental continuity or unity, but which can also be broken up into distinct parts or perspectives. Alternatively, you can think of it as my Bronze Age iceberg meme.

I could have argued for distinct Bronze Ages. While the focus of the Bronze Age tends to be Europe and western Asia, it occurred in different ways even within that focus, let alone the different times or regional variations throughout the world. I could have at least argued for the usual three-part demarcation of the Bronze Age into Early, Middle and Late Bronze Ages.

But no – it’s (mostly) more fun as different levels or parts of my Bronze Age iceberg.

As such, like my other top ten lists for “ages”, this will be more one of my shallow dip top ten lists – with shorter entries – than my deep dive top ten lists on other subjects.

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

(1) BIBLICAL BRONZE AGE – CANAAN

 

The Bronze Age Dreaming – and foremost cultural artefact of the Bronze Age in Western culture.

Well, not exactly – it’s the Iron Age dreaming of the Bronze Age, the Bronze Age preceding the kingdoms of Israel and Judah which emerged in the power vacuum left by the collapsing or retreating Bronze Age great powers before being swallowed up again once more by new great powers.

God is bronze – or Bronze Age. I remember a passage in the Old Testament where his divine war-winning power was stymied by iron chariots. (Looking it up it’s in the Book of Judges 1:19, which implies that God could not drive out the Canaanites with their chariots of iron – iron chariots pop up in a few references in that book and the preceding Book of Joshua).

 

(2) CLASSICAL BRONZE AGE – MYCENAE & TROY

 

The other Bronze Age Dreaming apart from the Bible – and other foremost cultural artefact of the Bronze Age in Western culture with Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

Well, again not exactly – it’s the Iron Age dreaming of the Bronze Age, since Homer as well as the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey are usually dated to the Iron Age. The historicity of the Trojan War is also an open question, although often identified as part of or leading up to the Late Bronze Age Collapse.

Speaking of which…

 

(3) BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE

 

You didn’t think I was going to have a Top 10 Bronze Ages without featuring the Bronze Age Collapse or more precisely Late Bronze Age Collapse, did you?

The Bronze Age Collapse – the widespread societal collapse of Mediterranean Bronze Age civilization in the 12th century BC, argued to be worse than the collapse of the western Roman Empire or even argued to be the worst case of societal collapse in human history. A dozen ancient civilizations collapsed or declined – “Almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again.”

 

(4) EGYPTIAN BRONZE AGE

 

Egypt would have to be hands down the most prominent Bronze Age civilization, thanks to its enduring monumental art or architecture and the equally enduring fascination with it in Western popular culture.

Also like my quip about God in the Biblical Bronze Age, Egypt was bronze – or more precisely, Bronze Age Egypt was peak Egypt. It didn’t too well in the Iron Age, falling to the Assyrians and succeeding great powers after them – as Egypt was increasingly not one of those great powers after the Bronze Age.

 

(5) MESOPOTAMIAN BRONZE AGE

 

The archetypal Bronze Age civilization – the various river valley city-states, states and empires of Mesopotamia.

 

(6) MINOAN BRONZE AGE

 

The Bronze Age’s model matriarchy – and topless too! Or in the parlance of social media – Minoan mommy milkers!

Or not – we just don’t know, although certainly some archaeological evidence suggests it.  The Minoan scripts have not been fully deciphered and hence we do not have the Minoans in their own words, only what we interpret of them through their art and architecture they left behind for archaeologists.

However, that hasn’t stopped Minoan civilization being mythologized or held up as a model matriarchy from Arthur Evans onwards and not coincidentally, more broadly a model society – from Robert Graves through Fritz Leiber (influenced by Graves) to David Graeber.

 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

(7) HITTITE BRONZE AGE

 

It may not have the prominence of Egypt or Mesopotamia (despite some fame for the Battle of Kadesh it fought against the former) but the Hittites or Hittite Empire deserves a place in any Bronze Age top ten.

Apart from being one of the major Bronze Age civilizations, the Hittites feature prominently in both of those two foremost cultural artefacts of the Bronze Age in Western culture – the Bible and the epic poems of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

The Hittites are frequently referenced by name in the Bible, although there is substantial debate about whether or to what extent the Biblical Hittites correspond to the Bronze Age Hittites and their successors.

The Hittites are less obviously referenced by Homer. That reference is with Troy itself, which is often seen as or argued to be a city within a confederation that was effectively a Hittite satellite state.

Of course, given the Roman myths of their Trojan origin, wouldn’t that make the Roman Empire…the neo-Hittite Empire?! It’s even more ironic when you think that for a large part of its history, the eastern Roman Empire had a similar geographic area to the Hittite Empire.

 

(8) INDUS VALLEY BRONZE AGE

 

The Indus Valley Civilization features prominently in the Bronze Age of my imagination, with the mystique of its two leading cities, Harappa (for which the Indus Valley Civilization and its inhabitants are alternatively named as Harappan) and Mohenjo-daro.

That and the famous Dancing Girl statue from the latter, because you can never have too many dancing girls. She’s nude too.

 

(9) EUROPEAN BRONZE AGE

 

Usually eclipsed by the more prominent Aegean Bronze Age (of Greek and Minoan civilizations), the rest of Europe also had its Bronze Age, across a diverse array of cultures and span of time through at least the entire second millennium BC, if not usually before and after as well.

 

(10) CHINESE BRONZE AGE

 

The usage of Bronze Age has been transferred to the archaeology of China from that of western Eurasia – not always smoothly or without debate as to its demarcation, but such that it usually has included two imperial dynasties, the Shang Dynasty and the Zhou Dynasty

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Ice Ages / Ice Age Iceberg (Special Mention)

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Iceberg in the Arctic with its underside exposed as photographed by AWeith – Wikipedia “Iceberg” licensed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

 

TOP 10 ICE AGES / ICE AGE ICEBERG (SPECIAL MENTION)

 

Alright stop, collaborate, and listen – ice is back with a brand new invention.

There’s even more Ice Age iciness, with the usual twenty special mentions for my Top 10 Ice Ages.

As usual, these special mentions are, dare I say it, more of an Ice Ace iceberg, as I stretch the category of ice age well beyond any geological or scientific classification to all things ice or icy whether scientific, historic, cosmic or mythic – getting weirder and wilder the deeper I go…

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

(1) IMPACT WINTER

 

“The hypothesized prolonged period of cold weather due to the impact of a large asteroid or comet on the Earth’s surface”.

Obviously, the immediate impact is very hot – at the point of impact. We’re talking the “enormous amount of dust, ash and other material” thrown up into the atmosphere from the impact and its aftermath (including firestorms or widespread fires from the impact), which then blocks out heat and light from the Sun, causing temperatures to drop dramatically.

Perhaps the most famous (and probable) impact winter is hypothesized as that from the “dino-buster” asteroid impact in the K-T extinction event that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. And yes – I know it’s called K-Pg now but you’re going to need another one of those before you pry the name K-T from my cold, extinct hands.

 

(2) VOLCANIC WINTER

 

As for impact winter but this time the impact is coming from inside the Earth! That is, from “a reduction in global temperatures caused by droplets of sulfuric acid obscuring the Sun and raising Earth’s albedo (increasing the reflection of solar radiation) after a large, sulfur-rich, particularly explosive volcanic eruption”.

There’s been quite a few of these – they are hypothesized to lie behind the Late Antique Little Ice Age and Little Ice Age, at least in part – but again perhaps the most famous was that from the Toba supervolcanic eruption 74,000 years ago, sometimes hypothesized as the Toba catastrophe event to have pushed humans to the brink of extinction reduced to potentially as few as 1,000 members of their species.

 

(3) FIMBULWINTER

 

In Norse mythology, the winter of the end of the world – the immediate prelude to Ragnarok.

“Fimbulwinter is three successive winters, when snow comes in from all directions, without any intervening summer. Innumerable wars follow.”

Apparently, the myth might originate in the volcanic winter of 536 AD (part of the Late Antique Little Ice Age) or even earlier climate change at the end of the Nordic Bronze Age.

More broadly, I use Fimbulwinter as representative of mythic winter – and winter in mythology or religion.

 

(4) FANTASY WINTER

 

Ice Ages or worlds of ice in fantasy & SF, including fantasy or SF set in the Ice Age or ice ages proper (although let’s face it, we’re talking the Pleistocene rather than any other ice age on our planet) – which are surprisingly prolific.

Narnia’s perpetual winter enchanted by the White Witch. Winter is coming in A Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones – as well as the White Walkers as the embodiment of ice or an ice age.

Worlds of ice in SF, perhaps most famously Hoth in Star Wars – although my personal favorite remains Fritz Leiber’s A Pail of Air, where our own world is utterly frozen after it has become a rogue planet after being torn away from the Sun by a passing “dark star”.

 

(5) GENERAL WINTER

 

General winter sounds like a good term for an ice age but no – I’m referring to General Winter, the nickname given to the personification of winter as a factor in military history or war, typically as a defensive buffer or force multiplier and particularly in Russia.

Winter famously contributed “to military failures of several invasions of Russia and the Soviet Union” – perhaps most famously in Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and the Second World War, albeit often overstated for the latter with the common adage that Germany was defeated by the Russian winter.

Ironically, General Winter may be outranked in Russia or the Soviet Union by General Mud, albeit closely related, from the muddy season or “rasputitsa” of autumn rains and spring thaws – an irony best illustrated by the German armed forces initially welcoming the onset of winter in 1941 for ending the rasputitsa season.

More broadly, I use General Winter as representative of winter warfare or winter war, including the Winter War called as such between Finland and the Soviet Union, as well as the impact of winter or cold weather on military history in general. The infamous Crossing of the Rhine for the Germanic invasion of the Roman Empire on 31 December in 406 AD – although that the Rhine was frozen, making the crossing easier, is a hypothesis.

 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

(6) SNOWBALL EARTH

 

Okay, this is something of a cheat as Snowball Earth is a hypothesis that during one or more of Earth’s glacial periods, the Earth’s surface was “nearly entire frozen with no liquid oceanic or surface water exposed to the atmosphere”. I just like the name so couldn’t resist it for its own entry in my Top 10 Ice Ages.

There’s a less frozen version proposed as Slushball Earth “with a thin equatorial band of open (or seasonally open) water”.

Usually proposed for the Sturtian glacial period in the Neoproterozoic Era, as well as the Marinoan glacial period – both aptly enough within the period in that era called Cryogenian.

 

(7) LATE ANTIQUE LITTLE ICE AGE

 

A cooling period in the fifth and sixth centuries AD, hypothesized as a “volcanic winter” (more about that in special mentions) coinciding with three large volcanic eruptions and contributing to the decline of the Roman Empire – contrasting with the Roman Warm Period. So the decline and fall of the Roman Empire was caused by…global cooling?

 

(8) LITTLE ICE AGE – GREAT FROST & YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER

 

A period of regional cooling, particulary in the North Atlantic, variously proposed from the 16th century (but also as early as 1300) to the 19th century (about 1850) with several causes proposed for it – contrasting with the Medieval Warm Period.

Within the Little Ice Age, there’s the Great Frost – for the winter of 1708-1709, the coldest European winter for the past 500 years.

Also within the Little Ice Age, albeit towards the tail end, there’s the Year Without a Summer in 1816 – which was exactly what it says on the tin with the coldest summer temperatures on record in Europe between 1766 and 2000, usually identified as a volcanic winter event from the eruption of Mount Tambora (located in modern Indonesia) in 1815.

 

(9) NUCLEAR WINTER

 

As for impact or volcanic winter but this time we do it, almost making you proud of human achievement – “the severe and prolonged global climactic cooling effect that is hypothesized to occur after widespread urban firestorms following a large scale nuclear war”.

 

(10) BIG FREEZE & HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE

 

Yes, there’s an Ice Age for the entire universe – the Big Freeze or Heat Death of the Universe, “a scientific hypothesis regarding the ultimate fate of the universe” – with the universe approaching absolute zero (or alternatively maximum entropy) over a very long timescale (so long as to be almost eternity).

Speaking of absolute zero…

 

(11) ABSOLUTE ZERO

 

The ultimate Ice Age state of reality – and by ice, we’re talking the solid state of gases, not water. Water freezes to ice at 0 degrees Celsius – absolute zero is 0 degrees Kelvin or -217.15 degrees Celsius.

It’s also impossible – while absolute zero can be approached, it can never be reached, although modern science can come pretty damn close (in units of picokelvin or one trillionth of a kelvin).

 

(12) SPACE

 

We already live in a cosmic Ice Age so to speak – space, which has an average or baseline temperature only slightly above absolute zero at 2.7 degrees Kelvin, apparently from the background radiation leftover from the Big Bang. Talk about running on fumes!

However, the actual temperature of space can vary depending on neighboring bodies, obviously such as stars.

 

(13) ASTROPHYSICS ICE LINE

 

Even our immediate stellar environment – the solar system, albeit itself incomprehensibly vast compared to Earth – is mostly an ice age, outside the so-called ice line (or frost line or snow line) in astrophysics.

It always strikes me how narrow the sweet spot or temperate habitable zone around our Sun (or any star) is – with our planet’s orbit obviously in it and even then it gets ice. In fairness, Mars is also in it – as the only other such planet “where liquid water can exist on the surface”. Otherwise, the ice line kicks in at 5 astronomical units – 1 astronomical unit is the average distance of Earth from the Sun – from Jupiter onwards.

Speaking of ice lines (or snow lines or frost lines)…

 

(14) POLES & MOUNTAINS

 

The ice line in astrophysics is borrowed from the similar ice line on Earth itself – or rather ice lines, as the ice lines for both poles (north and south, Arctic and Antarctic) and for sufficiently high mountains which have the same effect (through their height to where our atmosphere is thinner).

And yes – the ice lines mark the parts of our planet that are in an ice age, or rather the areas of glaciation for our present ice age, while the rest of the planet is in an interglacial period of the ice age.

That’s essentially the defining characteristic of an ice age – that parts of the planet are in glaciation – sometimes stated as icehouse Earth, as opposed to greenhouse Earth for which there is no glaciation, as in other geological periods (and as the argument goes, increasingly for our own with global warming).

 

(15) POLAR DESERTS & OCEANS

 

It’s always fascinated me that those regions of the Earth that fall under an ice cap climate – where no monthly mean temperature exceeds 0 degrees Celsius – have rainfalls low enough to qualify as deserts, although they usually are distinguished from true deserts. Hence, most of the interior of Antarctica is polar desert and it is the driest continent on Earth, even more so than the usual suspect (and next driest continent) Australia. I would have thought that polar deserts are relatively more common during ice ages.

Equally, it’s always fascinated me that the biome of Antarctica is predominantly marine – while the continent itself is mostly dead, its seas and coastline. The same can be said of the Arctic proper, only more so as it is entirely marine – such that the polar bear is classified as a marine mammal.

For that matter, there’s the deep sea or 90% of the volume of the ocean – effectively a oceanic ice age of itself, with consistent temperature of 0-3 degrees Celsius.

 

X-TIER (WEIRD / WILD TIER)

 

(16) GREAT FLOOD

 

Or as it might be called, the Great Thaw.

After the ice comes the thaw. Flood or deluge myths – including that of Atlantis – are sometimes attributed to the rise of sea levels from melting glacial ice at the end of the Last Glacial Period about 11,700 years ago

 

(17) FROZEN UNDERWORLD – HEL & HELL

 

The eternal ice age!

It’s not surprising that the underworld of Norse mythology – Hel or Helheim – was depicted as cold or frozen.

What is more surprising is for the Hell we’re more familiar with from Christian belief and popular imagination to depicted as cold or frozen rather than the usual archetype of the fires of hell. For hell to be frozen seems an oxymoron – after all, it’s where we get idioms like it will be a cold day in hell or when hell freezes over (invoking impossibility) and people wanting ice water in hell.

And yet that is how Dante, in the Inferno part of his Divine Comedy, depicted the deepest level of hell, reserved for traitors as the worst sinners and including Satan himself.

Not sure if that’s related to the supernatural cold spots – often causing breath to frost – associated with ghosts or worse.

 

(18) WINTER

 

Now is the winter of our discontent.

The seasonal ice age we have every year – and as such used as a metaphor, usually with associations with such things as discontent or the end of life with old age or death.

Speaking of which…

 

(19) PERSONAL ICE AGE

 

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

It’s everyone’s personal ice age, where everything gets frozen over – old age and death, for example, or depression and dark periods in life for which there is some possibility of a thaw.

And speaking of which

 

(20) S€XUAL ICE AGE

 

Yes – it’s time for my usual kinky entry as my final or twentieth special mention where the subject permits. I wouldn’t have thought that the subject of ice ages would have been open to kink – or in this case an absence of kink – but I just can’t resist the common usage of frigid for lack of sexual response (particularly in women) for the wider connotations of one’s own private s€xual ice age for lack of activity or response.

 

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Ice Ages

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Ice Age Earth, artist’s impression of the Earth at Pleistocene glacial maximum by Ittiz – Wikipedia “Ice Age” licensed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 

 

TOP 10 ICE AGES

 

Ice, ice, baby – and a shallow dip top ten on the spot for my Top 10 Ice Ages!

As I said in my entry for Ice Age in my Top 10 Ages, there have been a number of ice ages in the history of the planet such that I could compile a top ten of them, albeit I have to stretch it to get to ten since there are five or six major ice ages. (Not so much for special mentions, where I can get weirder and wilder with the subject, in what, aptly enough might be called my Ice Age iceberg).

So here they are (with all of them ranking as B-tier or high tier, with the exception of the top entry as A-tier or top tier)

 

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

(1) LATE CENOZOIC – QUARTERNARY (PLEISTOCENE)

 

No surprise here – the Ice Age, or the ice age everyone thinks of when they think of an ice age.

The most recent one – indeed, the one we’re stil in, albeit an intergalacial period of it. Hence in popular culture and usage the term Ice Age usually refers to the most recent glacial period within the larger ice age – the Pleistocene.

The one that began about 2.58 million years ago – the one with mammalian megafauna such as mammoths. And us – indeed, the Ice Age largely coincides with the (Upper) Stone Age (or Paleolithic), all the way back to our earliest hominin ancestors. We hunted the mammoth and all that.

 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

(2) LATE PALEOZOIC – KAROO

 

The next most recent Ice Age before our own – only 360 to 255 million years ago, preceding the dinosaurs (which first appeared about 243 million years ago). Also the most silly sounding name for an ice age with Karoo.

 

(3) EARLY PALEOZOIC – ANDEAN-SAHARAN

 

460 to 420 million years ago – life on land was just getting started.

 

(4) NEOPROTEROZOIC – STURTIAN, MARINOAN, GASKIERS & BAYKONURIAN

 

An ice age or series of ice ages from 720 to 635 million years ago (with encores 580 and 547 million years ago). Arguably this ice or these ice ages should outrank all others for a reason you’ll see in another entry on this top ten, but there wasn’t much life around to see it as it was just multicellular life getting started in the seas

 

(5) PALEOPROTEROZOIC – HURONIAN

 

Ice age – or at least three ice ages – approximately 2.5 to 2.2 billion years ago. Not much around to see it though with just cellular life

 

(6) MESOARCHEAN – PONGOLA

 

Oldest known ice age 2.9 to 2.78 billion years or so. Even less around to see it with microbian life.

 

(7) SNOWBALL EARTH

 

Okay, this is something of a cheat as Snowball Earth is a hypothesis that during one or more of Earth’s glacial periods, the Earth’s surface was “nearly entire frozen with no liquid oceanic or surface water exposed to the atmosphere”. I just like the name so couldn’t resist it for its own entry in my Top 10 Ice Ages.

There’s a less frozen version proposed as Slushball Earth “with a thin equatorial band of open (or seasonally open) water”.

Usually proposed for the Sturtian or Marinoan glacial periods in the Neoproterozoic Era, aptly enough within the period in that era called Cryogenian.

 

(8) LATE ANTIQUE LITTLE ICE AGE

 

A cooling period in the fifth and sixth centuries AD, hypothesized as a “volcanic winter” (more about that in special mentions) coinciding with three large volcanic eruptions and contributing to the decline of the Roman Empire – contrasting with the Roman Warm Period. So the decline and fall of the Roman Empire…was due to global cooling?

 

(9) LITTLE ICE AGE

 

A period of regional cooling, particulary in the North Atlantic, variously proposed from the 16th century (but also as early as 1300) to the 19th century (about 1850) with several causes proposed for it – contrasting with the Medieval Warm Period.

 

(10) NEXT GLACIAL PERIOD

 

We’re still in the Ice Age (the Quarternary Ice Age), just an intergalacial period – and some estimates are that we’re overdue for another glacial period, with human impact “now seen as possibly extending what would already be an unusually long warm period.”

 

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Dark Ages (Special Mention)

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After the destruction comes the desolation – The Course of Empire: Desolation (1836) – fifth of a series of five paintings by Thomas Cole (in public domain)

 

 

TOP 10 DARK AGES (SPECIAL MENTION)

 

Hello darkness my old friend – there’s even more Dark Age darkness, with the usual twenty special mentions for my Top 10 Dark Ages.

As usual, it’s more of a Dark Age iceberg as I look beyond the historiographical usage of the term to various aspects or connotations of the Dark Age or Dark Ages – getting weirder and wilder the deeper and darker I go…

 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

 

(1) SOCIETAL COLLAPSE

 

The defining characteristic that most people would associate with the Dark Age, or indeed anything that might be described as a dark age – particularly in combination with the loss or scarcity of historical records that societal collapse typically involves. I suppose the only distinction people might draw between the term of dark age and the concept of societal collapse is that the former arguably involves a society of some historical prominence, geographic range, and chronological duration prior to its collapse.

‘Nuff said, really, except that the concept or phenomenon of societal collapse probably deserves its own top ten list (or lists) and not simply as an offshoot of my Top 10 Dark Ages.

 

(2) POST-APOCALYPTIC

 

Well now, most people would see post-apocalyptic as synonymous for the society or whatever’s left of it after the societal collapse. After all, apocalypse or apocalyptic have become synonymous with societal collapse – at best that is, since at worst they are synonymous with extinction events or destruction on a planetary scale. So post-apocalyptic is essentially synonymous with a dark age – and the Dark Age itself can readily be described as post-apocalyptic, I would presume by reference to the Apocalypse by some living in it.

Of course, probably thanks to both science and science fiction, we tend to use the term post-apocalyptic by reference to some contemporary or future apocalypse rather than a historical one. In which case, regression to a new dark age would seem the best case given the apocalyptic scenarios we face – certainly Einstein saw the outcome of World War Three as regression to a new stone age.

 

(3) FEUDAL

 

Usually seen as the defining characteristic of the European Dark Age – the feudal economy and society – and often by extension to dark ages projected into other parts of the past or the future.

 

(4) PRIMAL – STATE OF NATURE

 

Alternatively, the defining characteristic of the Dark Age or at least a dark age is often seen as a reversion to the primal state of (human) nature conjectured by Hobbes – the war of all against all, in which the life of man is nasty, poor, brutish, and short:

“In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

For that matter, the term dark age might well apply to the primal state of humanity in its prehistory. The Stone Age is the Dark Age – the Bronze Age too, for that matter. Of course, the Stone Age doesn’t so much reflect societal collapse as precede the formation of society itself to collapse, although the two resemble each other – and it doesn’t get much more lacking in historical record than prehistory, another point to invoke the Stone Age as Dark Age.

 

(5) PRE-INDUSTRIAL – MALTHUSIAN

 

Ultimately, I think that there is a strong argument to consider everything prior to industrialization and modern technology as a dark age, given the vast improvements in almost every metric for our standard of living and quality of life since – indeed, what might be called a Malthusian dark age, given the Malthusian trap humanity found itself in beforehand, such that most, if not all, improvements in material conditions or quality of life were swallowed up by the resulting population growth.

During this pre-industrial or Malthusian dark age, it seems at at best humanity mostly was treading water with its head barely above the surface, so to speak – and at worst, treading water below the surface.

 

(6) BARBARIANS AT THE GATES

 

Up there with societal collapse as the defining characteristic that most people would associate with dark ages, as most people associate barbarians at the gates – being overrun by barbarian, external or internal – as at least a symptom of societal collapse, when not actually the cause of it.

It certainly is associated by most people with the Dark Age, that is the European Dark Age and the fall of the Roman Empire. Interestingly, however, that is a matter of some debate between historians. Some historians argue that it was more peaceful transition rather than violent fall. Even when it is accepted to be a fall, there remains the perennial debate whether it was from external forces – the proverbial barbarians at the gates – or from its own internal decline.

It also tends to be associated with contemporary or future post-apocalyptic dark age scenarios, as in the Mad Max film franchise.

Interestingly, only some of my Top 10 Dark Ages involved barbarians at the gates – the European Dark Age (and sub-Roman Britain), the Bronze Age Collapse (and Greek Dark Ages), and the Byzantine Dark Age.

 

(7) VESTIGIAL EMPIRE

 

Up there with barbarians at the gates as the defining characteristic of the Dark Age or European Dark Age – the vestigial empire being the Roman Empire.

Imperial or political state collapse, whether that state is left shrunken or in remnants, tends to accompany societal collapse and hence tends to be a recurring characteristic of dark ages in general, when not actually definitive of them.

 

(8) CHURCH MILITANT

 

Something of a dead horse historical trope, there is or at least was a recurring association with the Dark Age or European Dark Age with an ascendant Church effectively exercising a monopoly over the human mind or imagination – and actively suppressing cultural or scientific learning or advancement. Sometimes that association is to the extent that the Church effectively caused or prolonged the Dark Age.

Fortunately, history has marched on but it remains something of an enduring force in popular culture or imagination, such that an ascendant Church or something like it often tends to feature in the post-apocalyptic dark ages of fantasy or SF.

 

(9) PLAGUE

 

Plague tends to recur as symptom or cause of the societal collapse that is a defining characteristic of dark ages – even the Dark Age, where the triple whammy of the Antonine Plague, the Cyprian Plague, and the Plague of Justinian played their part in the collapse of the Roman Empire, possibly even the decisive part.

If the plague is big and bad enough, it can readily overwhelm society to the point of societal collapse or close to it. While I would hesitate to call the period of the Black Plague in Europe as dark age, I would not hesitate to call it as coming close in the scale of collapse or destruction, particularly in the areas worst affected.

 

(10) VIKING ERA

 

Do you want Vikings? Because that’s how you get Vikings.

Now we come to a specific aspect of the Dark Age – in this case of the proverbial barbarians at the gates, albeit not involved in the fall of the western Roman Empire but after it.

However, more than any other group that might be labelled as barbarians after that fall, the Vikings and their era have effectively become synonymous with the European Dark Age – not least due to their pervasive geographical extent throughout Europe (and beyond) as well as their time span. I understand the very term Viking originated not from their ethnicity as such but their occupation as raiders – the same raiding that was symptomatic of the Dark Age’s societal collapse and lack of political states with the resources to effectively oppose them.

The Vikings had their parallel in at least one of my Top 10 Dark Ages other than the European Dark Age – the Sea Peoples of my second place entry, the Bronze Age Collapse. Beyond that, they often have their parallel in the mobile raiders, whether by land or sea, in the post-apocalyptic dark age scenarios of fantasy or SF. I tend to quip about Rohan as horse Vikings in The Lord of the Rings, although whether one would label Tolkien’s Third Age or some part of it as a fantasy dark age is another matter.

 

(11) MONGOL CONQUESTS

 

We come now to historical events or periods that are not labelled dark ages as such but might well be or at least be considered analogous to dark ages – perhaps foremost among them the Mongol Conquests, with their scale of destruction in some estimates rivalling the world wars in absolute numbers and substantially higher relative to the world population. When you’re dealing with destruction on a scale that it is estimated to have caused climate change, you know you’re in the big league.

That said, I don’t think it could be described as a European dark age for Europe, at least outside Russia. While the Mongol Conquests reached Europe, they remained on the fringes – it was more a matter of the long shadow they case into Europe, with, the Mongol bark being worse than their bite as it were.

However, for destruction elsewhere in Eurasia – China, central Asia, the Middle East, even Russia – it might well be considered a dark age, albeit obviously a golden age for the Mongols themselves (which begs the historical question of how many golden ages for some might be dark ages for others).

 

(12) COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

 

Although arguably a golden age for Europe – for whom the so-called Columbian Exchange with the Americas was on the profit side of the balance sheet – that same Exchange as well as the Spanish Conquest might well be considered a dark age for the original inhabitants of the Americas, or indeed as extinction events, predominantly through disease.

Of course, the Columbian Exchange wasn’t entirely one-sided, but the more beneficial exchanges by Europe to the Americas tended to be reaped by the European colonialists rather than the Americans. One exception that might have seen native Americans, particularly in the north American plains or tribes like the Comanche, pull off something akin to their own Mongol Conquests – the horse – mostly came too little and too late to have that effect against the odds of increasingly industrial and technological opponents.

 

(13) MODERN DARK AGE

 

One would have thought the world, particularly Europe, to be immune from dark ages after the Industrial Revolution – but no, some have compared twentieth century totalitarianism, fascism and communism, or the world wars to a new dark age, with some justice to such claims.

Indeed, no less than Winston Churchill used that exact phrase of a new dark age for German victory in the Second World War – and in his most famous wartime speech at that, his “finest hour” speech (and just before the finest hour bit).

Almost if not as famously, British Foreign Secretary presciently spoke of Europe darkening at the advent of the First World War – “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time”.

 

X-TIER (WEIRD / WILD TIER)

 

(14) COSMOLOGICAL DARK AGE

 

Now we move from historical dark ages to broader use of the term – in this case theoretical scientific cosmology, which proposes a Cosmological Dark Age after the Big Bang until the formation of the first stars. As such, it is a literal dark age in terms of the absence of visible light from stars, albeit I understand there were two limited sources of photons or light from elsewhere even if those sources get a little too science-y for my brain to wrap its big bang around.

 

(15) CULTURAL – AUDIENCE ALIENATING ERA

 

It occasionally pops up for periods in or aspects of culture, popular or otherwise, to be labelled as dark ages because of their perceived lack of aesthetic value or because people just don’t like them – a la the trope of audience alienating era in TV Tropes.

Indeed, my very next special mention entry features two commonly used dark ages in popular culture, albeit not necessarily for their lack of quality but also as part of a more general usage labelling “ages” within popular culture.

 

(16) DARK AGE OF COMICS & DARK AGE OF ANIMATION

 

Yes, there’s a Dark Age of Comics, used as a label for the period for comics published from the 1980s to 1990s, albeit more for a shift to mature or “darker and grittier” content in comics than a judgement of lack of quality – although this period certainly saw its notorious excesses from the former that overlapped into the latter.

It follows on from the labels for ‘ages’ in the publication of comics following on from the Golden Age of comics or dawn of superhero comics with Superman and Batman, although I’ve always thought the Bronze Age of Comics to be somewhat nebulous in defining characteristics between the Golden or Silver Age of Comics and the Dark Age of Comics.

On the other hand, the Dark Age of Animation from the 1950s to the 1980s is proposed as a term for the decline of quality from the preceding Golden Age of Animation

 

(17) FANTASY & SF DARK AGES

 

No, I’m not referring to a Dark Age OF Fantasy or SF as a term for a period in the publishing or production of fantasy or SF in literary or other media, although it may well have popped up in such usage by someone at some time or another.

Rather, I’m referring to a Dark Age IN Fantasy or SF – that is, for the usage of a dark age or even the Dark Age (as in the European Dark Age) within a fantasy or SF setting. There are certainly fantasies set in the Dark Age – indeed any fantasy setting involving King Arthur, as I discussed the latter for my entry on the British Dark Age or sub-Roman Britain entry in my Top 10 Dark Ages.

I would argue that the Third Age as setting for The Lord of the Rings in Tolkien’s legendarium is a fantasy dark age – at least in large parts if not the whole. However, the archetypal example of a dark age setting is in SF, involving as it does a dark age directly adapted from the Dark Age with the decline of a Galactic Empire directly adapted from the Roman Empire – and that is Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series.

 

(18) DUNG AGES

 

The Dung Ages trope in TV Tropes, the Dark Age (and usually the Middle Ages as well) as a trope for the depiction of medieval Europe as a crapsack world, often characterized by the omnipresence of literal crap – or at least dirt, filth, or mud. The archetypal example of the trope (indeed the trope codifier acknowledged as such by TV Tropes) is the Monty Python and the Holy Grail film, in which one filthy peasant observes to another about King Arthur – “He must be a king. He hasn’t got sh!t all over him”.

 

(19) PERSONAL – DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

 

“Some are born to sweet delight

And some are born to endless night”

 

Yeah, I got the latter option, damn it.

That’s right – it’s everyone’s own personal dark age or decline and fall.

We all inevitably face one with either old age or mortality, although I think describing one’s old age as your dark age or decline and fall sounds much more glamorous.

Of course that doesn’t stop personal dark ages from occurring earlier in life – from archetypal mid-life crises (I like to quip that I’ve had a mid-life crisis all my life – or an all-life crisis) to other periods of pain and sorrow, breakdown, or depression. Although again I think that describing such periods as your own personal dark age or decline and fall sounds more glamorous, perhaps even transformative for coping or healing.

Strictly speaking, the dark night of the soul is a descriptive term for part of a mystical or religious experience, but “in modern times, the phrase dark night of the soul has become a popular phrase to describe a crisis of faith or a difficult, painful period in one’s life”.

And that seems a natural segue to my final special mention entry.

 

(20) S€XUAL DARK AGE

 

My usual rule is to reserve my final (twentieth) special mention for a kinky (or kinkier) entry, where the subject matter permits – and I wouldn’t have thought that the subject of dark ages would permit it but here we are. Once again, you’ll be surprised what kink I can squeeze out of a given subject.

A s€xual dark age could refer to one’s personal such age – the proverbial “dry patch” or “involuntary celibacy” in the parlance of our times.

The latter suggests a more contemporary and widespread sxual dark age, one of societal s€xual collapse – of widespread celibacy, involuntary or otherwise, among the population, decline in testosterone, ambiguity or ambivalence about conventional sexual identities, or decline in fertility or procreation

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Dark Ages

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The Course of Empire: Destruction (1836) – one of a series of five paintings by Thomas Cole (in public domain) and typically the painting used when someone wants to use a painting to depict the fall of Rome, albeit the series depicts an imaginary state or city

 

 

TOP 10 DARK AGES

 

After the fall, comes the darkness – and a shallow dip top ten on the spot for my Top 10 Dark Ages!

As I said in my entry for the Dark Age in my Top 10 Ages, while it is most commonly used for the period of (western) European history after the fall of the (western) Roman Empire, it is more broadly used for other periods of perceived decline or collapse – or those marked by a comparative scarcity of historical records.

All entries are ranked B-tier or high tier.

 

(1) EUROPEAN DARK AGE

 

Yes – top spot has to go to the Dark Age that everyone thinks of when you refer to Dark Age, a term for the early Middle Ages (500-1000 AD) or even the entire Middle Ages (500-1500 AD) in European history.

Not surprisingly, it was a term not used by the people that lived in it, and tends not to be used now for that period of European history because of its negative connotations – which perhaps misses out on its cooler connotations and for that matter its continued usage in popular culture or imagination.

 

(2) BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE

 

The original Dark Age in the Bronze Age – a period of “sudden, violent and culturally disruptive” societal collapse across the eastern Mediterranean and ancient Near East in the twelfth century BC.

It saw glittering Bronze Age civilizations such as Mycenaean Greece and the Hittite Empire – effectively the combatants of the Trojan War, given Troy has been conjectured as a Hittite satellite – collapse, while even heavy hitters like Egypt barely squeaked through it.

The Bronze Age was not exactly prolific in its historical records even at its height (being more a matter of archaeology) so the Bronze Age Collapse gets pretty dark for historical records – such that much about it is hypothesis, including the infamous Sea Peoples believed to have played a large part in it.

 

(3) GREEK DARK AGES

 

Overlapping with the previous entry for the Bronze Age Collapse, the Greek Dark Ages is – or at least was – a term used for the period from the Bronze Age Collapse to archaic classical Greece, from about 1100 BC to 750 BC.

Earlier divided into the Postpalatial Bronze Age (1180-1050 BC) and the Prehistoric or Early Iron Age of Greek history (1050-800 BC), but now being abandoned as our own conception with neither period truly as “obscure”.

This is why we can’t have dark ages.

 

(4) BYZANTINE DARK AGES

 

“Historiographical term for the period in the history of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire from around c. 630 to the 760s”

Well, it’s only fair that the eastern Roman Empire should have its own Dark Ages to match that of the western Roman Empire, albeit not coinciding with the latter since it avoided the same political collapse as its western counterpart – and even expanded its control into the former western empire.

However, its turn came with its own near collapse and radical transformation from defeat in the Muslim conquests of the 7th century, following hard on the heels of the final Byzantine-Sassanid War – although at least they could say you should see the other guy, being the Persian Sassanid Empire that collapsed completely to Muslim conquest.

“It was still recognizably the late antique world dominated by the Roman Empire, with the Mediterranean mare nostrum as its center of gravity…The final Byzantine-Sassanid War weakened this world, but the Muslim conquests of the 7th century shattered it for good. The emergent caliphate was not only far more powerful and threatening than Persia had ever been, but it also shattered the political unity of the Mediterranean world…Byzantium was left territorially crippled, reduced to the status of a peripheral power, and on a permanent defensive against invaders from all sides.”

The eastern Roman Empire was radically transformed, marking “the transition between the late antique early Byzantine period and the “medieval” middle Byzantine era” – so much so that historian Peter Heather opined that the eastern empire effectively became another Roman successor state and even historian Adrian Goldsworthy noted it was permanently transformed from classical superpower to regional power.

It also has that usual proposed feature of a dark Age or dark ages – “a paucity of primary historical sources”

 

(5) DARK AGE OF THE PAPACY – “SAECULUM OBSCURAM”

 

Saeculum obscurum, which might loosely translate to dark age – entertainingly “also known as the Rule of the Harlots or the P0rnocracy” (which sadly seems to be a metaphor rather than actual description) and which “was a period in the history of the papacy during the first two thirds of the 10th century” usually seen as the nadir of the papacy in which popes were elected from or controlled by a powerful Roman aristocratic family.

And for a period to be seen as the nadir of the papacy is up against some stiff competition in an institution that fell under the control of the Borgias during the Renaissance.

 

(6) PARTHIAN DARK AGE

 

Term used for “a period of three decades in the history of the Parthian Empire between the death (or last years) of Mithridates II in 91 BC, and the accession to the throne of Orodes II in 57 BC…due to a lack of clear information on the events of this period in the empire”

 

(7) IRISH DARK AGE

 

Term coined by Oxford historian Thomas Charles-Edwards “to refer to a period of apparent economic and cultural stagnation in late prehistoric Ireland, lasting from c. 100 BC to c. AD 300”

 

(8) BRITISH DARK AGE – SUB-ROMAN BRITAIN

 

Okay, okay – the British Dark Age is part of the wider European Dark Age, albeit somewhat preceding it by close to a century due to Roman rule in Britain ending earlier, at latest in 407-410 AD and perhaps even effectively or in large part from 383 AD (when the usurper Magnus Maximus withdrew Roman forces from northern and western Britain to launch his bid for imperial power).

However, I think it deserves its own place in my top ten for three reasons.

Firstly, Britain seems to have a prominence within the wider Dark Age.

Secondly, I just like the term sub-Roman Britain which is a large part of the British Dark Age.

Thirdly because King Arthur, that’s why.

 

(9) CAMBODIAN DARK AGES

 

A term occasionally used for the post-Khmer period or so-called Middle Period of Cambodia, from the end of the Khmer Empire in the 1431 to the start of Cambodia as French protectorate in 1863 – a period not only of imperial decline and fall but also, you guessed it, a lack of reliable historical sources.

Also a term used, aptly enough, for the apocalyptic Khmer Rouge regime under Pol Pot.

 

(10) DIGITAL DARK AGE

 

One might think this is a term in anticipation of a post-apocalyptic society if ever some event, the equivalent of a global EMP, wiped out computers and computer records – particularly if it did so permanently.

Although not entirely unrelated, it is in fact a term used for “a lack of historical information in the digital age as a direct result of outdated file formats, software, or hardware that becomes corrupt, scarce, or inaccessible as technologies evolve and data decays. Future generations may find it difficult or impossible to retrieve electronic documents and multimedia, because they have been recorded in an obsolete and obscure file format, or on an obsolete physical medium…there could be a relative lack of records in the digital age as documents are transferred to digital formats and original copies are lost.

 

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Stone Ages / Stone Age Iceberg (Special Mention: Complete 1-20)

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Kebaran culture (Levant and Sinai) microliths 22,000 – 18,000 years ago (public domain image)

 

 

TOP 10 STONE AGES / STONE AGE ICEBERG (SPECIAL MENTION)

 

But wait – there’s more!

There are my twenty special mentions I have for my Top 10 Stone Ages

You know the drill – just like the top ten itself, it’s one of my mostly tongue-in-cheek top ten lists where I look at a subject which has a fundamental continuity or unity, but which can also be broken up into distinct parts or perspectives. Alternatively, it’s just more and deeper layers in my Stone Age iceberg meme.

It’s also one of my shallow dip top ten lists– with a few lines or so for each entry – than my deep dive top ten lists on other subjects.

So here goes…

 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

(1) HOMININ STONE AGE

 

It’s striking to think that most of the period usually identified as the Stone Age – 3 million years or so – is not for our own hominin species of homo sapiens but for preceding or other hominin species. And by most, I mean 90% – anatomically modern homo sapiens only pops up in the last 10% or so and behaviourally modern homo sapiens even more recently.

You know, there’s enough hominins for their own top ten…

 

(2) NEANDERTHAL STONE AGE

 

Everyone’s favorite hominin other than homo sapiens – and viicon of the Stone Age, so they deserve their own Stone Age

 

(3) HOMO SAPIENS STONE AGE – BEHAVIOURAL MODERNITY

 

There we are.

Behavioural modernity has its own Wikipedia article, but no settled range of time for it – anywhere from 40-50,000 years ago to 150,000 years ago

 

(4) INDUSTRIAL STONE AGE – LITHIC TECHNOLOGY

 

No, we’re not talking Fred Flintstone’s job at Slate Rock and Gravel Company (as a bronto crane operator)…but surprisingly not far from it. Apparently, you didn’t just pick up any stone to make it the Stone Age – some stones are better than others and there were “industrial” sites for stone tools at locations of ideal stones, although quarry is probably a better term than factory.

Lithic technology has its own Wikipedia article

 

 

 

 

(5) SPEAR STONE AGE

 

Paleolithic salesman: (Slaps tip of spear) “This baby can fit so many megafauna extinctions into it”.

Although spears go way back, probably at least in the form of sharpened sticks – apparently chimpanzees have been observed to use sticks as spears – the development and use of spears with stone heads or points – always seemed something of a game changer to me, particularly when thrown (and when spear throwers like an atlatl were developed and used to add range and speed).

You know, like the Paleolithic equivalent of gunpowder empires, except against megafauna. Just think – we hunted the mammoth to extinction with spears.

I mean, I wouldn’t want to face off a sabertooth tiger or cave bear with a few chipped rocks, unless, you know, there was like a hundred of us pelting it with rocks or ideally dropping rocks on it from above. Add in a spear (and perhaps something like fire) and…oh, who am I kidding, I’d still want a hundred of us hurling spears from a safe distance. Or better yet, a spear gun.

 

(6) BOW STONE AGE

 

Like the spear but even more so as a Stone Age game-changing ranged projectile weapon. Apparently the first evidence of bows or arrows goes back to 60-70,000 years ago or so – and their use had spread everywhere but Australia and most of Oceania by the end of the Paleolithic.

 

(7) CLOTHED STONE AGE

 

I’d like to see a demarcation between the Naked Stone Age and the Clothed Stone Age.

Interestingly, such a demarcation is not too different from that between the Paleolithic and Neolithic, although the Naked Stone Age doesn’t quite go so long as the full Paleolithic, wrapping up (heh) towards the end of the Middle Paleolithic.

It always strikes me how recently humans developed and used clothing, with the weight of opinion seeming to be approximately 100,000 years ago, and before that the Stone Age was gloriously naked, albeit hairier.

This was the intuitive truth behind the Biblical Garden of Eden. How far we have fallen from our nude Eden!

 

(8) DOG STONE AGE

 

I like dogs so why not have a Dog Stone Age?

But seriously, the domestication of dogs is something of a key transition in the Stone Age, particularly towards the domestication of animals for agriculture. The dog was the first animal and only large carnivore to be domesticated, occurring at some time towards the end of the Paleolithic (usually opined at an upper limit of 20-40,000 years ago), reflecting its usefulness for human hunter-gatherers prior to agriculture.

 

(9) CERAMIC STONE AGE

 

The development and use of pottery was another key transition in the Stone Age, usually associated with the Neolithic but occurring as early as the Upper Paleolithic. Pottery is also iconic of archaeology – I tend to quip archaeology is mostly dusting off broken pieces of pottery as opposed to Indiana Jones.

Of course, from our modern perspective, we tend to see pottery as decorative or a novelty, because we have since moved on to other materials for storage and cookware (even where the importance of it persists in the surname Potter).

 

(10) WHEELED STONE AGE

 

The iconic invention of prehistoric humanity, so much so that the phrase reinventing the wheel has become proverbial – albeit the Wheeled Stone Age is pretty much a few seconds before midnight of the Stone Age and perhaps more accurately as part of the transition to the Bronze Age, if not indeed in the Bronze Age itself.

We tend to think of the wheel for wheeled vehicles, but it also overlaps with the previous entry in the development and use of the potter’s wheel.

 

(11) MEGAFAUNA EXTINCTION STONE AGE

 

The mammoth is dead – and we killed it!

Well, the jury’s still out on the cause of mass megafauna extinction – also termed the late Pleistocene extinctions – between human impact and climate change, although the consensus seems to support “at least a contributory role of humans in the extinctions”.

I mean, they do tend to coincide with the patterns of early human migration, particularly in the Americas and Australasia, but it was like that when we got here, honest!

 

(12) ROCK & CAVE ART STONE AGE

 

Yes, I’m an Altamira and Lascaux cave art fanboy – as I am of the Sorcerer in the Cave of the Trois-Freres, particularly as drawn by Henri Breuil. All hail the Horned God!

Cave and rock art comprise perhaps the most vivid visual icons of the Stone Age – and our best glimpses into the minds of our Stone Age forebears.

Speaking of the Sorcerer…

 

 

(13) SHAMANIC STONE AGE

 

There are different viewpoints of Stone Age religion or religious beliefs, but one of the two predominant viewpoints is that the Stone Age was fundamentally shamanic. That viewpoint underlies Weston La Barre’s The Ghost Dance, as well as Peter Watson’s The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New. The latter essentially proposes that the native Americans remained locked into the shamanic beliefs and mindset they brought with them from Siberia – reinforced by the rigors of American geography and the larger number of psychedelic plants.

As for the other predominant viewpoint of Stone Age religion…

 

 

Photograph by Matthias Kabel for Wikipedia “Venus von Willendorf” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 

 

(14) MATRIARCHAL STONE AGE

 

Stone Age Venus! She is the goddess and this is her body!

You don’t get much more of a visual icon of prehistoric matriarchy and mother goddess worship than the famed Venus of Willendorf. Paleolithic – more like Paleolithicc, amirite?

Ironically, despite the prolific nature of Paleolithic Venus figurines, it is the Neolithic that tends to be associated with mother goddess worship or goddess-centric religions, typically overlapping with agricultural fertility, at least in popular culture – albeit an association highly contested within archaeology and anthropology.

Which brings me to…

 

(15) LONGHOUSE STONE AGE

 

The idea of the communal dwelling or longhouse, originating in the Neolithic albeit with a long history after that – and coopted in contemporary online discourse to signify oppressive matriarchal or gynocentric social conformity.

 

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

(16) STONED AGE

 

And now, as usual towards the end of special mentions, we come to my weirder and wilder entries – well, weirder and wilder than the Matriarchal Stone Age and the longhouse.

I just couldn’t resist the obvious gag of the Stoned Age, but it’s more than just a gag – it’s a reference to the Stoned Ape theory of Terrence McKenna, which indeed involved human prehistory in the Stone Age. Hence – the Stoned Age.

 

(17) PALEO DIET

 

“Meat’s back on the menu, boys!”

Another obvious entry suggested by the contemporary paleo diet, which purports to be a diet based on the model of our Paleolithic ancestors as the ideal diet for health – so no Neolithic grains or milk but sadly seems to opt out of the cannibalism theorized to occur during the Paleolithic. Not to mention all the other crap that we turn up our noses at or throw out today…

 

(18) STONEPUNK

 

Yabba dabba doo!

Yes, it’s the Flintstones – meet the Flintstones, they’re your modern Stone Age family…

But seriously, the Flintstones is classic stonepunk – one of the many ‘punk’ variants of fantasy or SF named after cyberpunk, albeit the version most likely to be played for laughs. Not to mention comedic anachronism, not least humans living alongside dinosaurs. Which I suppose would make some versions of Young Earth Creationism….stonepunk?

Stonepunk focuses on pre-technological developments in prehistoric times, its juxtapositions of the modern world with the primitive, and the effects of an early form of “advanced” technology on society

More broadly, I would extend this entry to more serious (or seriously researched) works set in prehistory, such as the Clan of the Cave Bear books (and film).

 

(19) STONE AGE HERBALIST

 

Well, I can’t have Stone Age special mentions without a shout-out to the Stone Age Herbalist account on X – bringing the Stone Age to our own age.

 

(20) EROTIC STONE AGE

 

Bow-chicka-wow-wow – my usual preference is to reserve my final or twentieth special mention for a kinkier or kinkiest entry. Well, there wasn’t much else to do at night in the Stone Age…you and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals.

 

But seriously, the Stone Age s€x is pretty much the focus of study for evolutionary psychology.

 

 

 

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Stone Ages / Stone Age Iceberg (Special Mention 16-20)

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Kebaran culture (Levant and Sinai) microliths 22,000 – 18,000 years ago (public domain image)

 

 

(16) STONED AGE

 

And now, as usual towards the end of special mentions, we come to my weirder and wilder entries – well, weirder and wilder than the Matriarchal Stone Age and the longhouse.

I just couldn’t resist the obvious gag of the Stoned Age, but it’s more than just a gag – it’s a reference to the Stoned Ape theory of Terrence McKenna, which indeed involved human prehistory in the Stone Age. Hence – the Stoned Age.

 

(17) PALEO DIET

 

“Meat’s back on the menu, boys!”

Another obvious entry suggested by the contemporary paleo diet, which purports to be a diet based on the model of our Paleolithic ancestors as the ideal diet for health – so no Neolithic grains or milk but sadly seems to opt out of the cannibalism theorized to occur during the Paleolithic. Not to mention all the other crap that we turn up our noses at or throw out today…

 

(18) STONEPUNK

 

Yabba dabba doo!

Yes, it’s the Flintstones – meet the Flintstones, they’re your modern Stone Age family…

But seriously, the Flintstones is classic stonepunk – one of the many ‘punk’ variants of fantasy or SF named after cyberpunk, albeit the version most likely to be played for laughs. Not to mention comedic anachronism, not least humans living alongside dinosaurs. Which I suppose would make some versions of Young Earth Creationism….stonepunk?

Stonepunk focuses on pre-technological developments in prehistoric times, its juxtapositions of the modern world with the primitive, and the effects of an early form of “advanced” technology on society

More broadly, I would extend this entry to more serious (or seriously researched) works set in prehistory, such as the Clan of the Cave Bear books (and film).

 

(19) STONE AGE HERBALIST

 

Well, I can’t have Stone Age special mentions without a shout-out to the Stone Age Herbalist account on X – bringing the Stone Age to our own age.

 

(20) EROTIC STONE AGE

 

Bow-chicka-wow-wow – my usual preference is to reserve my final or twentieth special mention for a kinkier or kinkiest entry. Well, there wasn’t much else to do at night in the Stone Age…you and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals.

 

But seriously, the Stone Age s€x is pretty much the focus of study for evolutionary psychology.

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Stone Ages / Stone Age Iceberg (Special Mention: 11-15)

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Kebaran culture (Levant and Sinai) microliths 22,000 – 18,000 years ago (public domain image)

 

 

(11) MEGAFAUNA EXTINCTION STONE AGE

 

The mammoth is dead – and we killed it!

Well, the jury’s still out on the cause of mass megafauna extinction – also termed the late Pleistocene extinctions – between human impact and climate change, although the consensus seems to support “at least a contributory role of humans in the extinctions”.

I mean, they do tend to coincide with the patterns of early human migration, particularly in the Americas and Australasia, but it was like that when we got here, honest!

 

(12) ROCK & CAVE ART STONE AGE

 

Yes, I’m an Altamira and Lascaux cave art fanboy – as I am of the Sorcerer in the Cave of the Trois-Freres, particularly as drawn by Henri Breuil. All hail the Horned God!

Cave and rock art comprise perhaps the most vivid visual icons of the Stone Age – and our best glimpses into the minds of our Stone Age forebears.

Speaking of the Sorcerer…

 

 

(13) SHAMANIC STONE AGE

 

There are different viewpoints of Stone Age religion or religious beliefs, but one of the two predominant viewpoints is that the Stone Age was fundamentally shamanic. That viewpoint underlies Weston La Barre’s The Ghost Dance, as well as Peter Watson’s The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New. The latter essentially proposes that the native Americans remained locked into the shamanic beliefs and mindset they brought with them from Siberia – reinforced by the rigors of American geography and the larger number of psychedelic plants.

As for the other predominant viewpoint of Stone Age religion…

 

 

(14) MATRIARCHAL STONE AGE

 

Stone Age Venus! She is the goddess and this is her body!

You don’t get much more of a visual icon of prehistoric matriarchy and mother goddess worship than the famed Venus of Willendorf. Paleolithic – more like Paleolithicc, amirite?

Ironically, despite the prolific nature of Paleolithic Venus figurines, it is the Neolithic that tends to be associated with mother goddess worship or goddess-centric religions, typically overlapping with agricultural fertility, at least in popular culture – albeit an association highly contested within archaeology and anthropology.

Which brings me to…

 

(15) LONGHOUSE STONE AGE

 

The idea of the communal dwelling or longhouse, originating in the Neolithic albeit with a long history after that – and coopted in contemporary online discourse to signify oppressive matriarchal or gynocentric social conformity.