From: Alex Ferguson (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 27 Jun 1994 - 01:23:51 EEST
Nick Brooke intervenes to my musing:
> > Hrm. We get a lot of these "the Carmanians invented it, because the
> > Persians did" arguments these days, I note. Too many, I think, when one
> > considers how brief a time Carmania was a distinct entity, in between
> > leaving the West, then conquering/merging with Dara happa, and then
> > getting squished by the Lunars. (A few hundred years, the exact dates
> > escape me.)
> Foundation: 729 ST.
> Squishing: 1244 ST.
> Or thereabouts.
But bear in mind that for much of this time, Carmania occuppied Dara Happa, or at least the non-EWF bit thereof. (Frantic searching of two feet shelf space of RQ product fails to reveal the exact date of the above (the closest I got was "eventually" ;-/)) This suggests to me that we're should abate the rate at which we suppose frantic Persianisation of Carmania, unless we also suppose it for 2nd Age Dara Happa, or have reason to confine it to the Western bit (present day Carmania).
> Five hundred years is a *long* time in cultural development.
If we use as broad a definition of Persia as some of the more enthusiastic Carmanian analogers seem to be doing, then I suppose:
Founded: 728 BC
Squished: 640 AD
Just a tad longer. Yes, this is a huge swathe of distinct dynasties, and ignores minor details like Alexander's conquest, which is why I'm nervous about the whole period being equated to Carmania's history. Which I'm sure Nick doesn't do, but I wonder at other people's zeal...
BTW, if anyone wants to include anything pre-Medean or post-Islam from Persia in their version of Carmania, let me know, so that I can "improve" on my figure of 1368 years. ;-)
> The Roman
> Empire only lasted that long in the West, from Caesar through to Romulus
> Augustulus.
Yeah, and this represents neither Rome's founding, nor it's squishing, in a cultural sense. And they certainly didn't, during this period, produce anything like the range of cultural and technological innovations I've seen blithely dealt with here by the old adage "the Carmanians must have done it". Not, admittedly, all by the same person, so I'm carping at the general accumulated effect, rather than any individual's megalomania.
> Yanafal Tarnils "discovered" the new type of sword out East in
> Accursed Torang (like Columbus discovering America): just what he needed, a
> non-Humakti kind of sword.
To give the Devil Duke his due, this may have required a fair bit of Discovering, since it seems more likely that the odd Pentan tribe used some sort of somewhat curved (in either direction) sword, than that the whole lot of them came ready-equipped with full-fledged scimitars.
Alex.
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