To understand our own mortality is one of the biggest markers of being human. To seek to control it, even more so.

True, we're not sure whether the anticipation and understanding of death is uniquely human, and there are certainly plenty of arguments to suggest that some animals understand death too, but it might be that the concept of a soul that couples with the idea of death is entirely a human construct. In this way, humans would truly be unique.

In his book 'The Buried Soul', the archaeologist Timothy Taylor takes a close look into when it was that humans first started to create the concept of a soul and started to try to define and control their own mortality -and by extension - immortality.

One of the greatest problems with pre-history and early history is the difficulty in source materials and, by extension, the difficulty in stepping into the minds of those in the past. "The past is a foreign country" a wise man once said, and we are often scant-informed tourists. As an archaeologist Taylor is well aware of these problems and how these have led to what he believes are misinterpretations of the cultural data of mortality in the past, often due to anachronisms created when historians put their own modern cultural perspective onto the remnants of history. Too often we either assume that our ancestors thought and acted exactly like us (and therefore we reject the more distasteful parts of their cultures as false), or we view them as barbarians and so don't bother to properly unpick the layers of why their actions were important and unique to them. While Taylor runs through a whole host of different death cultures, it was his treatment of the above issue that I found the most valuable and interesting in the book.

For example, Taylor centres the majority of his book around unpicking an understanding the funeral of a Rus (Viking) chieftain, returning to the vividly described scene as each of his arguments shed more light on it and the mindsets of those involved. In this funeral we have a rare written account provided by an arab ambassador about how the chieftain was interred in the ground while a huge ship and scaffold were created, ready for his cremation. When complete he was disinterred and laid on a great bed on the ship. Of his slave girls, his favourite apparently volunteered and took part in a seemingly strange and brutal ceremony. She was given the rings of engagement, as if she was betrothed to the chieftain, and, heady on ritualistic wine, went to each tent of his closest men and slept with them. Afterwards she was lifted up above three houses, announcing that she could see her parents and others waiting for her in the afterlife. When she went to the great building of the ship she reportedly found herself hesitating and was encouraged inside. The rings were removed, she lay on the bed next to their chieftain and, with a noose tightening around her neck by the old women dubbed the 'Angel of Death', she was brutally raped by seven men as the crown outside drummed their shields to drown out her screams. 

Timothy Taylor

Why did this sequence of events occur?

How reliable is the account?

What purpose did the brutality serve and what was the slave girl's investment in it?

Why on earth do some historians reject the brutal realities and simply sign off with dismissive statements like: "The happy girl thus went to Valhallah?"

What does this ritual tell us about the purpose of death culture, and the potential danger that the chieftain's soul posed to the mortal living?

Taylor answers all of these questions and more with care and convincing evidence. In doing so he also looks into another brutal and controversial element of history: cannibalism. Since the 1970s it has been fashionable for historians to reject cannibalism altogether, finding it more comforting to assert that it never actually happened and was instead a racist accusation or a misinterpretation of evidence, to the point where I assumed this was likely. But Taylor challenges this in a very convincing manner, taking the stance that cannibalism was - and is - commonplace, but served very different purposes for different cultures, all of which features importantly in how these culture interacted with death and funerary rites. Cannibalism isn't something that belongs in a horror movie, but instead can be a legitimate, useful expression of grief that should not be ignored simply because it is distasteful to western historians. I must admit, after the reading the book, I'm pretty darn convinced he's on the right lines.

In the end, I know that in this blog I tend to trot our reviews of books that I like, leaving those less interesting neighbours by the wayside. But out of my pick of excellent books, this really is one worth paying attention to and picking up for yourself. Taylor's combination of engaging narrative writing as well as the exciting (and potentially controversial) views he has of the pre-history and history he knows so well, makes this a book that is both entertaining as well as being genuinely academically important for any interested in the subject. It certainly convinced me to re-evaluate how I looked at various elements of cultural history, which I think is worth it's weight in gold.

What's more, I couldn't put it down. For a non-fiction book is very high praise indeed. 



More Great Books and Media on Mortality and the Human Imagination:
- Sapiens, a Brief History of Humankind - By Yuval Noah Harrari
- The Self Illusion - by Bruce Hood
- Paranormality - By Richard Wiseman
- Gunther Von Hagen's Autopsy Series

Have you ever read a book twice without realising it?

Gotta admit, it's a sexy cover

I found myself in this situation with Stephen Baxter's Time.

Perhaps already this is a sign that the review won't be a ringing endorsement by the fact that you can wander down the same plot twice without it sticking with you, and my kneejerk reaction was certainly one of frustration because of this. But in the end I found that in it's way Time was worth recommending. It led me to think about the 'hard sci-fi' genre in general, my relationship with it, and what books like these are really trying to achieve.

Digging into 'Hard Sci-fi'

I'll confess now, I'm not a 'proper' sci-fi fan. I grew up with The Next Generation and Deep Space 9 on TV: for me sci-fi has always been a vehicle for cool alien designs, exploration and character driven plots in strange surroundings. When I got older I loved Doctor Who and the playground of history and space that it offered us, and when Doctor Who declined in quality I slipped into Rick and Morty. In films I can appreciate something more dystopian, but they have to be on a firm foundation of wonder, style and adventure. All things considered, sci-fi for me if an ultimately optimistic open world wrought with unique challenges - a final frontier.

My taste in sci-fi books follows the same lines as my taste in fantasy and historical novels . I'm a sucker for good character development, and for these concepts to work and be fully realised they need to hang on an already solid plot... like a murder mystery for example (see: Altered Carbon). I want to fall in love with characters and be taken on a journey, and I want to see the strange intelligently thought out setting through a protagonist's empathetic gaze while something tangible drives the plot along. It might not be 'proper' sci-fi, but it's damned entertaining.

The trouble was - is- that so much proper 'hard' sci-fi hangs on...seemingly nothing but concept.

 The key, I think, with 'hard' sci-fi is that it's central aim is one of realistic world building, or to illustrate and interesting scientific concept. They are usually fantastically well researched, intelligent and incredibly detailed. I picked up Time at first years and years ago in a charity shop, determined to immerse myself in 'proper' sci-fi and once and for all declare myself a 'proper' geek....and I hated it. It bored me to tears, it was so stale.

'High Sci-fi' was to me what Jules Verne was to H.G.Wells: on the one 'hard' Verne side you had blueprints, on the other 'soft' Wells side you had story.

'Hark! A Vagrant' perfectly illustrates the difference.

But time marches on, as does the vague sense of guilt for not being a 'proper' geek. After reading the non-fiction book In Search of Schrodinger's Cat I thought it was high time that I tried 'hard sci-fi' again now that I had a better understanding of some of those more interesting quantum theories. Little did I know that when I picked up that sexy book cover it was the exact same book again. 

I smelled a rat when I got deja vu about hyper-intelligent squid and space sex.

The cover on my first read..not so sexy.

What is Time About?

Time tells the story of Emma Stoney ...until the book abruptly decides that the main character is actually Reid Malenfant. 

It starts off slow, taking the reader through the challenges of the Bootstrap corporation as Malenfant - a failed astronaut and maverick - works against NASA and the governments to cobble together his own funded voyage into space. Emma is his ex-wife and leads the legwork in keeping the company afloat, batting off officials who would like to pull them under as Malenfant takes greater and greater risks. One fly in the ointment in Cornelius Taine, who arrives out of the blue at Emma's door, pushing for a meeting with Malenfant to hijack his aspirations away from simple material wealth and forwards into avoiding the doom of humanity itself by interpreting messages from the future. Initially dismissed as a nutjob by Emma, he captures Malenfant's attention and takes the couple and the company on a dangerous course.

Meanwhile hyper-intelligent children are popping up all over the world, spooking their parents and the governments around them. Could they signal the end of humanity as we know it?

It's hard to talk about Time without entirely spoiling the story, especially since it doesn't pick up at all until well past the middle of the book. Suffice to say there is space travel, the concept of messages from time are explored and, in the end, Baxter puts forward a very bittersweet idea about what one of the purposes of humanity might be if we actually were alone in the universe. What it might mean if aliens don't exist? What sort of life would it be if human beings succeeded enduring all the way to the end of this empty universe?

The 'Hard Science' of Time: Does it Fare Better on a Second Readthrough?

I have to admit that, once I had gotten past the first half of the book (and the endless shuttling of Emma back and forth to meetings), I found myself rather caught up in the scientific realism of it once the action started. When the team managed to get into space Baxter describes future technologies - such as false gravity- in a realistic way, and keeps at his heart the image of space as a great ordeal full of both wonder and constant indignities. What's more the idea of using a hyper intelligent cephalopod as an astronaut was inspired, and gave us the more interesting character in the book.

Black holes are scary, yo.

When it came to describing the concept of messages from time he made a wise choice to use different characters to explain the difficult concept in different ways, with Cornelius as the expert, Emma as the practical layman, and Malenfant as the idealist somewhere in-between. In Search of Schrodinger's Cat helped me a great deal with the basics, and I think without it I would have struggled, as I did before on my first readthrough when I was younger. The bleak picture of the future it gave (before the final flourish) was one that again was helped from reading the final chapters of books like Centuries of Change, and how humanity seems doomed to slide away from the current 'golden age' and turn against itself into something more brutal and old fashioned. The Blue Children served as a decent enough catalyst and focus for this downturn, but they fundamentally didn't strike the right note as characters for me. Similarly, the whole reason for messages from the future boils down to the 'inevitability' of the 'Carter Catastrophe', which is a central concept that - while based on real theories- is one that I didn't accept in part because I couldn't convincingly wrap my head around the assumptions that they leapt to from basic (flawed?) statistics.

Finally the scientific view of the universe in the book is one that was frightening and also beautiful - massive chaos, but with fierce possibility...up until the point of hopelessness. The descriptions of how the universe itself could be mined by people in the far future has the black triumph that I appreciated in Doctor Who's Utopia episode - a triumph and yet a withering defeat. A whimper, not a bang. And this leads to the final act that again was quite a blackly impressive question: what is the purpose of human life if we are alone?

But...Was Time An Entertaining Read as a Story?

In the end, despite having read it for a second time, my first emotions at the end of the book were ones of frustration and fatigue. It took a good few days for the book to sit with me as a whole before I could come around to appreciating it for what it showed me with the science parts of the science-fiction. But the fiction parts left me cold, which is why this, for me, will always be a book that ends up off my shelf and in the donation pile.

Sheena 5. The most human character.

Emma Stoney was an interesting enough character, though we don't have much chance to actually sit in her head or see her doing much else but deal with Malenfant's crap. I like that she is independant and a capable business woman while being tied to him for reasons she understands and accepts despite her own common sense - that could have been more interesting if developed even further. But she still seems flat, being pulled along by events, initially presented as the protagonist until the book realises that Malenfant is the guy they want to haul through the sequels. Similarly Maura Della - a politician- is another strong capable woman who was actually quite well drawn out, but the way both their endings are handled seems, in my opinion, to short change them by - quite literally - treating them as fundamentally interchangeable. Also there is a theme of childlessness with the two of them that at times seems to be a decent enough avenue into a commentary on how they don't feel connected to mankind's future, but at other times comes across as a little condescending - it just doesn't quite hit the note it needs to.

Malenfant himself is on the periphery throughout most of the book, and not as charming as he needs to be as a protagonist. Though he grows on you by the time the team get into space I never found myself particularly interested in him. He's meant to be a maverick, but I found myself emphasising more with Emma's groans at the inevitable paperwork he creates rather than his ambitions. Cornelius works well enough as the shifty point of intelligence to drive the plot along that no one really trusts, but the story seems to enjoy picking on him for the sake of it. But he redeems himself more at the end - a serious injury later on had a genuine emotional resonance - while never being fully 'redeemed' into a likable character

Stephen Baxter

which...I liked.

As for side characters, the blue children were entirely unsympathetic, which was I believe the intention since we - as homo sapiens - are supposed not to trust them and to be afraid of them. But they become more irritating than real threats and some of the images used later on that are associated with them are just silly. You never get a proper closure on who they are as people and they seem to fall flat rather than being fleshed out yet still mysterious. The true star of the show was, instead, Sheena the hyper intelligent cephalopod, and - credit where credit's due - Baxter did a fantastic job of writing in a way that was both animalistic and sympathetic when her parts were in the book.

Finally the storytelling itself was bland and choppy with several little chunks under honest-to-god name headers. I understand the need to bounce around different characters' heads in a story like this, but it defeated a sense of flow and further put roadblocks in front of your developing much empathy for the characters.

So should you pick up Time and the Manifold Series?

In the end, Stephen Baxter is clearly a very intelligent man, and there are quite a few things in Time  that are well worth a look. For me, the story just didn't hit the right notes, but that could be due to my general dislike of the priorities that 'High Sci-Fi' have. For me story and characters always should come first, and in Time they're more vehicles to take the reader into various realisations of scientific ideas.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, give it a whirl. You'll certainly learn something interesting.

What do you think? Did you enjoy 'Time' if you read it?

What is your relationship with the Hard Sci-fi genre?

Keep in touch....

Remember, you can follow Preludes: Blog of Words us on Twitter and Facebook. Or Subscribe to us on Blogluvin' to never miss a post.

Stay curious!

Today I want to try something a bit different and give you a walk through my non-fiction bookshelf.

I never realised how many non-fiction books I had accumulated over the years until I moved into my new flat and actually attempted to organise them on a bookshelf. So in this Vlog I take you through some of my favourites for learning about social history, psychology & philosophy and science.

This is my first attempt at a vlog and was filmed on my ipad, so apologies for the occasional dip in sound volume. But you do get to actually hear my voice so...bonus?

You can view the video above or click here to go directly to Youtube.

Have a good weekend, and keep curious ;)

Being the Head-Honcho Has Never Been Easy, and Make That Doubly So If You Were A Woman In the Past.

Often branded as 'whores', 'poisoners', 'witches' and worse, many societies in the past had a visceral distaste of women in power, and many of the same issues still face women in power today. 

A politically manoeuvring woman is so often called a 'bitch', an opinionated headstrong woman is so often a 'shrew', or 'nag'. In moments of arguments they are often infantalised - told to "calm down dear" (David Cameron to Angela Eagle), called a 'girl' (Silvio Belusconi) or a 'brave little woman' (Austin Mitchell on Margaret Thatcher). If they are dressed plainly they are painted as emasculating, ugly, dowdy and homely as if they have nothing else to contribute ("What does she want, this housewife? My balls on a tray" - Jacques Chirac on Thatcher). If they present as too conventionally 'pretty' they are not taken seriously and dubbed 'beauty queens' (Kumara Welgama to Rosy Senanayake) or criticised (as in the case of the ANC  playing fashion police in criticising South African leader Lindewe Mazibuko's outfit).They may even be subject to wolf-whistles rather than being listened to (as Cecile Deflout, the French housing minister).

Given that women in power still face these challenges today in our relatively liberal western-centric society, in the past their successes were nothing short of remarkable. In 'Women Who Ruled- History's 50 Most Remarkable Women' Claudia Gold's impressive research brings 50 of these such women into the limelight they deserve.

Claudia Gold's book is very easy to read for anyone interested in women's history without any polemics, perfect for dipping in and out of. The 50 women listed are organised chronologically.This becomes especially important when we reach the 16thc and the age of European Queens, when often the political fate of one woman's family influences the rise of another. The book is also commendable in offering a wide variety of female leaders, from the near-mythological figures of Jazebel and the Queen of Sheba, through to Eastern leaders such as Wu Hou and Roxelana, as well as the western favourites of 'Bloody' Mary and Elizabeth 1st and finally into the modern day politicians of Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher. You get a real impression that the book aims not to view history through a western lens, but to celebrate and commiserate the lives and careers of as many interesting ladies as possible.

Roxelana, The Ukranian slave who became
Sultana of the Ottoman Empire

The brilliant thing about Women Who Ruled is that Gold gives us a full picture of the women in power across the many countries of the world without romanticising them.
These women did not have to be saints in order to be respected: just as we have Machiavellian kings we have viscous queens. Just as we have weak-willed and exploited kings we also have foolish and naive queens. Just as we have opportunistic lords we have conniving ladies. For some the bonds of family united them together in mutual honour and bravery, and for others the bonds of family were simply threads in a web to be manipulated and cut off at will. The characters in this work are all multi-faceted and, in the brief few pages that are granted to each, you get a real impression of the often dangerous political landscapes that they resided in, and how fickle fate could be to even the most intelligent political wrangler. Across each story, though, we see how each woman (or her family and 'allies') had to rely on their quick wits to carve out a place for themselves in societies that so often mistrusted them.

Whatever your stance on feminism as a whole, this is a very engaging and interesting book for anyone who is a fan of history. I very much recommend it.



Sources

• Top 10 sexist Moments in politics
• 10 Sexist Quotes about Margaret Thatcher
• 'Women Who Ruled- History's 50 Most Remarkable Women' By Claudia Gold

Horrible Histories Has Exploded In Popularity Recently

It's always been there in the background, but nowadays what with the hugely successful live-action CBBC series, touring shows and more, I decided to sit down and crack open one of my old books and take a look at how well the original Horrible Histories series had really aged. Are they still decent books for teaching kids history, or are the recent catchy songs and funny sketches of the Tv series (and a good dose of nostalgia) just distracting us from books that really should have died in the 90s?

Seriously though, the series is flipping fun.

To Test This Out, I Picked Up My Old 1998 Copy of Bloody Scotland.

I decided that the best way to see whether Horrible Histories stands up to the test of time was to pick a subject I know absolutely nothing about (Scottish history) and see if I could learn something as well as being entertained. As I'm now an adult -[IknowRightHowDidThatHappen?!] - I know I'm not exactly the target audience, but at their core these books were always about offering an entry into learning about a certain period of history by giving you what you really want - gore and weirdness! 

My Little Collection At Home

Gettin' Gory

When I came back to these I thought that the focus on the gore and weirdness would be a huge turn-off and it would be that focus which would age these books badly. I had visions of the York and London Dungeons experience, where bad actors lunge at you with plastic hearts and describe in excruciating detail horrific torture techniques, trying to get a rise out of you. As a kid, with limited life experience and a taste for the macabre that is all imagination it's fascinating and there's a bloodthirsty curiosity and pleasure about it all. But when you're older and life's managed to carve a bit more empathy into you, the ghoulish displays are- more often then not- just genuinely repulsive and kind of upsetting. Because, you know, real people went through it all.

The good news? Horrible Histories really is a lot more than lists of gory goings on.

Sure, Bloody Scotland  has 'bloody' in the title for a reason and in the pages you can find plenty of strange and bloodthirty facts to whet your appetite. For example in the 'Funny food, cwaint customs and sporran sports' chapter it describes games such as Hurley Hacket (where you sled down a hill on a dead horses' jawbone) and Twisting the Cow (a game where you literally race to twist the legs off a dead cow), all accompanied by the brilliant little illustrations by Martin Brown that we all know and love. There are plenty of gruesome stories; such how corpses were dug up to be brought to trail, how a nobleman with an interest in dentistry would pay peasants to pull out their teeth, and how the witch trials used torture to illicit false confessions; but they are handled with a sense of humor that eases their impact and yet manages to point out just how wrong-headed and bizarre the logic behind the acts were. It peaks the curiosity but, in the end, doesn't really feel exploitative. Most importantly, Terry Deary's Horrible Histories know just when to take a step back and criticise the truly awful with a little more weight, such as when describing the horrible unfairness and cruelty of the Highland Clearances.

Which brings me to my next point...

Is Horrible Histories Actually Good History?

It would be so easy to create a series of books like Horrible Histories, which is in the end based on anecdotal tid-bits of history, and not bother trying to make something coherent and educational. If you're mainly drawing people in through quirky illustrations and a promise to make a rude joke about Scots wearing no knickers, then why do anything else than give them what they want?  In reality, while Horrible Histories will always lean towards picking out the most sensational details and running with them, and while it's never going to be academic in tone, I was pleasantly surprised by how often Deary tried to work historical balance into these kid's books. Check out the excerpt below:

That right there is historical balance. It's only a bullet point, but it sets up an important point for any kid that's interesting in learning about history: that the past has biases, that the people who write about it have their own agendas, and that heros are rarely ever pure heros, no matter how cool they might sound.

Bloody Scotland is a really great example of Deary showing decent history by being balanced in other ways, as in this book he reminds kids that even he - the author - isn't 100% unbiased, or even the best person to teach about certain types of history. He impressed me by making it clear that he was an Englishman writing about Scottish history and as a result he checked his privilege as being a member of the nationality of people who often would warp written history to make them out as the good guys, and who has been pretty bloody nasty to the Scots. It was honest and frank and still with his usual sense of humour (after all, he says with his tongue in his cheek, he's going to keep writing about Scottish history anyway). It was something that he didn't need to put in to this book, but which makes a big difference in teaching kids history well.

As well as some acknowledgement about the academic discipline of decent history, the way the books are structured is also pretty informative, working to a rough chronology that's summarised at the beginning of the chapter and then walked through in more detail. While there is a little flexibility within themes, all in all the books walk you through the past, so you can see where certain political movements and mentalities actually come from, and each past chapter helps you in learning more about the next chapters. Neat.

Is Horrible Histories Still An Entertaining Read?

Ok guys, I'm going to break it to you. Take a deep breath now.

Ready?

The jokes are a little naff.

I know, I know! I loved them too! As a kid they were really funny and whenever they mentioned putting your teacher into a trebuchet or whatever we all gave a little cackle of glee thinking 'aw yeah, this guy gets us!'. Needless to say as a grown up they're just pretty formulaic and obvious and you read them waiting for a pause and canned laughter to start. But, you know what? They're still fun, and they still add something special to the whole mix.

Plus Martin Brown's illustrations are just really brilliant.

Brown's got his own art style that just screams 'Horrible Histories', and it elevates each joke with the way he knows how to balance cartoony gore with cynical characters and it's just fab. In my old childhood collection one of my favourite books was 'Greek Legends' (because I, like apparently every child on the planet, was a nut for Greek mythology), but for one reason or another Martin Brown wasn't the illustrator. While the replacement has his own style, the whole feel of the book suffered as a result even though it had some of the funniest and most imaginative content in the whole series.

So with naff jokes in tow and with Martin Brown as the second in command of the HMS Horrible Histories, how does the writing of the captain of this ship fare? The answer - pretty darn well. Terry Deary really seems to know how to teach history to kids in a way that will keep them (and even us older readers) engaged and entertained. He knows how to pick interesting topics but the key here is how he tells them. As well as the straight up anecdotes of interesting history that are just told to us, the book also explains history creatively by including made up letters by fictional witnesses to historical events, quizzes, quotes, exercises to try at home, character profiles,timelines, fact sheets, bizarre sports analogies, literary extracts and of course plenty of little funny comics. Deary does a great job of making you want to learn more, and packs a whole lot into these short books without making them feel cluttered, which is no mean feat. All in all even as a grown up you're sure to find fun and interest in the way he tells his history.

(Plus Terry Deary at least used to answer his fan mail. Which absolutely made my year when, like a big old nerd, many years back I wrote to him to tell him how awesome Wicked Words was for me as a kid and how he inspired me to go to uni to learn history. He just genuinely seems like a really nice guy. So there's that.)

Without Horrible Histories, for example, we may have never
known just how awful William McGonagall's poetry was.

So, In conclusion, Is Horrible Histories Still Worth It's Salt?

Absolutely.

No matter what your age, you can still get a good dose of fun and information out of Horrible Histories and they're genuinely really useful as an interesting in-road into topics of history that you may never have learnt about before. If you've left it a decade or two since you read one or if you (*gasp!*) have never read one before, I thoroughly recommend that you get your behind out there and pick up a copy of this classic series. 

Aw go on then. Have another video to play us out.

It's hard to imagine getting by in life without writing nowadays...

While of course there is still illiteracy in the world, nevertheless a huge number of societies wouldn't be able to function without writing, whether it's the imaginative novels that sustain our spirits or the complex data entry that keeps our bureaucracies ticking.

It all started with accountancy

The Kushim Tablet

The oldest recognised piece of writing dates to around c3,400-3,000 BC by the Sumerians in the city of Uruk. Recorded on a stone tablet it made use of a measurement system for numbers as well as well known symbols for words - a form of 'cuniform' writing.  Before cuniform writing there was a manner of recording types of objects and numbers by using token pebbles; for example one with a cross carved on it meant a sheep. But if you has 38 sheep you needed 38 tokens and it was hardly efficient. this new cuniform writing enabled far more detail with far less effort.

Unfortunately there is no great piece of history or story recorded on the stone tablet: it served a wholly practical purpose. Scholars, after much study, managed to translate the tablet as reading:

"29,086 measures barley 37 months Kushim"

What is the most interesting about the Kushim tablet - aside from it serving a a snapshot of an ancient business transaction - is the word 'Kushim'. It seems not to fit with any other symbol, but is instead made up of two separate symbols that make two separate sounds: 'ku'  and 'shim'. We can assume, then, that the Sumerian people made use of not just symbols that represent their literal origin, but something more phonetic. By using symbols that corresponded to the words as spoken, you could mould them together to make new words. 'Kushim' could the the official title of the transaction or official occupation of the person handing out the transaction. Or, most interestingly, it could be a name. If so, 'Kushim' is the first name in recorded history. 

Giglamesh

It wasn't long before the Sumerians began to get creative and the Epic of Giglamesh was born.

The Epic of Giglamesh is largely credited as the first novel ever written, with its earliest copy dating to around 2,100 BC. The most complete version we have was written on twelve stone tablets (one of which currently resides in the British Museum) and tells the story of the King Giglamesh who ruled over Uruk in around 2,700 BC. 
Gilgamesh was worshipped after his death due to his wisdom ans judiciousness and celebrated for his abilities as a warrior and a builder. He even is thought to make a feature in the bible as 'Erech'. To this day the story of Giglamesh's quest for immortality is still being bought and read by scholars and the general public alike.



But not everyone used writing for quite such a 'noble' purpose

Once writing took hold it was here to stay and with great power - and increasingly widening literacy - comes great responsibility. We all know what trouble writing has brought through history as well as what goodness. Perhaps, for the armchair historian, the best pieces of writing are those that were a little rebellious without being grim; those that show us that, no matter when they lived, people have always been people and nothing much ever really changes.

You can find one cute example through Erik Kwakkel's Tumblr page. Here he shows off a discovery from the 1950s from near the city of Novgorod in Russia. Archaeologists dug up hundreds of pieces of birch bark with all sorts of texts written on them. One set were from a medieval classroom where, in the 13th century, young boys were learning to write. Like many students they inevitably got bored and when they did they started to doodle...

Nothing much changes when it comes to children's drawings

Another charming (if crude) example of people using writing for more rebellious purposes are in the infamous pieces of Roman graffiti, the best of which can be found in Pompeii and Herculaneum. If you pardon a little profanity, here are a few gems that would not look out of place scrawled in a nightclub's toilets.

Found on the house of Peascius Hermes:
"Watch it, you that shits in this place! May you have Jove's anger if you ignore this."

"Apollinaris, medicus Titi Imperatoris hic cacavit bene"
"Apollinaris, doctor to the emperor Titus, had a good crap here."

"Oppi, emboliari, fur, furuncle"
"Oppius, you're a clown, a thief and a cheap crook."

Found on the Barracks of the Julian-Claudian gladiators:
"Celadus of Thracian makes the girls moan!"

"Philiros spado"
"Phileros is a eunuch."

Found in the Basilica:
"Chie, I hope your hemorrhoids rub together so much that they hurt worse than when they ever have before!"

A note carved on the door of the Inn of the Muledrivers:
"We have pissed in our beds. Host, I admit that we shouldn't have done this. If you ask why? There was no potty."

In a Herculaneum bar next to a drawing of a phallus (still bizarely popular today!)

"Handle with care."

As ever, turn to 'The Life of Brian' for your Roman history!

For more Roman goodness try these related posts:

How did the Roman Empire begin?
No accounting for taste: the painted statues of ancient Greece and Rome
Review: I Claudius by Robert Graves
Historical hairstyles to try at home

For more ancient history try these related posts:
Was the agricultural revolution the worst mistake in human history?
Historical honey's 'The fascinating history of cosmetic surgery'
Legends of the sun
The golden eyed lady of Shahr-e Suketh
5 Advanced ancient technologies that shouldn't be possible.



Sources
- Sapiens, a Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari
-The British Museum: Historic Writing
-The Development of Writing Erik Kwakkel
- The History of Writing, G Carboni
- Medieval Doodles on Birch bark - Erik Kawakkel via tumblr
-The birth of writing: the Kushim tablet
-The first book ever written
-The epic of Giglamesh; Sparknotes
-11 colourful phrases of ancient Roman graffiti
-The bawdy graffiti of Pompeii and Herculaneum

  I've not really reviewed historical fiction here before, but this week I'd like to break the trend by reviewing I Claudius, By Robert Graves


Written in the 1934 ‘I,Claudius’ is the story of the Julio-Claudian royal family of ancient Rome as told by the stuttering ‘half-witted’ Claudius, the uncle of the infamous Caligula and, eventually, reluctant emperor of Rome. A man who is far more resilient than he seems.

If you’re a history fan like me then ‘I,Claudius’ is a great way to learn about the complicated family tree and assassinations of the emperors and their heirs. While of course, even if well researched, you can’t rely on the historical accuracy of it, it does bring a real emotional reality to what often can be a stale list of names and political manoeuvres and murders that one finds in history books or on Wikipedia.


However, as a work of fiction in of itself, the long time period - spanning past emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and finally Claudius - sometimes has a detrimental effect on the narrative. 

Claudius

Often we are marched from event to event, anecdote to anecdote, when sometimes we want instead to dwell more on particular scenes and characters and the emotions and relationships behind them. But the narrator Claudius is a historian, and Graves keeps true to this voice, but for me it left me a little lacking at times when the gems of stories and relationships that Claudius tempts the reader with are often wrapped up quite quickly. 

For example, I was interested by the relationship of Germanicus and Agrippina and the excitements and difficulties of their lives on campaign after being tempted by stories of how the heavily pregnant Agrippina and Germanicus dealt with mutinies. I was intrigued to learn more of Tiberius’ debauchery and his relationship with Caligula. And charismatic minor characters, while given short scenes to shine, were often passed by quickly in the marching narrative through the decades. This, of course, is necessary in order to keep the book short and compact, but I did yearn for more. This, naturally, is the sign of a good creative mind in developing these hooks, but I was nevertheless left a little frustrated at times.

All this is not to say that ‘I,Claudius’ is bland, of course! It has some wonderful characters and these situations and scenes, while often short, are entertaining.

‘I,Claudius’ has perhaps the best villianess I have come across in a long time: Livia Augusta. This Machiavellian wife of Augustus is charismatic in her self reliance, wickedness and in her skill as working as the prime-mover in the plot through her aims to manipulate the running of Rome. Historical characters are truly brought to life, and some of the horrible deeds that are so easily glossed over by the scholastic resistance to emotion are utterly brought into engaging emotional reality.

Livia

All in all, while not the most gripping of page turners (I am, in the end, a tricky customer for this as I am quite partial to break-neck paced thrillers) it has it’s thrilling moments and overall for a history fan ‘I,Claudius’ is an interesting read. In the end, despite the inevitable accusations of inaccuracy in any historical fiction, I,Claudius certainly feels authentic at its core.

I feel that I will enjoy the DVD box set more as it is far more visual and paced differently. And, after all, who cannot be charmed by the cast list? Derek Jacobi is Claudius, Brian Blessed (sans beard) is Augustus, John Hurt is Caligula and Patrick Stewart (with hair!) is looking somewhat tasty as Sejanus. (Don’t judge).

And, to top it all off, you can watch the entire series on youtube.

Here’s episode 1
And here’s the rest
Enjoy!

Sejanus