A proChristian history of the Sasanians

Michael Jackson Bonner, who last decade had posted some good stuff about Sasanian ideological output, in 2020 published a full book: The Last Empire of Iran. I didn't buy it because, frankly, it cost too bloody much: it's a Gorgias joint. Van Bladel has reviewed it and is highlighting another problem with Gorgias - that it is a Syriac imprint, publishing proChristian product.

According to van Bladel, Bonner has treated the Sasanians - and the Muslims - like an East Syrian archbishop might. The former follows the cow faith of "Zoroastrianism" and the latter are camel jockeys - so the review claims of the book. Van Bladel proposes that both religions deserve better, at least from 21st-century scholarship if we cannot check our biases. (G-d knows Van Bladel is no slavish Noeldekist, himself.)

Also missing - which Van Bladel concedes are deliberate omissions - society, economy, material culture, and archaeology. Yes, archaeology is a dry topic; yes, we can handle material-culture in footnotes. But how the F$^* can you talk about an empire without discussing its society? For the Sasanians in particular we really must say something of its economy, especially given Mazdakism.

An actual Parsi or Muslim, at this point, has cause to consider Gorgias as Bombadier priced as Brill. Except that this would insult Bombadier; Gorgias here is rooting around Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited territory.

On topic of Islamic origins (while we're here): available since last July is an essay by Stephen Shoemaker attached to some others, courtesy Cascade (and Amazon, if you own Kindle and want the $10 epub). Unfortunately my introduction to this work is a commentary on footnote 181; which footnote is annoying al-Jallad, van Putten, and even MacDonald. Also lately available is Robert Spencer.

The empress of Mars

Last week I bought and read Lenore Newman and Evan DG Fraser, Dinner On Mars. Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, A City on Mars now has competition in the leftwing authoritarian space. And how!

I'll start by slapping the authors silly(-er) for omitting the index. When you don't have an index you are telling your readers to go pirate the PDF. (Disclosure: I was honest. I hold a Barnes and Noble membership and bought this book there.) In a (slightly) happier note I see a partial-bibliography, of the "Further Reading" genre. Here we learn that the authors have read Zubrin's Case for Mars and Robinson's Red Mars; in the main text Fraser cops to The Martian (the movie not the book, but that's fine, and he's surely read that too).

Newman admits to a female "partner", which means she has taken herself out of the running for future humanity. Her causa, instead, is Earth: she wants not directly fewer people, oh no, but poorer people (who will then decide economically not to increase their families). The book admits that Malthus and lately Ehrlich were wrong, but this is to well-detectable chagrin.

You could run a full drinking-game on "we must" comments at this book's conclusion, pp. 202-6. The book here p. 203 touts how wonderful Canadian "policy" worked for getting everyone vaccinated against Covid. "Policy" means force. Yes: Newman - excuse me, "the book" - intends to tax carbon p. 206. Newman should say force. Newman should tell her readers outright that she is a Fury - but for everybody! Fraser, that soyboy - or oatboy as pp. 110-14 would prefer - is not the man to stop her.

Getting past Newman's noxious misanthropy was a chore, for this blogger - also of a misanthropic and authoritarian bent. Hey; I just prefer that people say what they are. Come out come out little girl!

On the other hand: Newman has restrained at least her misandry, enough to work with Fraser, to the extent his Y chromosome works. And the book is pro-labour, or at least purports to be (a directly anti-immigration stance would have been key here, for a book which claims pp. 156-7 to know economics). So maybe there's something in Newman that can be reached.

For another thing Newman is a vegan. On this much I'm more amenable; Mike Cernovich and I think Robert Kennedy have made trenchant comments on how we grow meat in the West - actually on our diets generally, which both this book's authors agree on. The book makes a semidecent case for e/acc legume-and-fruit veganism, although branching to seeds like Oatly (which we won't see @cernovich). The book further recommends fake crab and fake salmon, and fake egg, even the Impossible Burger (which I still doubt is quite ready).

On the other side of the semi is almost-certainly Fraser: the book recommends - and outlines! - artificial trout-runs pp. 183-9. For my part I think Martians will rather enjoy watching koi and catfish swim about in 3.73 ms^-2, and snails and tilapia might help keep the ponds clean. If Fraser had read more Zubrin - How To Live On Mars, say - he's too polite to note that this book recommended bringing chickens and goats too, which Newman would refuse. One does however wonder about guinea-pigs and rabbits.

Overall Newman and Fraser boost ahead of the Weinersmiths if only because Dinner on Mars does argue that we should be getting out there. I remain a Gillilandist, more-inclined to spinning habs, than to Mars proper. Newman (particularly) is so authoritarian and misanthropic that I shouldn't want in on a colony she's queen of. Same as she probably wouldn't want citizenship in the Baghistan.

The first dynasty

This blog has discussed early China before, but not Erlitou much. Besides millet-bread, which most Chinese would rather we ignored, we've had hints at a great flood. Anyway: here's a confirmation from China that a dam burst ~1920 BC. Here begins Erlitou, predecessor to the Shang state.

Erlitou these days is considered Xia. Problem: no written records, until late Shang oracle-bones and occasional bronzes. Another problem, for the Falun Dafa/Gong cult: Xia is remembered as starting long before Erlitou and this flood. Xia was like so many civilisations-remembered-by-later-civilisations, like royal Rome and pre-Flood Nippur / Kish - and our Bible: sus lengths for royal reigns. (Although, long-noted, Augustus actually did reign that long, as did Justinian and - in Egypt - Pepi II.) Anyway given that Yin=Song had called their empire "Shang" in their prime, the name "Xia" needs to be considered a likewise temporal-exonym. I prefer that if modern Chinese must use "Xia" that they do so as a placeholder, like "Shu".

Even Erlitou had antecedent: Longshan, 2500–1900 BC. This paper is from last December, concerning graves in Shanxi. Apparently the females there were imported. The local lord will have been something like a king; in late Chalcolithic China, other realms had kings too - like Shimao. The Empire, Long Divided, Must Unite; Long United, Must Divide and all that.

Hothouse flowers

The next book on the list is Lenore Newman and Evan DG Fraser, Dinner On Mars. Here you learn of a maximum temperature for the plants we rely upon. Above that temperature, plants hold their breath - they stop transpiration. They outlast the Nubian summers that way.

I say "you" because we, who read Centauri Dreams last week, already knew: "Substantial extension of the lifetime of the terrestrial biosphere". The plants might not in fact die off in the great heating our Sun will give them. Some - like Dichanthelium lanuginosum - might last until 1.6-1.86 Gy from now (6.17-6.427 Gy from main-sequence). Good news for us; good news for other aging systems. (Although absent losing our Moon in a Newtonian event, Aldiss' particular vision won't happen.)

As for carbon-reduction events, we still must beware coming Pangaea continent-gatherings. The amalgamation should raise mountains. Monsoons will weather the rock... until those mountains wear down. The question moves from low-atmo CO₂ to surface phosphour - always limited (some say the Amazon's long fertility only happened because of the Chicxulub accident). Can Earth count on more accidents? volcanoes in a frustrated Venerean surface?

Aaaand there's our segue for Newman (vegan) and Fraser to start farms up off this doomed planet. They were talking outer Mars at half irradiance; this post aims at the 1.35-1.91 range, or even 1 for our Lagranges, heliosynchs, and that fortnight-daylit Moon. Given hotter arboreta, Venus colonists don't need to worry - as much - keeping their floating farms cool. It still might worry human technicians but then, they're probably not getting into the greenhouse too often either, given the carbon-dioxide and always-on-illumination in there. It also means farms in space-stations might not demand a priority for those radiators.

Plutarch in his time

In more news of dogs not barking, Inger Kuin is reviewing the late Frederick Brenk. Brenk's thing was Plutarch, right to the end of a 93-year life. Amazing man; almost as amazing as his subject.

If you think you don't know Plutarch you probably actually do - through Shakespeare.

Plutarch was a Delphist, Brenk tells us - and a Platonist, suggesting that he figured that Delphi was where to listen to the words of the One God. I've heard elsewhere (and Brenk probably notes it in his text) that the man was quite the patriot as well, excoriating Herodotus for his solicitude to the Persian. Plutarch didn't think much of Egyptian religion; but was willing to accept the Hellenised and Platonised bastardisation which his compatriots made thereof. One wonders what Plutarch would have made of Philo even of Josephus.

Plutarch is said to have died after AD 119 therefore after the Diaspora Revolt under Trajan. Our man would have been an old man then. But as Brenk proves, entering one's eighth decade doesn't necessarily stop a man, or even tenth.

Plutarch would have written in the times of younger Pliny, before Lucian then Celsus; he was assuredly a contemporary of all four Gospels and related "satyrica". As such Plutarch should have had some interest in Christianity. But we own nothing of whatever he said. This silence has attracted the notice of minimalists such as Vridar. Brenk doesn't explain why so quiet; his aim is to lay out the evidence, so others can argue the point.

Tracking the dogstars

The "Dog Days" of Sirius are usually associated with the Greeks. Among the eastern reaches of Greek-dom was the Pamphylia, from Attalia on-east. This shares a longitude with lower Nile. OldEuropeanCulture is here to inform us that Sirius used to herald the Nile Flood, July/August (sign of Leo).

In Egypt, Sirius was female: Sopdet. (Note that -t, common to "Afroasiatic".) Instead of Orion/Sah's dog, she was Orion's mate... but still connected. Venus meanwhile was their child, genderswapped again this time male: Sopdu. For Egypt, Sopdu ruled the east in his morning-star capacity.

Among Sopdu's domains will be Arabia. Back to his mother, Nathaniel Miller doesn't talk about Shi'ré in Arabia; but he has much to say on Canopus. Orion's second dog rises in September in the Hijaz (p. 189) and October even November from Najd to Kuwait (pp. 171-2).

The first dog Sopdet/Sirius shared the same latitude, anyway, with Kuwait and Basra. You'd think this, in the Hijaz, should rise more late-Augustish, sign of Virgo.

I do wonder why Sirius didn't attract the poets as did Canopus.

Greater Tartessos

Tartessos attracted the admiration of the Hellenes for being a culture as ancient as Egypt. I always thought that was Tartessos in Spain south of the Lusitanians, those latter being paraCelts like Italians so not particularly civilised. We just had some work done which noted that Lusitanian barbarism petered out toward Gades, which became a famed port with the Punici. So: how about Tartessos?

Tartessos might, in fact, not just be Spain. h/t Reynolds: Oued Beht. Morocco didn't just share their U5b women across that Strait; they also shared ostrich eggs and ivory. And customs.

If we accept that the Greeks were several days away by ship so not always clear on the cultures on the Atlantic edge; Tartessos might actually be as ancient as the Greeks thought it was. One must consider if the thirteenth-century BC upheavals hit the Maghreb too.

"Tartessos" in the early Classical age may have been reduced to a rump state in Spain; desperately learning Punic, Greek, and/or Celtic to survive. Tartessians would remember they were once more than this.