#David Stepp

[wondyvillains]

[artphotographyofmen]

Northwind by Alex Garcia, colors by David Stepp

[blackcrowing]

Review of The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony

I will be upfront, it is a very technical book. If you are not well versed in the anthropological categorizing of cultures and time periods of the areas being discussed it can be very difficult to keep up with the more finite points the author is making. That being said, I had never heard of any of the specific cultures being discussed in the Danube Valley and was still able to enjoy this book and its well put together analysis of various aspects of language, culture, technological developments and shifts in behaviors and place.

If you are especially interested in any of the major themes this book discusses (which is in all honesty is an extensive list including but not limited to; the development of Indo-European language, the time periods and locations as well as likely motivation for domestication of various livestock types, the cultural effects of technological developments on the peoples of the Eurasian Steppes and their migration/trading patterns) I do highly recommend. It is heavy reading but extremely illuminating.

[platypusesforarms]

The Great Steppe | Frozen Planet II: Frozen Worlds

The Great Steppe is a grassy plain that stretches 5000 miles across Central Asia.

[valarhalla]

Ok tumblr friends. I’m trying to spend less time on the internet these days, and I LOVE reading non-fiction books, but trying to find recommendations for new books is a nightmare. Any time I try to look up good new non-fiction books the results are all like “would you like to read an autobiography of Paul Newman or New Reasons We’re All Doomed” and that just. Doesn’t Work for Me. So I’m asking for recs here. I’m open to books about literally any field or topic. Only caveats are that hard sciences have to be on a level I can understand as a humanities person, and medical stuff can’t be too gory (ie I loved Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene and The Song of the Cell, but can’t stomach The Mother of all Maladies). And nothing TOO miserable, but I have a fairly high tolerance for historical stuff. I’m particularly fond of micro-history and books that delve into multiple overlapping topics.

As a sampling, here are some books I’ve read and particularly enjoyed in the last two years:

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty

The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee

On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe by Caroline Pennock

Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Victims of Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

The Last Days of the Incas by Kim McQuarrie 

The Dream and the Nightmare: The Story of the Syrians who Boarded the Titanic by Leila Salloum Elias

Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Yeats by Andrew Knoll

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya von Bremzen

Jesus and John Wayne by Kristine Kobes du Mez

Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that made China Modern by JIng Tsu

The Last Island: Discovery, Defiance, and the Most Elusive Tribe on Earth by Adam Goodheart

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home by Anya von Bremzen

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann

Fire away!

[smellrain]

𝐧𝐡𝟏𝟑 - 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭

in which: nico and you had met years ago in a cold rink in canada but then lost touch for several reasons. It's hard, growing and correcting mistakes of your past but you try anyway.

tags: written, angst, hopeful ending, mentions of: depression, injuries, hospitals, doctors, etc. (masterlist)

notes: [5.1k] I have no idea what this is? I woke up, wrote the entire thing and passed out again for 2 hours. Tried polishing it through editing? Yeah. It turned out a lot different than the rest of my stuff so far, so it's scary posting this. Come & tell me if you liked it.

The ice was as harsh as it was unforgiving. 

The cold air of the rink has seeped into your bones years ago and the reddend tips of your fingers went numb a while ago, but you were used to it by now. Nothing really mattered when you got like this, too caught up in your head for anyone to reach. 

Not even yourself. 

You had been home and then suddenly not, your body already knowing what you needed before your mind caught up to it. 

The rink wasn’t open, not yet, but you had gotten a key years ago. The owner, David, had been the only one that had looked at you the same back then. There had been a knowing sort of look in his eyes when he had seen you waiting for him at the front door stepps, eyes red. 

He had given you a key, because he had seen you for who you were: a girl whose entire life had collapsed around her. 

Bronze at fifteen, silver at sixteen, gold forever out of reach. 

You could still remember the red pen tucked into your doctor’s coat. The ‘my condolences, but’, the white light, the letter in your hand, the sinking realisation that this was it. 

That you were going to be one of the several girls that had pushed their body too far.

The same way you had done everything back then you had followed the instructions of your therapist to the letter. Stretching, compressions, different exercises. Still, there was no full recovery, no chance of ever skating professionally again. 

That might be the worst part, still being able to skate but knowing that you will never be able to feel it anymore. That you were cursed to be in this limbo, never letting go of it but never being able to live for it anymore. 

The harsh sound of your blade cutting over the fresh ice was as pleasant as it was torture. You wanted more, but you had to settle for this. You had to learn that this was all you were ever going to get. 

These select few hours in the early morning, just before your classes started, before you had to start living your life. 

You could feel yourself drawing harsh breaths, but it didn’t matter. You had pushed through worse, hunger, hurt and feelings just to stand here for a bit longer. The ringing in your ear accumulated when you thought about all that you had lost, that you could never regain.

Suddenly the heavy door of the entrance fell closed. You slowed down, curious who it might be. The clock in the corner of your vision reflected a red 05:57 back at you. It was too early for it to be anyone aside from David or another person with a key, someone like you.

It was a guy, a bag in his hand and another slung over his shoulder. 

You would recognize the equipment anywhere, familiar with it in a distant way. It must be a hockey player that David had picked out out of the hundreds that frequented this place. 

For some reason you already didn’t like him. Maybe because unlike you, he had the chance of actually archiving his dreams. Bitterness was an annoying but frecent emotion that stained the back of your mouth. 

You wanted. You wanted more than this. You wanted the early morning practices, the ones after school, the rigidous schedule, the heavy monitoring. What were you without all that?

The static in your mind had been interrupted by his arrival but you hardly noticed, more focused on the way he walked down the stairs, casually like he had done so hundreds of times already.

It was almost six, which meant it was time to get off the ice anyways, so you circled a few laps, rotating your wrists and shoulders to feel if anything was off, and then made your way towards the outside of the rink. 

“You look pretty,” said the boy from where he was tying his shoelaces up on the benches. “Out on the ice, I mean.”

Something in you hurt at that, as if your heart started pulling at its own strings. It’s been a while since anyone has watched you skate,, since you let someone else watch you. There was a sharp kind of anger rising up in you that it had been him watching you which dissipated as soon as you looked back at him.

It wasn’t his fault. There really was something wrong with you.

You knew your parents didn’t approve of you being here, but they couldn’t look at you anymore when you skated, disappointed that this was how it had ended. Disappointed in you.

“Thanks,” you said, your voice completely scraped raw. You hoped he didn’t notice it. 

“I’m Nico,” he said, approaching you. He held out his hand. He wasn’t wearing gloves yet but his dark shirt had thumbholes that his thumb peeked through which was weirdly endearing on him. 

You looked back up to his face. There was a tired but polite smile plastered on it but you didn’t have the energy to give him one. Instead you simply told him your name and took his hand. Even through his layer of fabric it was warm beneath your icy fingers.

He didn’t flinch at the cold of your hand and instead started genuinely smiling which took you by surprise. People didn’t react to meeting you like this, not anymore. 

Then, without saying anything else, he took off his guards and stepped on the ice, skating around to warm up. You watched him for a bit while scraping off the excess ice and putting your skates away. 

His skating was differentthan yours; not as delicate. The beauty of it had been hammered into you from an early age on which didn’t seem to be the case form him. It was weird, not being on the ice, being the one to watch instead. 

You changed back into your shoes and walked up the steps. 

From the top, which wasn’t all that high because this rink wasn’t that big, he seemed small. You wondered if you looked like that too, if anyone had thought that when you fell down, when they had seen you sprawled on the ice at fifteen, not being able to get up again. 

A sick shudder passed through you. You wondered if you had ever gotten up from that ice.

Then you turned around, your back to him and left without saying goodbye. 

~*~

The next time you saw him again, was two days later, just after six. 

You knew you were going to be late for class but didn’t really care. Today you weren’t as cooped up in your own head, but it was still hard to let go of these stolen few hours of freedom and face reality. 

“Hey,” Nico said, “it’s you again.”

“Hello,” you said in return. He stepped on the ice and you fought off the urge to leave immediately. That would be impolite, a voice reminded you in your head, even if you didn’t want him to be here right now.

“Are you here every morning?” he asked you, falling into step beside you and therefore joining you on your cooldown laps. 

Your eyebrows furrowed in annoyance. Couldn’t he just do his own thing? Did he have to come talk to you? “Yes.” 

"Dedicated. I only come every second day,” he said as if it mattered to you. You might have to leave early every second day now to avoid talking to him, which made your scowl even worse. 

“Okay.” You said instead. 

He hummed in reason but dropped the conversation after. When you took a look at him from the corner of your eye he didn’t seem deterred at your attitude, seemingly just satisfied that he got a response.

After another lap in, you hated to admit it but companionable silence, you left, without saying anything but this time he waved back at you from below. You didn’t return his gesture. 

~*~

Despite your early judgement, the two of you formed some kind of routine over the next few weeks. You came early, and sometimes you left a protein bar for him in the stands and sometimes he brought  you a hot tea for when you got off the ice. 

Still, always without fail, he joined you for a few laps. He talked about his life and sometimes asked you a few questions. Sometimes you answered him, other times you didn’t. He never pressed for answers. 

Nico told you that he was from Switzerland, which explained the heavy accent. He just joined Halifax, and he came early to work on his technique, preferring to do so in silence without his teammates chirping at him. You, in turn, told him that you had skated, professionally, before your injury. He didn’t ask for details about either of these things and you didn’t share of your own accord. 

Slowly, so slowly that you didn’t even notice, you realised that he had become your friend. 

It was strange. You hadn’t made friends in a long time. Before, you had had school friends, but because you never hung out outside of it, always training, it never deepend. 

A weird sort warmth seeped in under your skin at the thought of the two of you being friends like a steady fire that kept you warm at night.

The friends you had made while skating splintered along with your knee. 

It was hard, you knew that, to see their worst fear reflected back at them, but it was still hard for you to reach out, so you simply stopped talking to each other. 

On your bad days you thought that it was all their fault, on your good you knew that it was a mutual mistake. 

The thing about Nico was that he was hard to pin down. He was hardworking, thrived under pressure and loved hockey. He was also afraid of falling and failing, he loved sitting under the sun in the summers, feeling his skin heat up and his favorite colour was green, but he admitted that it changed every few weeks. 

You knew that this friendship wouldn’t last, not really. Neither of you had any way of reaching out to the other, and neither expressed the desire to do so but it was still nice, this tentative kinship.

~*~

“Have you ever played hockey?” he asked you, once. 

It must have been a Saturday or Sunday because you were in no hurry to get off the ice, instead basking in his company. 

“No,” you answered, simply.

He grinned, “you are missing out.”

“Really now?” you asked, teasingly, when you turned around to skate with your front to him.

“Really. I wanna teach you,” he said, leaving the choice up to you without outright asking. If you wanted to you could just brush it off and the conversation would continue. 

Instead you said, “yeah, sure, why not.”

His smile was blinding, the adoration for his sport bleeding from every inch of his skin. It was a good look on him, happiness. Distantly you wondered if anyone had ever thought that about you.

It was different, skating with a stick in your hands but it was fun. He taught you how to shoot and aim at a certain spot which you weren’t half bad at if you stood still.

Hours later when the two of you stepped off the ice your tea was cold but you hardly noticed it.

~*~

Another day you asked him what he was reaching for. 

“Olympics,” he had answered immediately but after a beat of silence he looked up as if the lights in the ceiling were stars he could wish upon. “I think I want someone to look at me and think ‘I want to do that. I want to start playing hockey.’”

You looked at him and the only thought that crossed your mind was that he was the reason you could step off the ice again, that you knew you would always be able to come back, just one more time. 

“I like that,” you said because it was true. 

He tilted his head back to you, and the way his eyes glimmered with a rare vulnerability made your breath catch. Or maybe that was just the effect he had on you, standing still, alive and just in reach.

Oh. 

That was that feeling in your chest. 

~*~

Yet another day he joined you on the ice and you immediately kicked him off again. 

“What did I say about injuries?” you asked, frustrated in a way only he could make you. 

“That they were not to be ignored,” he parroted back, his gaze between his feet as if staring at his ankle would magically heal it. 

“Exactly,” you said. Then, gentler than before, “you need to give yourself time to heal, otherwise you will never get better.”

He looked back up to where you were hovering above him. “Okay.”

You didn’t want him to have the last word. “Okay,” you said firmly and sat down next to him. 

The two migrated up to the changing rooms  where he sat on a bench with his ankle elevated while you worked through your stretches, your knewww aching in phantom pain.

~*~

Today your mind was quiet.

It was your last time and you had wanted to take it all in again, one last time. You were moving, your father had gotten a new job somewhere in New Jersey. You knew it was good, a new start away from everything, a chance to start over. 

But still, you were going to miss this. The rink, the quiet, the place you had grown up in. The place that was your prison as much as it was your salvation. 

As you looked up towards the ceiling, the lights shining down on you, the dark gary that seemed black in contrast, you thought you should cry. This was the perfect moment to, and you hadn’t yet. 

Then, the door opened. 

You were surprised because he wasn’t supposed to be here today. Nico had been here yesterday and the two of you had argued about your favorite brand of cereal, and you selfishly had wanted to leave it at that. 

To leave your friendship without having to say goodbye, without having to ever really let go of him. 

“Nico,” you breathed, before you could stop yourself. 

“Hey you,” he said, as he came up to you. You didn’t even realise that you had stopped moving. 

“It’s late,” he stated. You looked up to the clock and sure enough, it was almost twenty past. 

“Ah,” you said, uncaring. It’s not like you had school today. You wondered when he went to school, if his just started later than yours had. In all your talks you had never actually talked about it. 

And you never were going to anymore, you had to remind yourself. Suddenly it was a lot harder to breathe through the ache in your chest. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, and you knew he meant it, “you look, I don’t know, sad?”

“I’m moving,” before he could ask anything more, “like tomorrow. This is the last time I’m going to see you in a while.”

“Oh.” The expression on his face was hurt, because he must have realised that you had intended to leave without saying anything. 

“I’m sorry,” you said. “for everything.” You weren’t really sure for what, but it seemed like the right thing to say. For your intentions, the way you acted, maybe.

“It’s okay,” he said, but it wasn’t, not really. You knew that and he knew that you knew.

“I’m moving to New Jersey.”

He was quiet for a bit.”America,” he started. Then, “do you want to exchange numbers?”

You ignored the sting behind your eyes. “I’m probably going to have to get a new simcard, but you can give me yours.”

The two of you skated back to the door, from where you had stood still in the middle of the open space. He got a piece of paper and a pen from his bag and then somewhat messily tore off the corner of a worksheet and scribbled down his number in blue ink and signed it with his name.

He looked up at you but neither of you said anything for a while. What was there to say, anymore? 

“Don’t forget about me,” he ended up telling you and you reached out to hug him. He was warm under your hands, steady and you were going to miss this, him.

“Don’t forget me either,” you murmured into the crook of his neck. 

Still, in the back of your mind, you knew that you were never going to use his number. You were going to cut off your old life before it could follow you to your new one. But for once you had told him the truth, you weren’t going to forget about him, probably ever. 

And that was that. You said goodbye, waved and you left him there. He returned the gesture, face unreadable and you were sad that the last time he looked at you he wasn’t smiling.

From the top you looked down at him one last time. He seemed bigger now, compared to that first time you had looked down at him, still filled with bitterness.

Maybe that was just your imagination, or maybe it was his confidence after playing with his current team, after seeing his results pay off. 

You turned and let the door fall closed behind you. 

Then, and only then tears started to well up in your eyes. You ignored them and moved on. Always looking ahead, never back. 

Still, you kept the number tucked away safely hidden in a small corner of your wallet. A piece of him that you would always carry with you. 

~*~

You made new friends, graduated and decided to attend college. Got diagnosed with chronic depression and mild anxiety, got a boyfriend and broke it off again after three months, cried, laughed and finally lived. 

But there was part of you hidden in the corner of your wallet, too.

~*~

If you were being honest, Nico didn’t really cross your mind when your friend asked you to go to a hockey game with you. 

In a way he did, because he had been one of your few friends that played hockey, but it was more of an oh yeah, the sport Nico loved and not oh yeah I’m going to a hockey game and I wonder if Nico is still playing, I wonder if he made it to the big leagues. 

Okay, maybe that was a bit of a lie, but still. You hadn’t expected this. 

The two of you went to the Prudential Center and you were excited despite your earlier apprehension. Your phone with the blocked tags of icehockey and nhl seemed to burn a hole in your pants but it’s not like anyone would know. 

Your friend had told you a bit about the team, but if you were being honest, you could not remember any of their names, much less which position and line they played. 

When the players got announced, the home team first, you froze. Suddenly the noise of the cheers around you were completely quiet until they flooded back to you, a harsh reminder of reality.

Because it was him. That was Nico. Your Nico. Or like your past Nico.

There, with a red thirteen and a small C over his chest, was Nico. He was all grown up now, and instead of thinking wow, he is kind of attractive when he smiled at the camera, you thought, holy shit, he is really, really handsome. 

Your friend picked up on your strange behaviour. “What's wrong?”

I know him, you wanted to scream. I think he saved my life without meaning to, and I think I loved him but I never told him. What came out instead was, “I think I'm going to be sick.”

“What?” she asked, suddenly even more worried, “do you need fresh air? Or do you just want to leave?”

You wanted to stay. You wanted to shoot a puck at his head and tell him to look up at you, the way he had done back then. 

“No, don’t worry about it,” you said and when didn’t change at your reply, you added, “I’m just going to get some water. I think it might be the crowd or something.”

“Are you sure? Do you want me to come with?”

You knew how much she had been looking forward to it, and besides there was nothing she could help you with anyhow. “No, really, it’s all good. Just need to breathe for a second.”

She gave you a look, and you smiled despite wanting to curl up in a corner and cry, “if you are sure. But if anything,” she took your hand in hers, “if anything is wrong call me. I’m gonna have my phone in my hand the entire time.”

You squeezed her hand the same way your heart did at her words. “Thank you, really, but it’s okay. I'll be right back.”

Then you fled up the stands and you couldn’t help but think about the first time you had seen him, how you had left without saying anything. You looked down, just once, and spotted him immediately, as if he was the north pole to your south, your eyes drawn to him. 

He seemed even bigger now, as if he had finally grown into the steady confidence he had had, even back then. 

You smiled. He deserved it, genuinely. You were glad that he did end up making it to the big leagues, even if some part of you hurt at that. You still missed ice skating, your rink from back then, David, but most of all you missed what could have been if you hadn’t been scared. 

What could have been if you had just texted him. 

Regret was a useless emotion to feel, but all of a sudden you felt yourself drown in and you coughed once, just to ease that feeling in your throat.

Then you turned your back to the ice and walked up the rest of the stairs to the stands to get yourself some water. 

It was useless trying to think about any of it now, so you pushed the thoughts aside for later. 

~*~

A week later you were drunk. It was a Friday evening and you had finally finished the gruelling lab you had worked on for the entire day. 

You were hanging out in your friend’s room, the same friend that had taken you to the game a week before. Two of your other friends were sat ob the floor, leaning gainst the opposite bed and a warm, content feeling spread through your chest. 

You had friends now. 

“What’s wrong?” she suddenly asked from where she was sat next to you on her bed, her back against the headboard, yours against the wall adjacent to it.

“Nothing,” you answered because nothing was. 

“Don’t ‘nothing’ me, tell me,” she said, “you've been quiet ever since we came back from the game a week ago and I’ve waited long enough for you to say something, so now I’m going to.”

Had you been that obvious? Or did she just know you that well? Either way, she deserved the truth, the full truth.

“I just,” you began and stopped again, starting to peel off the sticker on your beer with the blunt edge of your nail. 

“When I was younger, I skated.” You started. You knew that she had never expressed any kind of interest in skating so you elaborated further, “really well.” Wow, you were really eloquent tonight.

“Okay,” she said, no doubt wondering where you were going with this. 

Your mind was fuzzy around the edges because of the drinks which made harder than usual to focus on your words, but it made it easier to talk about it, too. These people didn’t know about anything that had been, only what was. “I was good enough to win. Olympics, I mean.”

Suddenly one of the other two friends from the other side of the room joined in. “The Olympics?”

“Yeah,” you said, staring firmly at the bottle in your hands, not looking at any of them. “I won bronze and silver, fifteen and sixteen.”

“Holy shit,” she said, as did your other friend, but one of them remained quiet, so you looked at her. 

From the look in her eyes you knew that she knew. “And then I fell, badly. Tried to get up again but couldn’t. Went to the doctor and you know,” you trailed off, “retired. Started physiotherapy, got a lot better but…”

“Not enough to ever compete again,” she finished for you. 

“Yeah,” you said, voice hoarse. “But I couldn’t let go of it, you know? So sometimes, before school, I snuck out to the local rink and skated around just because I didn’t know anything else.”

Your friend that was next to you on the bed made an encouraging noise, and laid a hand on your knee, so you continued. 

“Then I met a guy. I was in a bad mental place, not really talking to anyone unless I had to, but we somehow became friends.”

Then you looked at them, “I don’t know, it was a weird friendship because we only ever saw each other at the rink every few days, but I felt something for him anyway. It wasn’t quite love but could have been, maybe.”

The others were still listening, and the words rushed out before you could stop yourself. “Then I moved. Wanted to leave before saying goodbye because that would hurt too much. On the day I was leaving I saw him anyway. He gave me his number but I never used it.”

“You wanted to make a clean cut?” your friend asked. 

“Yeah. It was sefish, because it wasn’t just about me, you know? I should have told him how I felt, but I didn’t.” You shook your head, “but that’s not even the point. I saw him again at the game.”

“Oh,” your friend that had dragged you to it, said. 

“Yeah,” you answered, and your other friend asked, “why didn’t you talk to him?”

The other friend, the one that had never asked you about your skating, even though she had known, even though she had every opportunity to, said, “because he was playing, right?”

“Yeah,” you said and you wanted to cry. You could still hear his name announced by the speakers. “Funny, all the time we spent together and I never knew his last name.”

“Who is it?” she asked, gentle, and you knew you could just not answer. You could bury it deep down, once and for all. But that’s not what you wanted to do, not anymore. 

“Nico Hischier.” And your friend laughed. 

“Of course it’s the captain,” she said and you couldn’t help but join in, the effects of the alcohol cursig through your veins. What were the chances, really? That he ended up in the state you had moved to all those years ago.

The others joined it. “He changed his number by now, I’m sure.”

“Oh yeah, definitely,” one of them said. 

All of you were quiet for a second. “Wait, I have an idea,” she said and moved her hand from your leg and grabbed your phone. 

She gave it to you and made a motion for you to unlock it. You did and gave it back to her. From where you were sat you weren’t able to see your screen, much less what she typed on it. 

After a few seconds she gave it back to you. 

It was Nico’s instagram profile. You hesitated before clicking on his most recent post. Your other friends that had been sitting on the floor climbed up to join you. 

“Follow him,” one of them said. You could feel your heart thumping in your chest. This was not the account you had used to document your wins and training back then, but it still had your first and last name in the username, but it was on private. 

Underneath your thumb the button changed colour. “Fuck,” you said.

The other three laughed at your exclamation. “Wait, do I text him?” you asked, turning to the others. 

They all looked back at you, and one of them asked, “do you want to?”

You did. You really fucking did, but you had no idea what to say. “But what do I say? Hey, sorry for being a dick to you when we were like seventeen, I was half in love with you and didn’t know how to tell you, so I just cut you out before anything could possibly hurt me.”

One of them leaned her head on your shoulder. “If you leave out the half in love part, it’s not too bad.”

“You should also ask if he wants to meet and talk in person,” the other said. 

You opened your notes app and the four of you composed a message to him. 

Your hands were shaking and your heart was beating too fast. This was it, this was your chance and you weren’t going to let go again without a fight. This time you would stay and he could make the choice: to stay or to leave. 

Then, you hit the small blue icon and sent it and let out a quiet scream. You wouldn’t be able to take it back, not anymore. 

You threw your phone away from you onto a small patch where the blanket you were sitting on was still visible. 

Over an hour passed and you still hadn’t heard back from him. Soon after you pased out, but a quiet acceptance had settled in your stomach. He forgot. Or maybe he didn’t see the message or maybe he didn't want to talk to you again, which you couldn’t blame him for. 

But when you woke up the next morning, you had a single notification from him. 

For a second you debated not clicking on it, but that would mean standing still. It would be different this time. You would be different this time. There was an unfamiliar, new kind of determination that flickered up your spine and it reminded you of the steady ice under your skates, of the final hug the two of you had shared. Harsh, unforgiving, certain. 

You clicked on it and there was no going back now.

Nico Hischier Hello, it’s been a while.  Of course I remember you, didn’t I tell you?  For sure, I'd love to meet up and talk. Does next weekend work for you? I have a home game which makes it easier for both of us. 

notes: So. How are we feeling? Thoughts? Part 2? Please talk to me about this one because this lives in my mind rent free.

[onnahu]

I think we deserve StephCass cowboy au. Or just like, western climate about girls destroying bars and killing men in duels.

Let them have horses. When they meet they fight because both horses have the same name - Batgirl. Cassandra's horse isn't even female.

Make them enemies to rivals to running-away-from-the-law-together to lovers born of the nights spent together under the night sky by a fire, trusting each other to keep watch while they're sleeping.

Let Cass be a runaway from her rich ass father David Cain that tried to (put here something he would do bc i have no idea) her so she stole his horse and made her way from the coast to the steppes where no man hired by her father would find her.

Let Steph be a girl that swore she'd kill every man like her father, and that want's to achive a bigger bounty on her head in a year than he did throughout his entire life. Let her crossdress and pretend to be a man so she isn't treated as a dirt under the other's boots. Make her be so charming that she undercover as a man steals the ladies of anyone who pisses her off, but not enough to deserve death.

Let them play Robin Hood if it was a western. Let them rob banks. Let them beat up men. Let them kiss. Let them collect a harem of girls pining over them in every city they passed through, even if they know they'll never return.

I got seriously invested. Damn. So yeah. I'm looking for volounteers lmao.

[whencyclopedia]

The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity

Timothy Winegard’s "The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity" is a sweeping study of the transformative role horses have played in shaping the course of human history. Beginning with their domestication in the grasslands of the Eurasian Steppe about 5,500 years ago, horses, argues the author, have “steered and dominated every part of our existence” and served as the “pinnacle instrument of profit and power.” This is a multifaceted work offering a 360-degree perspective of this unique animal.

Spread over 16 chapters, the author delves into how the horse played a key role across cultures and geographies changing the course of agriculture, warfare, transportation, travel, the rise and fall of empires, and even colonialism. According to the author, without the horse, the Silk Trade connecting the East and the West and serving as an economic lifeline for millions could not have happened. Nor could Alexander’s exploits across continents, the rise of the mighty Mongol Empire, and Cortez’s defeat of the mighty Aztecs have materialized.

A noted historian and the author of the New York Times best-selling work The Mosquito (2019), Winegard is currently an associate professor of history at Colorado Mesa University. He draws upon a wealth of research from diverse fields, including literature, genetics anthropology, archaeology, biology, and sociology, to craft a narrative that is as much authoritative as it is informative. Winegard’s discussion of the biology of the horses including their natural instincts, intelligence, and physical attributes, and how these attributes made them ideal partners for humans is compelling and insightful. The author’s discussion of the horse’s place in myth, art, and literature adds an extra valuable dimension to the narrative. The work also incorporates scores of photos and charts that serve as an important aid to the discussion and analysis.

Written in engaging language, this work should be of interest to diverse readers, including experts in animal studies, university students, and general readers interested in broadening their horizons. An extensive bibliography reflects the depth of research that went into the work. A surprising omission in the work is any reference to Michael Morpurgo’s fascinating novel War Horse (1982), which recounts the experiences of Joey, a horse bought by the British Army for service in World War I, serving as the basis for Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of the work in 2011.

Even after the arrival of trains, planes, and automobiles, horses, as the author documents, continued to play an indispensable role in various areas including warfare. More than a million horses were deployed by the Allied forces alone during the First World War serving as indispensable transport horses towing artillery, armaments, rations, water, and any other conceivable articles of war.

Some of the merits of the book also serve as its weaknesses. The author could have delved more into analysis than presenting an overabundance of facts which many average readers might find overwhelming. The author also tends to over-romanticize the role of horses as if they were the sole forces in historical transformation. Lastly, the staggering costs and ethical dimensions of using horses in human pursuits are largely absent in this work while the author himself admits that the First World War was the “bloodiest conflict for horses in the history of warfare.”

Despite these limitations, this book is a major contribution to our understanding of the role of horses in effecting historical change. It is a valuable complement to other recent works in the field: Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires (2024) by David Chaffetz, and Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History (2024) by William Taylor. All three works came out within only a few months, enriching and deepening our understanding of this unique and trail-blazing theme in human history.

Continue reading...

[crowleysgirl67]

Family Business

Author: @crowleysgirl67

Word Count: 3782

Parings/Characters: NCIS team, BAU, (Y/N) Gibbs, Hotch x Reader (eventual)

Warnings: NCIS/CM crossover, show warnings, angst,   

A/N: Thanks for reading! Loosely based on NCIS S3 E 23/24 the hiatus,

“(Y/N)” 

You turned at the sound of your name and smiled as you saw your dad approach with Fornell in tow. You abandoned your new team mates, who watched with curiosity, and met him in a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“We had other business to discuss and I mentioned you and your team were here.” Fornell chuckled. “You know he can’t resist seeing you.”

“Please you’re the same way with Emily.” your smile never faded.

“Plus he wants to scope them out ya know how dads are.” Fornell smirked as Gibbs rolled his eyes.

“Well come on then. I’ll introduce you.” you hooked your arm through your dads and led him over to the team. 

“Special Agent Gibbs, this is my team Dr. Spencer Reid, Derek Morgan, David Rossi, Jennifer Jareau, and Emily Prentiss. Penelope Garcia is our tech analyst who isn’t in the group right here. Nor is our team leader Agent Hotchner.” He gives a slight nod as you introduce everyone, obviously sizing them up a bit. 

“Guys this is Special Agent Gibbs, NCIS.” 

“Gibbs?” Morgan questions, looking between the two of you.

“My father.” you smiled, glancing over at him catching the small smile that graced his face before it disappeared. 

Hotch emerged from his office and appeared at the top of the steps, looking down watching. Rossi spotted him and waved him down, “Come meet Agent Gibbs”

Confusion crosses his face as he comes down the steps, “I’ve already met her, she's on the team.”

“Not me Hotch.” you smiled and rolled your eyes. 

His attention shifted to Gibbs “Special Agent Aaron Hotchner.” he introduced himself. 

“Special Agent Gibbs” he shook his hand in a firm grasp. 

You shook your head slightly as they sized each other up. You understood he just wanted to make sure you were safe, but sometimes it was ridiculous. Their weird spell was broken when a cell rang, Gibbs unclipped it from his belt and answered “Gibbs.”

He took a few steps away to listen to his call. When he was finished you approached him to say goodbye knowing he had to go. After your goodbyes you headed back over to the team.

“What?” you asked, feeling a little weird as they stared at you. 

“So that was your dad huh? Interesting guy.” Morgan says.

You shrug, “He’s my dad.” you did worry that they were profiling him but you didn’t dwell on it as Hotch beckoned everyone to the conference room. Time for another case.

***

“What the hell was that?!” Hotch shouted at you. 

“What do you mean what was that? It’s my fucking job!” you seethed. Who the hell did he think he was? You did your job, you weren’t out of line.

“You could have been hurt, or worse.” 

“So could anybody! Rossi, Derek, you! Any of us could!” you crossed your arms.

“You’re different.”  

“How the fuck am I different?”

“You’re young, you haven’t been doing this as long.”

“Are you kidding me? I’ve been doing this since I was eighteen.”

“Under your father, sure.”

Your jaw dropped, “Your excuse is that I’m inexperienced because my dad taught me? My father is one of the best damn agents there is and I will not stand here and take this.” you stormed off.  

***

You clenched your jaw but kept quiet. The plane ride was tense and you felt a little bad for the others that they couldn’t relax a little because Hotch was mad at you, again. It wasn’t as if you tried to get in trouble, it was just something about him treating you differently than the rest of them that pissed you off. Sure you were the youngest but that didn’t mean you weren’t capable. Hell you’d been doing this for years. This work was in your blood, who you were.

Protecting people was your job, even if it meant you were in harms way. Standing in front of that kid today was no different. The unsub had been waving a gun around and the kid would have been in the crossfire if you hadn’t stepped in. 

By the time the plane landed you’d finished your reports and dropped them in front of Hotch as you deboarded faster than the rest of them. You were half way across the tarmac by the time they got off. 

“Who the hell is that?” Morgan asks as you run up to a man in a red sports car.

“Does she have a boyfriend?” JJ asked.

“She’s never mentioned one. Can anybody see him clearly? Maybe it’s just her dad. We don’t know what kind of car he drives.” Emily suggests. “I think his name is Tony.” Spencer joins them on the ground.

“Slow down, pretty boy. How do you know that?” Morgan looks at him.

“I caught a glimpse of her cell phone screen when she was texting.” he shrugs as they watch you get in the car and the two of you take off.  

***

When you walked in Monday morning you headed straight for Hotch’s office. Might as well get the yelling over with. You were feeling a little better after spending the weekend with your dad and friends. Ziva and you did a little sparring to help you work out some of your aggression. You flex your bruised and a little bit bloodied knuckles and roll your shoulder a bit where she’d gotten a good hit in. Open handed you tapped on Hotch’s door in lieu of knocking. 

“Come in.” he said without looking up. 

You walked in and shut the door, which made him look up. He regarded you as you crossed your arms waiting for him to start. 

Instead of yelling he said, “You’re hurt.” 

“Oh this is nothing. Just did some sparring over the weekend.” you shrug off his comment. You’d had worse which actually caused permanent bone pain.

He looked pointedly at your bruised knuckles, “Since when does sparring do that?”

“When you spar with a former Mossad officer. She is ruthless.” you chuckle softly.

“Was there something you needed?”

“Uh.. You’re not gonna yell at me? You were pretty pissed earlier.” you were confused. You had expected to be yelled at not this.

“No. Anything else?”

“Uh… I guess not.”

He nodded and went back to his work effectively dismissing you. You left his office confused, not that you minded not being yelled at. In fact it was nice not to be, but you were confused why he had a change of heart. It crossed your mind that one of the others might have said something to him. You were with them all weekend you didn’t see how they could have. 

“Yo (Y/N). You ok?” Morgan asked, walking up beside you. 

“Huh? Oh. Yeah I’m fine.” you answered distractedly.

“Yeah cuz you sound fine. What’s up?” he slung his arm over your shoulder. 

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it. But thank you for your concern, that's sweet.”

“Ok, I’ll drop it if you answer a question for me.” he grins.

“You want to know who picked me up?” you guessed.

“Exactly. So who is he?”

“Tonys a friend, he works with my dad.”

“Just a friend huh?” he raised a brow at you.

“Yes.” you roll your eyes and nudge him, “He’s like my big brother. You tryin’ suss out if I’m dating anyone? Because the answer is no.”

He didn’t get to say anything else as JJ came over.

“Conference room in five.” she said as she passed. 

“Ya heard the lady.” you chuckled and ducked from under his arm and headed that direction. 

After the case debrief, everyone scattered to gather their things to meet on the plane. You were the last one out as you slipped your phone from your pocket and sent a group text to Tony, Ziva, Mcgee and you included Abby. Although you were sure it wasn’t her she would get a kick out of this.

*Alright, which one of you did it? Fess up.* you sent the text and grabbed your bag after making it back to your desk. Their responses rolled in quickly.

*Ooh you’re in trouble* you chuckled to yourself at Abby.

Ziva: *I don’t know what you’re referring to.* 

Tony : *Did what? Whatever it was I plead the fifth*  

You: *Who got to my boss? He didn't yell at me today.*

Ziva: *Is that not a good thing? I am confused. You were just complaining about him yelling at you.*

Abby: *gasp* (Y/N) are you disappointed he didn’t yell at you?

Tony: *Do you like him???*

You: Shut up Tony. 

Abby: *YOU DO!!!! That’s so cute!!!! 

You: YOU’RE MISSIN’ THE POINT! 

You: *Who did it???*

Tim: *I did. I texted him a video from your phone of you sparring with Ziva, with a caption about you being upset about being treated differently. I then deleted the evidence.

Tony: *Go probie! I didn’t know you had it in you.*

You: *Awww Tim. <3 Thank you, that was sweet.*

Tony *Hold up! That’s it? You’re not gonna call him out?*

You: *No, it was sweet.*

Tony: *Sweet?! You’d kick my ass if I talked to him. Hell you’d try to kick Ziva's ass too.*

Ziva: *She would not get far.*

Tim: *I thought she was doing pretty well the other night.*

Ziva: *I was going easy. Gibbs was not too happy with the small bruising she acquired from that.*

Abby: *That’s his baby. Of course he’s unhappy when she’s hurt.*

You: *Guys you realize I’m still here right?* 

Tony: *Back to my point. What the hell (Y/N).*

You: *It’s sweet coming from Tim. He isn’t as gung ho to fuck somebody up over my feelings being hurt as the two of you are. I love that about you but sometimes you gotta just let me bitch.*

“What’s got you smiling like that?” Morgan slid up next to you.  

“Geez fuck!” you jumped and slid your phone in your pocket. You’d been so absorbed in your text conversation you hadn’t heard him approach.

He laughed and you shoved him playfully.

“Didn’t your mama teach you not to sneak up on a lady?” 

“I don’t see Garcia anywhere.” he shoots you a shit eating grin.

“Derek, you are a little brat.” you admonish, but grin back anyway.

*** 

When you arrived at Rossis, you were surprised to see that Hotch and Jack were the only ones there. 

“Am I early? Didn’t you say six?” you asked Rossi as he invited you in.

“I did. You know how everybody is. Fashionably late.”  

“I suppose that’s true.” you chuckled softly. 

“You alright?” he took notice of your arm in a sling. It wasn’t there yesterday after you closed the latest case.

“Yeah. Just an old injury acting up. Keeping it immobilized helps.”

He nods, “Well make yourself at home. We’ll be in full swing before you know it.”

You smiled and made your way in taking a seat near Jack who was coloring. 

“Hi Miss (Y/N).” Jack smiles at you.

“Hey Jack. Whatcha colorin’?”

“Tow Mater.” He shows you his coloring book.

“Wow. He looks really good buddy.” you smiled softly.

“Thanks! Do you wanna color too?”

“Sure. I’d be happy too.” you adjusted the sling a bit before sliding down next to him on the floor.  

Hotch found himself smiling as he watched you color with Jack. You were very attentive to him, even after everyone else arrived. 

“You’re really good with him. Thank you.” Hotch slides next to you on the couch. 

“He’s a good kid. You’ve done well Hotch.”

“I can’t take all the credit, Hailey did most of the work.”    

“You both did great. He seems well adjusted for losing a parent so young. It’s hard.” you watched Jack giggle at some magic trick Spencer was showing him.

“How old were you?” Hotch glanced your way. 

“I was seven.” you rubbed your arm. The accident had robbed you of your mother and twin sister and left you hospitalized for months.    

He squeezed your shoulder gently, “I’m sorry.”

You give him a small smile and pat his hand gently, “I’m sorry too. Losing your spouse is incredibly difficult. I’ve watched my dad all these years.” 

***

You excused yourself when your phone rang and stepped into an empty office to take the call. 

“(Y/N)” Tony's voice was grave over the phone, cluing you into trouble. 

“What’s happened? Who's hurt?” you gripped the edge of the desk with your free hand. 

“There was a bomb your dad…” he started

You didn’t hear anything else as you felt your knees give out and you sunk to the floor. “No! No. no no.” you chanted as you struggled to breathe, to focus. 

The door flung open as Hotch and the others filed in. They had seen you go down, their concerned faces went unnoticed by you.

“Is he alive?” you gripped the phone so hard you thought it’d break.

“Yes...” Tony’s voice faded away as Hotch pried your phone from you to get details. He was alive, the relief swept through you. Whatever else you could deal with as long as he was alive.    

Your brain was in overdrive as you scrambled to your feet, “I’m sorry, I have to go. I have to go.”  

“(Y/N).” Hotch said, making you look at him. “You’re in no shape to drive. I’ll take you.”

“I.. ok.” you nodded. He was right, it was a bad idea for you to drive yourself.  

The ride to the hospital was a blur as you stared out the window trying to compose yourself. Hotch didn’t say anything as he drove, just kept glancing over as he watched the tears slip down your face in silence. 

“(Y/N)!” Abby cried out as she saw you approach.

“Abby” you hug her. “How is he?”

“He’s in a coma.” Abby gives you the grim news.  

***

You hadn’t left the hospital since you got there, and by extension neither had Hotch. You spent most of your time in a chair by his bedside, holding his hand and staring blankly between bouts of tears. It had been three days and you were getting worried he wasn’t going to come out of it. 

You wondered how your feelings had been compared to what he had gone through after coming home to find his wife and one daughter were murdered and his youngest in a medically induced coma to heal from the wreck. If his feelings were half as intense as yours, you didn’t understand why he hadn’t lost his mind. In comparison he hadn’t been in the coma that long, yet you were losing your mind.  

Tony stopped by briefly to check on you and bring you a bag. He knew better than to try to get you to leave. 

“She likes big comfy clothes when she's in distress. Also she bites her lower lip, so watch out for that. She hasn’t done it in a while but I suspect she might start. It’s almost as if it's an unconscious act. She’ll do it until she bleeds so stop her if you catch it.” he said casually as he stood next to Hotch as they watched from outside as you sat in a chair beside Gibbs bed. The large oversized hoodie Tony brought already on you, like a security blanket. 

“Why are you telling me this?” Hotch glanced at him.

“While I may be the joker of the group, I’m not stupid. You care about her.” Tony doesn’t look at him.

“She’s a part of my team of course I do.”

Tony shakes his head, “We both know it's more than that. As her friend I’m speaking for all of us, hurt her we’ll hurt you. She’s been through enough already.”

Hotch can’t help the small smile. He was glad you had such caring friends. 

Tony stepped away to tell you goodbye before returning to work, they still had a case to solve. Hotch watched as you hugged him and pondered his exchange with Tony. 

Director Sheppard had arrived again and you let her have the room. You were currently on the bench outside of the hospital room, head in Aarons lap and asleep as he stroked your hair. He was quietly talking to Dave who had stopped by to check in. The team had started coming in shifts to help relieve him. He had gone home for a little bit to shower, check on Jack and catch a few hours of sleep.

A flurry of activity going into Gibbs room stopped the conversation. Hotch turned as much as he could without waking you to stare into the room to see what was going on. He couldn’t see much with the doctors in the way but he could see the Director's face in relief. Gibbs must have woken up. 

Aaron was reluctant to wake you, as you hadn’t been asleep that long. He knew he needed to but he was determined to give you a few extra minutes or at least until the doctors were through. When they looked to be about done he gently began to rub your back, “(Y/N). Time to get up.”   

It didn’t take him as long as he expected to rouse you and you sat up. You rubbed your hands over your face to wipe away the sleep and looked around. “What’s going on?”

“Miss Gibbs?” the doctor stepped out before Aaron could answer you.

“Special Agent Gibbs.” He corrected the doctor for you.

The doctor took it in stride “Your father is awake.”

You jumped up, “Can I see him? How is he?”

“You can see him but I have to warn you, he has amnesia. He doesn't remember anything from the last fifteen years.”

“Oh no,” You whispered as you wavered on your feet a bit. Hotch stood wrapping an arm around you to keep you steady.

The doctor gives you a sympathetic look, “Try not push him to remember. We want him to try to do that on his own.” 

“Ok.” you nod and turn to look at the director and dad through the window.  

“You don’t have to go in until you're ready, kid.” Rossi gave your shoulder a squeeze.

“Thanks Rossi, but it’s not gonna hurt any less, might as well get it over with.” you gave him a small, unconvincing smile. Hotch dropped his arm allowing you to move freely as you walked to the door. 

You walk through the door and both turn to look at you. 

“Shannon?” he had so much hope in his voice, it hurt. 

The dam breaks and the water works start at him calling you your mother. “No daddy it’s me (Y/N).” 

“You didn’t…” he trails off as he looks at you.

“No. I survived.” you knew what he was trying to say. You made your way over and sat in the chair beside his bed. 

His calloused hand cupped your cheek as he wiped your tears away. Not that that did any good against the steady stream. 

“You look so much like your mother.” 

You let out a half laugh half sob, his pain was probably fresh. In his mind it was fifteen years ago. You had been too young to know the details of when and where he was told. He never talked about it, even after you’d gotten older. He had been deployed when it had occurred, that much you knew.

“They weren’t sure you were going to make it.” 

You met his eyes, surprised he would even talk about it. You weren’t sure how much he remembered yet. Staying silent you let him continue. 

“You died twice. At least that’s what they told me when I was able to come home and see you.”

“I don’t remember much, but I only thought it was once.” you remembered very little about the crash. It was always flashes of memories, you did however vividly remember dying.   

“What do you mean?” he looked at you questioningly.

“I only remember dying once. It was cold and dark and I was scared, but then mom and Kelly were there. Mom..” you cleared the lump in your throat. “Mom said I had to go back. We couldn’t leave you all by yourself. She said I was the strong one, I’d made it this far. Kelly hugged me and said to tell you she loved you and that they were gonna be waiting for us.”  

He was staring at you and something flashed in his eyes as he remembered more. “You never told me that.”

“What was an eight year old me gonna say? You’d just lost your wife and daughter. I lost my mother and twin sister. Really I was too traumatized to do much other than work on healing.” you sniffled. 

He didn’t say anything and scooted over to make room on the tiny hospital bed, before patting beside him. You were careful as you climbed up next to him, you didn't want to hurt him more. He pulled you into his side and kissed your head.   

***

You’d taken two weeks off work to help your dad out. During that time you and Hotch texted everyday even if it was just a check in text. You loved your dad but he was stubborn and you vented to Hotch about it.

You: Am I this bad?

Hotch: What happened now?

You: He’s not resting. I threatened to tie him to the couch unless he took it easy. I’m glad Jenny made him take a little vacay but dude chill!

Hotch: Yes, you have a tendency to be just as stubborn. Like father like daughter I suppose.

You: I deserve that. 🤪

Hotch: It’s not always a bad thing.  

You: You wouldn’t say that if you had to deal with me 24-7. 

“(Y/N) Door.” your dad yelled from the kitchen.

“I’ve got it!” 

You: BRB dad needs me.

You jogged downstairs and answered the door, surprised to see Hotch standing on the other side of it.

“Hotch? What are you doing here?”

“Coming to see you. Got a minute?”

You glanced back in the house, “Yeah sure. Dad, I'm stepping outside!” you shouted and stepped onto the porch. “So what brings you over?”

Hotch shifted on his feet seeming almost nervous. 

“Hey whatever it is you can tell me.” you said softly.

“I feel like a teenager asking out his crush.” he chuckled, “Which is in essence what I’m doing. Would you like to go on a date with me?”

You smiled, “I’d like that.”

“Great, maybe now you can keep her off my ass about stuff.” Gibbs huffed appearing in the doorway.

“Dad!” 

“I’ll try” Aaron laughed.

[rui-nova]

Tragedy at an Impasse: The Terror, Hope, and Loss

Or a series of digressions about the story's themes of hope and some of its manifestations.

Once upon a time, a Greek chorus would sing upon a spectacle, and before then, and ever after, tragedy would fascinate us, because it would call to our familiars, because we, too, live with regrets, on a stage with little control over our fate, where we are nonetheless festering hope, a speck of something unattainable, a longing for what we may have once dreamt as familiar, as safe, as right.

There is no chorus in The Terror, its music is haunting, quiet, and acute. Like a good tragedy, its beginning already spells its doomed end, but its theme is silence. How then, should one replace the chorus, how can one call for fear and mercy, which muse should sing for them, rotten as they are, lonesome as some vowed to be? Its characters are left bare, but few of the self can be recognised through their exposed thinning flesh and frail whimpering. They are no geodes, expecting to be broken, to reveal a truth only their God would lay claim upon 一they’re Heraclitus’ paradigm of the shifting river, Theseus’ ship, and they are gone. Dead, and gone.

They are a graveyard of hope, with no bones to be buried. It begets grief and resistance, in their path laden with loss and futileness. The Terror is a tale of hubris and loss, of unfairness upon silence, of humanity bereft of it. Hope, too, is bereft of itself —but it does not die until they all do.

I. Devotion

On occasion, the characters pour hope into their devotion. After all, the men of Erebus and Terror cling mostly to the way of the lands they leave behind.

Far from the waylay ships and their forsaken fates, they hang on to the faith of their merciful God, whose scripture should stand above all laws of men. Here? There is no place for the divine. Not for them. The land, they soon see as godless, as it is put under prejudice, as they try to conquer that which is not theirs; soon it is godless, as human law and debauchery attack it, and thus God cannot love them. Their faith, and thus their hope, cannot reach him, if he is there.

Forsaken, what is God to them? He who loves them not, and in whose stead Fitzjames raises Sir John first, then Crozier?

Like Irving, the men who know the gospel in their hearts doubt and suffer, but they find contentment in that divine law, in its order. That God would not grant them ghosts. There is no more content soul than that of the most pious devout, and that of those who deny religion and gladly accept it in their heart. To Irving, faith was enough, as he upheld 'propriety' at the ships. It was enough, as he trudged atop the ice and the steppes. It bloomed, when hope was granted by chance, as a meeting with the Netsilik, as the goodwill of humanity was rekindled before his eyes. Freezing, devoted, doggish Saint Bernard that he was, it is still known: tragedy fancies not a mercy to devotion, to faith.

God-fearing Franklin and David Young cling to faith, when they feel their passing near.  Perhaps, convinced by Goodsir, Young would fashion himself a more fortunate Icarus, even when his wings he did not will himself; why would he not wish to be anything other than a canary in a coal mine, after all? Perhaps, Sir John fashioned himself a Robinson Crusoe, that God would say to them that “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Joshua 1:5). Perhaps, but God is not there for them.

Even then, when Goodsir claims it does not matter if God is with them, it matters to some, it matters to Hodgson, and Fitzjames, who gnaw onto its hope and meaning for salvation, for legitimation. Hodgson equates the Holy Communion to human consumption, he incarnates the horror that Dante appealed to with Count Ugolino and his purposely ambiguous verses, and he hopes, or rather wishes he hoped, that this faith will preserve his humanity, as the body of Christ preserves life, because he is hungry, and he wants to live. Fitzjames, in its stead, plays his subtle counterpart, he plays Ugolino’s sons, he pleads to give back to those who believed his performance more than he did, and he cries, to Crozier, who ‘loves the men more than God does’, “Father, much less pain ’twill give us / If thou do eat of us; thyself didst clothe us / With this poor flesh, and do thou strip it off. / Then hunger did what sorrow could not do” (Canto XXXIII, Inferno). Indeed, he is not Christ, but his body he will offer.

Hope, thus, is named faith, in the name of Christ, the son of the absent God, ripped apart like a Dionysos by men hungry for his love, when hunger did what sorrow could not.

II. Consumption

Could we say, then, that hope is consumption, in the human need of possession, the desire of life?

The crews find little wonder in this place. They wonder only of below, of forward, by Franklin's ghost. Life can bloom, one can find beauty in Nunavut, Goodsir learns, and Silna mourns, but the other sentenced men see only a barren land. The hollow land, for hollow men. 

Hope turns some to forbidden consumption, to harvest corpses for the life that does not bloom in them, and it is both the epitome of Arendt’s banality of evil, that “wholly unexceptional complacency” (Eichmann in Jerusalem) that waltzes into horror, and an act of fear and unrequited understanding, unrequited love.

It is said that “incorporating what you love is a sure way of seeing that it never escapes from you” (Crain, 1994). It is no wonder that he who has nothing would want to consume everything.

Rat, vulture, prophet, devil, monster, chosen, no one, ‘Hickey’ 一neither of which he is. Few understand hope as Hickey does. Hope is whatever one makes of a bad situation. Hope is survival, and “survival is a nasty piece of business. But we do what we have to do.” There is no troubled complaisance, because this force of life, this meaning, is owed to the possession of something, anything; it is feeding from the possibility of having a place and a meaning in the great scheme of it all. 

This curse may leave them loveless, may leave them unconsumed by the recognition of the other through their ever-decaying humanity, but Hickey opens the door to hope through consumption. No more would they be shown “fear in a handful of dust” (The Wasteland: The Burial of the Dead, TS Eliot), but rather, a new life from it: a utilitarian Noah's ark of mutineers. Or the attempt of it.

Because Hickey scraps from meat and its ornaments, he dresses in that which the world knows he is not, in the boots of a man who must stand to the view of all or believe himself no one at all, in the coat of a subservient man who forced him to expose himself for the 'godly' concern of ‘dirtiness’ —but Hickey is no Dr. Jekyll. He is both sinner and sufferer, but cannot conjure a Mr. Hyde. He cannot become someone else, someone born with different circumstances, someone beyond tragedy.

But hopeful, of his powerful change of fortune, he must have felt. Hopeful that the intimacy of anthropophagy and lust —and perhaps even love— would fill him as they should, that he would be seen and loved by a place through which he only works if it is to mingle with the dead… but this place, this barren, hollow, wasted land that they have made, cannot love them back. It cannot love Hickey back, no matter how much he hopes so.

III. Legitimacy

Hope is born out of recognition, a yearning that could not be wholly unreal, that there may be no certainty, but still a possibility of that desire, and a strength to see it through. As such, hope calls for an act of mercy, in repentance and debt, a hope for meaning and order; hope longs for foresight, as it guides the defeatist soothsayers to silent survival.

Mercy demands a hierarchy, a higher power and a higher moral, and what claim do these downtrodden souls have on such exercise? What right have they, to instil upon their lot the pretence of order they left back on their homes? What legitimacy have they to cry for Lazarus, his grave either sealed or in the making?

If hope is survival, if hope is in the rightness of humanity, and the purity of the flesh, it gives, that the physicians would dare all they did, a vow to knowledge, a vow to wellness ーthe burden of mercy. It is telling, then, that Stanley and Goodsir’s sentence is set from their very own sickened flesh, when their soul can no longer be contained, when it cannot bear to heal what is thought lost. Song is lost, through Morfin, and so is fellowship, through Collins, and truly, what remains of man by then?

Soon, they will be husks, there is no other end to life and their sentences. Three roads stand before them: they may seize all banal struggle, end it here before hope eats itself; they may push forward, wait for someone to take up the torch while they impossibly keep its fire alive; they may also cut expenses, maximise the chances of the fortunate few. Le Vesconte chooses the latter, to Little's dismay, but truly, nothing is fair where they are. The ill shall die alone, but they, too, already are "dead and gone", and damn it all ーthey still hope to live.

Theirs is an act of love, a hope that their mercy might make it right, but, ultimately, they are no God, and they cannot command the choice of their men. They cannot play Abraham nor the shepherds, because they are Cain, indeed, their brethren’s keepers, and the death they plan is also the death they hope to inflict upon the lead and the fear that is slowly sentencing them.

This is a truth that they know all too well, but few more than Silna and Crozier do, soothsayers, voice in the wilderness, shamans that they are. They have the certainty, and they suffer the curse of Tiresias and Cassandra, of an Orpheus who shall see his darlings leave when he remains, and whose cries shall be for naught but a sad song with no words. 

And Crozier shall drown in the alcohol and the visions of a David who will be thrown to the lion's den and survive it, yet he will long for that spiteful hierarchy of patronising mercy, in the mistrust born from others’ devaluation of him —but Silna shall be a symbol of the suffering that colonial enterprises inflict upon the innocent. She shall bite that “We were never meant to survive” (A Litany for Survival, Audre Lorde), but why would they not leave, why would they not let her bury her father, force her to play Antigone? Why are they tying her down with them, making her Lady Silence? And, to Crozier, “Why do you want to die?” Why— why would he kill hope, why would they make her home a boneyard?

And, far removed from who they were, exiled from their homes, both shall inflict a silence upon their legacy, and enact the aftermath of that hope. 

IV. Hope

What value does hope have, if this is an inked and parched tragedy? What goodness is it, when loss is assured, faith is unheard, consumption fills no well, and mercy is not merciful at all?

Most died, and there were innocents back in the graveyards they left behind, as there were innocents in Sodom and Gomorra. Faith and trust are gone, and so is warmth, while love is frail. Hope is at odds with itself, it is both a noble promise and a delusion, and it is the trembling gun that points not to the narrative’s back, but to its chest, cold, heavy, knowing, undoing. That particular gun should fire, it would be right, but a certain lieutenant wavers, does not pull the trigger, because he hoped— He hoped it did not have to be like this.

A question is thrown to the skies, from sore, tender hearts: “Why?”

The veterans remember well, ‘why’. Before their minds were touched by darkness, “it wasn't sickness or hunger that mattered most to our chances.” Instead, as Mr. Blanky relates, “what little love we had amongst us was the only thing keeping us civil”, and Blanky speaks not only of the story of Fury Beach, but also of their very fates.

If hope is to be the compulsion to bite the hand that feeds, to split its head open with a boat axe —if hope is to be a stronger faith in the others, or the self, than on living on, then so be it.

To hope against hope, in the face of silence, of loss, is worthwhile, and it is allowed, Blanky proves, as he discovers both the Passage and Tuunbaq by his own, lonely path. Then, hope needn’t be of survival, it needn’t be of a cleansed state of naïve, optimistic utopia. Ephemeral as life is granted to humanity, I’d dare say we are allowed this, to hope not only in spite —but because of death.

Because of death, the Netsilik family that feeds Irving matters —because of it, the efforts Lady Jane pursues back in England matter —because of it, Collins, Hartnell, and Tozer’s care for their fellows matters so, even as it leads them straight to their death.

Because hope is restless, and it cares little for tragedy when tragedy cares so much for it, it lives on, and it instils upon the bystander the chance of that bittersweet, wonderful catharsis.

Hope punishes Jopson, due to a frenzied servitude and loyalty that is paid in the botulism-induced disbelief of abandonment, but it pushes him forward, too, closer to the open than to the living dead the tents guard; hope chokes Little through angry chains and a last command, it reduces him to puppetry, but it pushes him to a subtle integrity few are allowed, and something must remain at the very end, to ask ‘Close?’, and thus hope for an answer, if it mattered, in the end; hope tells Bridgens love is what life is worth being alive for, and he’ll want for nothing else when Peglar’s gone, but he guards the pocket-book to his waist, he keeps his lover's words close, closer than his own, and he hopes not to die an empty book.

Crozier speaks without a waver, through words that haunt The Terror till its very end. That “‘close’ is nothing. It’s worse than nothing. It’s worse than anything in the world.” This is a tragedy, there is no happy ending. But ‘close’ does have a meaning. ‘Close’ means ‘hope’, and hope is the remnant in Pandora's jar, to which they were so close. Hope is what made them, once upon a time, alive, and hope is why it hurts.

If you reached the end, this is an invitation to talk about the hyperfixation together 🤝

[wondyvillains]

[rose-of-oz]

ONCE UPON A TIME OC MASTERLIST

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[comiccrusaders]

Johnny Quick by Alex Garcia, David Stepp #comicart #comicbookart

[xtruss]

The First Europeans Weren’t Who You Might Think

Genetic Tests of Ancient Settlers' Remains Show That Europe is a Melting Pot of Bloodlines From Africa, The Middle East, and Today's Russia.

Three Waves of Immigrants Settled Prehistoric Europe. The Last, Some 5,000 Years Ago, Were The Yamnaya, Horse-Riding Cattle Herders From Russia Who Built Imposing Grave Mounds Like This One Near Žabalj, Serbia. Danubian Route of Yamnaya Culture Project , National Science Center, Poland

— By Andrew Curry | Photographs byRémi Bénali

The idea that there were once “pure” populations of ancestral Europeans, there since the days of woolly mammoths, has inspired ideologues since well before the Nazis. It has long nourished white racism, and in recent years it has stoked fears about the impact of immigrants: fears that have threatened to rip apart the European Union and roiled politics in the United States.

Now scientists are delivering new answers to the question of who Europeans really are and where they came from. Their findings suggest that the continent has been a melting pot since the Ice Age. Europeans living today, in whatever country, are a varying mix of ancient bloodlines hailing from Africa, the Middle East, and the Russian steppe.

The evidence comes from archaeological artifacts, from the analysis of ancient teeth and bones, and from linguistics. But above all it comes from the new field of paleogenetics. During the past decade it has become possible to sequence the entire genome of humans who lived tens of millennia ago. Technical advances in just the past few years have made it cheap and efficient to do so; a well-preserved bit of skeleton can now be sequenced for around $500.

The result has been an explosion of new information that is transforming archaeology. In 2018 alone, the genomes of more than a thousand prehistoric humans were determined, mostly from bones dug up years ago and preserved in museums and archaeological labs. In the process any notion of European genetic purity has been swept away on a tide of powdered bone.

Analysis of ancient genomes provides the equivalent of the personal DNA testing kits available today, but for people who died long before humans invented writing, the wheel, or pottery. The genetic information is startlingly complete: Everything from hair and eye color to the inability to digest milk can be determined from a thousandth of an ounce of bone or tooth. And like personal DNA tests, the results reveal clues to the identities and origins of ancient humans’ ancestors—and thus to ancient migrations.

Top: The horsemanship the Yamnaya brought to Europe lives on in their native region. A rider at the Zaporizhzhya Cossack Museum on Ukraine’s Khortytsya Island demonstrates the acrobatic skills that made the Cossacks such feared warriors from the 1400s on.

Bottom: Masked figures at the annual carnival in Ottana, a village on the Italian island of Sardinia, act out human mastery over animals, a theme dating to the early days of domestication. DNA of Europe’s first farmers still dominates the genes of modern Sardinians.

Three major movements of people, it now seems clear, shaped the course of European prehistory. Immigrants brought art and music, farming and cities, domesticated horses and the wheel. They introduced the Indo-European languages spoken across much of the continent today. They may have even brought the plague. The last major contributors to western and central Europe’s genetic makeup—the last of the first Europeans, so to speak—arrived from the Russian steppe as Stonehenge was being built, nearly 5,000 years ago. They finished the job.

In an era of debate over migration and borders, the science shows that Europe is a continent of immigrants and always has been. “The people who live in a place today are not the descendants of people who lived there long ago,” says Harvard University paleogeneticist David Reich. “There are no indigenous people—anyone who hearkens back to racial purity is confronted with the meaninglessness of the concept.”

Top Left: Yamnaya artifacts from their homeland in Russia and Ukraine include a four-foot-tall anthropomorphic stela from 3000 B.C. featuring axes and horses. Yavornitsky National Historical Museum, Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine

Top Middle: This human skull was painted with ocher, a natural clay pigment. State Historical Museum, Moscow

Top Right: This necklace was made of fish teeth. State Historical Museum, Moscow

Bottom: Sheep ankle bones were used for games. State Historical Museum, Moscow

First Wave: Out of Africa

Thirty-two years ago the study of the DNA of living humans helped establish that we all share a family tree and a primordial migration story: All people outside Africa are descended from ancestors who left that continent more than 60,000 years ago. About 45,000 years ago, those first modern humans ventured into Europe, having made their way up through the Middle East. Their own DNA suggests they had dark skin and perhaps light eyes.

Top: The Yamnaya made knife blades like this one and other tools of bronze. State Historical Museum, Moscow

Bottom: This model, found in a 2500 B.C. grave, represents a wheeled wagon like those the Yamnaya used to travel across the steppes. State Historical Museum, Moscow

Europe then was a forbidding place. Mile-thick ice sheets covered parts of the continent. Where there was enough warmth, there was wildlife. There were also other humans, but not like us: Neanderthals, whose own ancestors had wandered out of Africa hundreds of thousands of years earlier, had already adapted to the cold and harsh conditions.

The first modern Europeans lived as hunters and gatherers in small, nomadic bands. They followed the rivers, edging along the Danube from its mouth on the Black Sea deep into western and central Europe. For millennia, they made little impact. Their DNA indicates they mixed with the Neanderthals—who, within 5,000 years, were gone. Today about 2 percent of a typical European’s genome consists of Neanderthal DNA. A typical African has none.

As Europe was gripped by the Ice Age, the modern humans hung on in the ice-free south, adapting to the cold climate. Around 27,000 years ago, there may have been as few as a thousand of them, according to some population estimates. They subsisted on large mammals such as mammoths, horses, reindeer, and aurochs—the ancestors of modern cattle. In the caves where they sheltered, they left behind spectacular paintings and engravings of their prey.

DNA recovered from ancient teeth and bones lets researchers understand population shifts over time. As the cost of sequencing DNA has plummeted, scientists at labs like this one in Jena, Germany, have been able to unravel patterns of past human migration. Max Planck Institute For The Science of Human History

About 14,500 years ago, as Europe began to warm, humans followed the retreating glaciers north. In the ensuing millennia, they developed more sophisticated stone tools and settled in small villages. Archaeologists call this period the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age.

In the 1960s Serbian archaeologists uncovered a Mesolithic fishing village nestled in steep cliffs on a bend of the Danube, near one of the river’s narrowest points. Called Lepenski Vir, the site was an elaborate settlement that had housed as many as a hundred people, starting roughly 9,000 years ago. Some dwellings were furnished with carved sculptures that were half human, half fish.

Bones found at Lepenski Vir indicated that the people there depended heavily on fish from the river. Today what remains of the village is preserved under a canopy overlooking the Danube; sculptures of goggle-eyed river gods still watch over ancient hearths. “Seventy percent of their diet was fish,” says Vladimir Nojkovic, the site’s director. “They lived here almost 2,000 years, until farmers pushed them out.”

Top: In Sweden, ancient rock carvings (enhanced with modern red paint) echo cultural shifts brought by migrants—starting with hunter-gatherers who came from Africa in the Ice Age and followed retreating glaciers north. Their DNA is still prevalent, especially in southern Baltic countries. Tanum World Heritage

Bottom: Over millennia, migrating humans have used the Danube River, seen here at a narrow gorge between Serbia and Romania, as a highway from the Fertile Crescent into the heart of Europe. The site of Lepenski Vir, nearby in Serbia, was a haven for fishing hunter-gatherers—until farmers took over around 6000 B.C.

Second wave: Out of Anatolia

The Konya Plain in central Anatolia is modern Turkey’s breadbasket, a fertile expanse where you can see rainstorms blotting out mountains on the horizon long before they begin spattering the dust around you. It has been home to farmers, says University of Liverpool archaeologist Douglas Baird, since the first days of farming. For more than a decade Baird has been excavating a prehistoric village here called Boncuklu. It’s a place where people began planting small plots of emmer and einkorn, two ancient forms of wheat, and probably herding small flocks of sheep and goats, some 10,300 years ago, near the dawn of the Neolithic period.

Within a thousand years the Neolithic revolution, as it’s called, spread north through Anatolia and into southeastern Europe. By about 6,000 years ago, there were farmers and herders all across Europe.

It has long been clear that Europe acquired the practice of farming from Turkey or the Levant, but did it acquire farmers from the same places? The answer isn’t obvious. For decades, many archaeologists thought a whole suite of innovations—farming, but also ceramic pottery, polished stone axes capable of clearing forests, and complicated settlements—was carried into Europe not by migrants but by trade and word of mouth, from one valley to the next, as hunter-​gatherers who already lived there adopted the new tools and way of life.

But DNA evidence from Boncuklu has helped show that migration had a lot more to do with it. The farmers of Boncuklu kept their dead close, burying them in the fetal position under the floors of their houses. Beginning in 2014, Baird sent samples of DNA extracted from skull fragments and teeth from more than a dozen burials to DNA labs in Sweden, Turkey, the U.K., and Germany.

Many of the samples were too badly degraded after spending millennia in the heat of the Konya Plain to yield much DNA. But then Johannes Krause and his team at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History tested the samples from a handful of petrous bones. The petrous bone is a tiny part of the inner ear, not much bigger than a pinkie tip; it’s also about the densest bone in the body. Researchers have found that it preserves genetic information long after usable DNA has been baked out of the rest of a skeleton. That realization, along with better sequencing machines, has helped drive the explosion in ancient DNA studies.

Top: Excavations at the 10,300-year-old site of Boncuklu in Turkey have revealed that people were living there during the transition to farming. The person buried here under the floor of a home likely would have farmed small plots of domesticated wheat, and may have herded goats and sheep, while continuing to forage.

Bottom: A woman harvests wheat by hand near Konya, Turkey. Farmers from Anatolia brought agriculture to Europe starting nearly 9,000 years ago. Within a few millennia, farmers and herders dominated most of the continent.

The Boncuklu petrous bones paid off: DNA extracted from them was a match for farmers who lived and died centuries later and hundreds of miles to the northwest. That meant early Anatolian farmers had migrated, spreading their genes as well as their lifestyle.

They didn’t stop in southeastern Europe. Over the centuries their descendants pushed along the Danube past Lepenski Vir and deep into the heart of the continent. Others traveled along the Mediterranean by boat, colonizing islands such as Sardinia and Sicily and settling southern Europe as far as Portugal. From Boncuklu to Britain, the Anatolian genetic signature is found wherever farming first appears.

Those Neolithic farmers mostly had light skin and dark eyes—the opposite of many of the hunter-gatherers with whom they now lived side by side. “They looked different, spoke different languages … had different diets,” says Hartwick College archaeologist David Anthony. “For the most part, they stayed separate.”

Across Europe, this creeping first contact was standoffish, sometimes for centuries. There’s little evidence of one group taking up the tools or traditions of the other. Even where the two populations did mingle, intermarriage was rare. “There’s no question they were in contact with each other, but they weren’t exchanging wives or husbands,” Anthony says. “Defying every anthropology course, people were not having sex with each other.” Fear of the other has a long history.

About 5,400 years ago, everything changed. All across Europe, thriving Neolithic settlements shrank or disappeared altogether. The dramatic decline has puzzled archaeologists for decades. “There’s less stuff, less material, less people, less sites,” Krause says. “Without some major event, it’s hard to explain.” But there’s no sign of mass conflict or war.

After a 500-year gap, the population seemed to grow again, but something was very different. In southeastern Europe, the villages and egalitarian cemeteries of the Neolithic were replaced by imposing grave mounds covering lone adult men. Farther north, from Russia to the Rhine, a new culture sprang up, called Corded Ware after its pottery, which was decorated by pressing string into wet clay.

The State Museum of Prehistory in Halle, Germany, has dozens of Corded Ware graves, including many that were hastily rescued by archaeologists before construction crews went to work. To save time and preserve delicate remains, the graves were removed from the ground in wooden crates, soil and all, and stored in a warehouse for later analysis. Stacked to the ceiling on steel shelves, they’re now a rich resource for geneticists.

Top: Bones and artifacts some 7,700 years old found at Aktopraklik, a Neolithic village in northwestern Turkey, offer clues to the early days of agriculture. DNA extracted from the skulls of people buried here has helped researchers trace the spread of early farmers into Europe. Bursa City Museum, Türkiye

Bottom Right: A grindstone from Aktopraklik testifies to grain farming. Bursa City Museum, Türkiye

Bottom Left: A ceramic sherd from Aktopraklik bears an image of wheat. Bursa City Museum, Türkiye

Corded Ware burials are so recognizable, archaeologists rarely need to bother with radiocarbon dating. Almost invariably, men were buried lying on their right side and women lying on their left, both with their legs curled up and their faces pointed south. In some of the Halle warehouse’s graves, women clutch purses and bags hung with canine teeth from dozens of dogs; men have stone battle-axes. In one grave, neatly contained in a wooden crate on the concrete floor of the warehouse, a woman and child are buried together.

When researchers first analyzed the DNA from some of these graves, they expected the Corded Ware folk would be closely related to Neolithic farmers. Instead, their DNA contained distinctive genes that were new to Europe at the time—but are detectable now in just about every modern European population. Many Corded Ware people turned out to be more closely related to Native Americans than to Neolithic European farmers. That deepened the mystery of who they were.

Third Wave: Out of the Steppe

One bright October morning near the Serbian town of Žabalj, Polish archaeologist Piotr Włodarczak and his colleagues steer their pickup toward a mound erected 4,700 years ago. On the plains flanking the Danube, mounds like this one, a hundred feet across and 10 feet high, provide the only topography. It would have taken weeks or months for prehistoric humans to build each one. It took Włodarczak’s team weeks of digging with a backhoe and shovels to remove the top of the mound.

Standing on it now, he peels back a tarp to reveal what’s underneath: a rectangular chamber containing the skeleton of a chieftain, lying on his back with his knees bent. Impressions from the reed mats and wood beams that formed the roof of his tomb are still clear in the dark, hard-packed earth.

“It’s a change of burial customs around 2800 B.C.,” Włodarczak says, crouching over the skeleton. “People erected mounds on a massive scale, accenting the individuality of people, accenting the role of men, accenting weapons. That’s something new in Europe.”

It was not new 800 miles to the east, however. On what are now the steppes of southern Russia and eastern Ukraine, a group of nomads called the Yamnaya, some of the first people in the world to ride horses, had mastered the wheel and were building wagons and following herds of cattle across the grasslands. They built few permanent settlements. But they buried their most prominent men with bronze and silver ornaments in mighty grave mounds that still dot the steppes.

By 2800 B.C, archaeological excavations show, the Yamnaya had begun moving west, probably looking for greener pastures. Włodarczak’s mound near Žabalj is the westernmost Yamnaya grave found so far. But genetic evidence, Reich and others say, shows that many Corded Ware people were, to a large extent, their descendants. Like those Corded Ware skeletons, the Yamnaya shared distant kinship with Native Americans—whose ancestors hailed from farther east, in Siberia.

Within a few centuries, other people with a significant amount of Yamnaya DNA had spread as far as the British Isles. In Britain and some other places, hardly any of the farmers who already lived in Europe survived the onslaught from the east. In what is now Germany, “there’s a 70 percent to possibly 100 percent replacement of the local population,” Reich says. “Something very dramatic happens 4,500 years ago.”

A terra-cotta statuette of a woman may symbolize fertility. Bursa City Museum, Türkiye

Until then, farmers had been thriving in Europe for millennia. They had settled from Bulgaria all the way to Ireland, often in complex villages that housed hundreds or even thousands of people. Volker Heyd, an archaeologist at the University of Helsinki, Finland, estimates there were as many as seven million people in Europe in 3000 B.C. In Britain, Neolithic people were constructing Stonehenge.

To many archaeologists, the idea that a bunch of nomads could replace such an established civilization within a few centuries has seemed implausible. “How the hell would these pastoral, decentralized groups overthrow grounded Neolithic society, even if they had horses and were good warriors?” asks Kristian Kristiansen, an archaeologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

A clue comes from the teeth of 101 people living on the steppes and farther west in Europe around the time that the Yamnaya’s westward migration began. In seven of the samples, alongside the human DNA, geneticists found the DNA of an early form of Yersinia pestis—the plague microbe that killed roughly half of all Europeans in the 14th century.

Unlike that flea-borne Black Death, this early variant had to be passed from person to person. The steppe nomads apparently had lived with the disease for centuries, perhaps building up immunity or resistance—much as the Europeans who colonized the Americas carried smallpox without succumbing to it wholesale. And just as smallpox and other diseases ravaged Native American populations, the plague, once introduced by the first Yamnaya, might have spread rapidly through crowded Neolithic villages. That could explain both their surprising collapse and the rapid spread of Yamnaya DNA from Russia to Britain.

“Plague epidemics cleared the way for the Yamnaya expansion,” says Morten Allentoft, an evolutionary biologist at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, who helped identify the ancient plague DNA.

But that theory has a major question: Evidence of plague has only just recently been documented in ancient Neolithic skeletons, and so far, no one has found anything like the plague pits full of diseased skeletons left behind after the Black Death. If a plague wiped out Europe’s Neolithic farmers, it left little trace.

Whether or not they brought plague, the Yamnaya did bring domesticated horses and a mobile lifestyle based on wagons into Stone Age Europe. And in bringing innovative metal weapons and tools, they may have helped nudge Europe toward the Bronze Age.

That might not have been the Yamnaya’s most significant contribution to Europe’s development. Their arrival on the continent matches the time linguists pinpoint as the initial spread of Indo-European languages, a family of hundreds that includes most languages spoken from Ireland to Russia to the northern half of India. All are thought to have evolved from a single proto-Indo-European tongue, and the question of where it was spoken and by whom has been debated since the 19th century. According to one theory, it was the Neolithic farmers from Anatolia who brought it into Europe along with farming.

Another theory, proposed a century ago by a German scholar named Gustaf Kossinna, held that the proto-Indo-Europeans were an ancient race of north Germans—the people who made Corded Ware pots and axes. Kossinna thought that the ethnicity of people in the past—their biological identity, in effect—could be deduced from the stuff they left behind.

“Sharply defined archaeological cultural areas,” he wrote, “correspond unquestionably with the areas of particular people or tribes.”

The north German tribe of proto-Indo-Europeans, Kossinna argued, had moved outward and dominated an area that stretched most of the way to Moscow. Nazi propagandists later used that as an intellectual justification for the modern Aryan “master race” to invade eastern Europe.

Partly as a result, for decades after World War II the whole idea that ancient cultural shifts might be explained by migrations fell into ill repute in some archaeological circles. Even today it makes some archaeologists uncomfortable when geneticists draw bold arrows across maps of Europe.

“This kind of simplicity leads back to Kossinna,” says Heyd, who’s German. “It calls back old demons of blond, blue-eyed guys coming back somehow out of the hell where they were sent after World War II.”

Yet ancient DNA, which provides direct information about the biology of ancient humans, has become a strong argument against Kossinna’s theory. First, in documenting the spread of the Yamnaya and their descendants deeper and deeper into Europe at just the right time, the DNA evidence supports the favored theory among linguists: that proto-Indo-Europeans migrated into Europe from the Russian steppe, not the other way around. Second, together with archaeology it amounts to a rejection of Kossinna’s claim that some kind of pure race exists in Europe, one that can be identified from its cultural artifacts.

All Europeans today are a mix. The genetic recipe for a typical European would be roughly equal parts Yamnaya and Anatolian farmer, with a much smaller dollop of African hunter-gatherer. But the average conceals large regional variations: more “eastern cowboy” genes in Scandinavia, more farmer ones in Spain and Italy, and significant chunks of hunter-gatherer DNA in the Baltics and eastern Europe.

“To me, the new results from DNA are undermining the nationalist paradigm that we have always lived here and not mixed with other people,” Gothenburg’s Kristiansen says. “There’s no such thing as a Dane or a Swede or a German.” Instead, “we’re all Russians, all Africans.” 

— August 2019, National Geographic

[outofangband]

Love, love, love the birds worldbuilding in Himring.

I've actually been digging through links looking for birds that occupy Nan Elmoth and the surrounding area - Himlad, northern Estolad, the banks of the Celon.

Any thoughts about the flying critters living around there?

I’ll start with Himlad!

Flora, fauna, geography and environment masterlist

Himlad was a realm in Eastern Beleriand, bordered on the West by the river Aros and on the East, its tributary, Celon. It means ‘cool plain’ in Sindarin and was described simply as a cold region, likely due to its proximity to the March and thus to the Iron Mountains, the cold fronts of which extend throughout the surrounding regions. 

I have imagined it as a steppe environment with an ecology similar to Mongolia. We have little information on environment other than the description of cold but some speculation can be done due to the habitat and through looking at similar real habitats, mostly in Northern Europe and temperate parts of Asia as well as parts of North America which Tolkien was inspired by the prairies in (source: The Flora of Middle Earth)

As always I include world building notes at the end so it’s not just a list of species! And as always please consider the list incomplete! There are so so many birds and I often go back to add more. Feel free to request a more specific prompt to focus on or a more specific family of birds

In the plains and steppe: tawny pipit (migratory, traveling west in the winter), David’s snowfinch, brown accentor, Siberian stonechat (also found in shrubs), rosy starling, swan geese, steppe partridge, pallas’s sandgrouse, great bustard, common cuckoo (migratory), cornrail (migratory, avoids the more arid parts), bearded vulture, crested lark, golden eagle, steppe eagle, imperial eagle, grey faced buzzard, ring necked pheasant, hazel grouse, black grouse, blue rock thrush, common quail, horned owls, gray partridge, desert warbler

Roosting in the sparse trees and shrubs: Yellow browed bunting, common rosefinch, fieldfare, stock dove, common nightjar, little owl, pine bunting

River shores: snow bunting (migratory), red necked crane (migratory), greater painted snipe, osprey, coturnix quail, grey heron, hen harrier, white throated dipper, bank swallow

Other: fork-tailed swift (migratory, mainly aerial), white headed duck, house sparrow, brambling (migratory), song thrush (migratory), black billed caper, northern wren

World building notes:

-Hunting with eagles and other birds of prey is more common than in the other Fëanorian realms (though most utilize birds at least sometimes). Golden and steppe eagles are used primarily by Celegorm and his loyal servants; these are huge and beautiful birds whose use is in some ways a boast of the skill of their handlers

-Celegorm’s knowledge of the language of birds is highly utilized for the defensive and offensive projects of Himlad. Though his followers do not for the most part have this gift they are highly skilled in using tracks, traces and conditions to understand the presence of local birds and the implications thereof. They know what to make of the stray tail feathers of a steppe partridge versus the presence of molt. They know the difference between the tracks of

Of course this applies to other creatures besides birds but as this post is about birds…

-Grouse and quail are sometimes kept for meat and eggs though different species of quail then are kept by the Marchwardens of Doriath. Some of the species are brought from Estolad, Ossiriand or Western Beleriand. The birds are housed in large open pens with small nesting boxes. 

-There are also domestic species of chicken, peacock and quail like birds that are kept for similar reasons. Hybrid species, sometimes with native species, occur naturally and through planned breeding projects during the Long Peacd

-The camouflage of steppe creatures including birds is often used in the fashion of Himlad’s soldiers.

-The various sections of archers among the army and scouts are distinguished by varying types of feathers used in their arrows. For example, Swan goose feather is used for the scouts that patrol the borders and rivers, swift feathers are used among the smaller more specialized groups and golden eagle feathers are reserved for the archers who will be first in the lines of offensive movements.

-Game birds are hunted for meat though all parts are used. Bird bones are actually highly utilized by the host of Himlad, in jewelry and headwear as well as whistles and other tools.

As always please feel free to ask more!

[scotianostra]

On September 27th 1831 Scotland’s first passenger railway opened between Glasgow and Garnkirk.

The trains must have been “quite the thing” and created a crowd to see them in use, as seen in the two pics by the famous David Octavius Hall, it looks like a family day out with pic tables and all.

The Garnkirk and Glasgow Railway was incorporated on 26 May 1826 and was ceremonially opened on this day 1831.. The engineers were Grainger and Miller from Edinburgh (Thomas Grainger and John Miller).

If look closely at the pics you will see the steam engine has no covered cab for the driver and fireman, a feature of early locomotives which meant that their drivers and firemen worked in all weathers.

The line was extended to Coatbridge in 1843; and in 1844 it became the Glasgow, Garnkirk and Coatbridge Railway.

In 1844 it was bought by the Caledonian Railway; and in turn with the 1921 Railway Grouping it became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway.

As early as 1842 passenger services were being publicly advertised as running to a regular timetable on the Garnkirk and Glasgow Railway. The trains ran between Leaend and Townhead, calling at Coatbridge (near the site of the present day Sunnyside station), Gartsherrie, Gartcosh, Garnkirk and Stepps.

No arrival time at Townhead is advertised, hence the overall journey time cannot be accurately calculated, however the pace of the journey can be deduced as (start to start times) taking ten minutes from Leaend to Coatbridge, fifteen minutes from Coatbridge to Gartsherrie, five minutes to Gartcosh, five minutes to Garnkirk and five minutes to Stepps. The times from Gartsherrie to Stepps are quite remarkable - compare it with a journey today.