Classify 'Conan the Barbarian'

[Euclides]

He looks Cro-magnoid to me.

''H. sapiens - Cro-Magnon

50 tya to present

Anatomically similar to modern humans.
Beginning in Sub Saharran Africa and a temperate climate, they would eventually adapt to all extreems of heat and cold. They ranged from Northern Africa to Southern Asia and across Europe. They took advantage of the lowered sea levels and connections via land to migrate across the Bering Land Bridge beginning around 20 to 10 tya. Others suggest that they might have crossed via a Greenland-Nova Scotia route, over ice, land and with small sea vessels across short distances. The first North American immigrants were caucasoid, and were later replaced by Asian tribes who were the ancestors of modern Native Americans ''

[Hans]

Neanderthal

[Razmig]

perhaps an early armenoid (neandrathal admixture in sapiens) haha

Conan is an ancient Nordic barbarian north of ancient Sumeria (nordic in the sense that he was in the northern regions of Sumeria), what would now be Anatolia, and if im not mistaken Conan was a real person.

[Nordhammer]

According to what I read about the author, he's supposed to be a Celtic-like barbarian.

He resembles a mesomorphic UP type, Brünnish with tanned skin, pale blue eyes and black hair.

I've never seen any renditions of Conan where he looks like a squat, roundheaded, bignosed Armenoid.

BTW, one of the best movies ever made!

[Nordhammer]

THE FATHER OF CONAN

By GLENN LORD, Literary Agent for the Estate of Robert E. Howard

As printed in Savage Sword of Conan #200

The future creator of Conan, Robert Ervin Howard, was born January 22, 1906, at Peaster, Texas, a tiny hamlet some forty-five miles southwest of Fort Worth. The father, a country physician, moved the little family the length and breadth of Texas over the next several years before finally settling at Cross Plains, a small town in Central Texas, in 1919.

...

By 1930 Howard had become a regular in Weird Tales and had broken into Fight Stories with his humorous Sailor Steve Costigan yarns. Later in the year he began a series of historical adventure stories in Oriental Stories, a relatively short-lived companion title to Weird Thies.

The Great Depression, as might be expected, had its deleterious effect on the publishing industry. For a period of time, Weird Tales reduced its frequency of publication from monthly to bi-monthly; even after returning to a monthly schedule, it no longer was able to pay contributors on publication. Oriental Stories went to quarterly from bi-monthly appearance. And Flight Stories was suspended with the April 1932 issue and would not return to the newsstands until the Summer 1936 issue.

Forced to seek new markets, Howard experimented with detective fiction with only negligible results, and would later admit it was not a genre for him. On the other hand, after some earlier failures, he found his niche in the western genre with the Paul Bunyanesque Breckinridge Elkins tales which ran in every issue of Action Stories from the initial story in early 1934 until after his death in 1936. So successful was this formula that two series of like nature had been accepted by rival publishers just a few months before his death.

The November 1932 issue of Weird Tales introduced another popular character, Bran Mak Morn, the Pictish chieftain, whose battles with the encroaching Roman legions in Britain were very popular.

The following month's issue introduced a character who would soon overshadow all his other heroes, and would be by far his most famous character: Conan the Cimmerian. This first Conan story, "The Phoenix on the Sword," was actually a rewrite of a rejected Kull story, "By This Axe I Rule!"

Over the next four years, seventeen Conan stories appeared in Weird Tales, some lengthy enough to require serialization. Had the English publisher Pawling & Ness Ltd. not gone into receivership in 1934, "The Hour of the Dragon" would have been Howard's first book. (It was later serialized as a five-parter in Weird Tales, and has since been published in book form under the title Conan the Conqueror.)

Howard was having an all-time high in sales by the beginning of 1936, with his work appearing regularly in Weird Tales and Action Stories, the Kirby O'Donnell and Francis X. Gordon (El Borak) adventure series appearing in Street & Smith's titles, and a new series of risque tales under a pseudonym in Spicy Adventure Stories.

But Howard's letters to correspondents indicated his growing worry over his mother's state of health. In 1935 Mrs. Howard had undergone surgery at the King's Daughters Hospital at Temple, Texas; she never fully regained her health, and from then on would require visits to regular medical facilities and intensive nursing care.

On the morning of June 11, 1936, the attending nurse replied in the negative when Robert asked if his mother would ever emerge from her coma. He walked to his car, parked to the side rear of the home on the outskirts of Cross Plains, got in and fired a bullet into his brain.

He died eight hours later; Mrs. Howard expired some thirty hours afterward.

A double funeral was held, with interment in Greenleaf Memorial Cemetery at Brownwood.

[Awar]

Conan is not Sumerian, he's Cimmerian, or Kimmerian.
Kimmerians were an ancient Iranian nomad people who lived in the pontic-caspian region and neighbouring areas. They were defeated and assimilated by Scythians, who were in turn assimilated by Sarmatians, who were finally assimilated by Slavs of modern Ukraine.

In the movie Conan, the band of raiders who attacks Conan's village were representing Scythians and their supreme new skill that enabled victory over Kimmerians, horsemanship.

The Tulsa-doom character ( the black one portrayed by James Earl Jones ) is supposed to be a Stygian, from a land that later came to be known as Egypt.

According to Howard's descriptions of Conan, the name of Conan's people, it's location and the given era of events, I'd say that Conan could have been a Cro-Magnid Irano-Nordoid.

[Awar]

"Know, O Prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars--Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingaria with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom in the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet."



-An excerpt from The Nemedian Chronicles

[Nordhammer]

"When Howard created his barbarian hero more than 50 years ago , he made an idealized version of himself, a man whose virtues made him stand out over the rest of humanity. An exceptional man not only thanks to his physical attributes and abilities as a commander, but thanks as well to his intelligence, strong will and charisma, Conan was even capable of stealing the rank of the most important chiefs of the Bacharian pirate float in just a week. Conan is the perfect star for any fantasy story, equally as good as a brilliant strategic man, as a smart burglar, a cold killer or a woman conquerer. Conan matchs every need in these kinds of plots and so is appropiate for any tale of Sword and Witchcraft. Also, Conan has one of the most attractive fictional lands ever imagined. The Hyborian era, with a smart mix between historical names (even celtic roots), medieval and classic backgrounds, also features magic with traditional myths and creatures of horror conceived by H. P. Lovecraft for the Cthulhu tradition in a fantastic frame to develop the most unbelievable adventures."

[Abby Normal]

I take it you're a fan, Nordhammer.
Diddn't Governor Arnold Schwarzzahanaghaggherr play Conan in a movie?

[Nordhammer]

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/crom.htm

REAL NAME: Crom

IDENTITY/CLASS: Hyborian God;
likely one of the Celtic Gods

OCCUPATION: God of Storms, Death, and Eternity

AFFILIATION: Hyborian Gods; Conan; worshipped by people of Cimmeria; an unnamed shaman

ENEMIES: Kulan Gath, Shuma-Gorath, Vammatar

KNOWN RELATIVES: (possibly) Gaea ("mother"), Ymir, Mitra, Lir (Leir)("half-brothers"), Bori, Manannan ("nephews"), Morrigan, Atali ("nieces")

ALIASES: Mountain God, Lord of the Mound, Lord of the Great Mountain; possibly Crom Cruiach (Bowed One of the Mound), Cenn Cruiach (Lord of the Mound), Crom Crioch, Crom Dubh (the Black Bowed One), Crooked One of the Hill, Bloody Bent One





BASE OF OPERATIONS: Crom's Throne, aka Mount Crom, a mountain in the Eiglophian Mts. of Cimmeria (now part of modern-day Germany)--active in the Pre-Cataclysmic Era and Hyborian Eras

POWERS: Crom was one of the very first immortals of Earth, possibly even before the Sumerian or Egyptian Gods (the two oldest pantheons known to Earth). He has extra-ordinary strength (Class 100), endurance, and cosmic awareness. As a god of storms, Crom can likely summon wind, rain, thunder, and lightning in any amount and intensity he desires. He has incalculable mystical powers on an omnipotent level and the ability to grant power on mystics and sorcerers who know how to summon him.


Crom is a stern and unforgiving god that answers no prayers. Conan and other Cimmerians saw Crom as dispensing two important gifts to all Cimmerians at birth: the strength in their sword arm and the fire in their hearts. These are the ONLY boons he ever grants his worshipers.

FIRST APPEARANCE: (historical) Robert E. Howard's stories...which one? beats me.
(Marvel Universe)

(name only) Conan the Barbarian Vol. 1 #1 (1970)

(seen) What If I #39 (June, 1983)

(Earth-616 version seen) Savage Sword of Conan #110 "Army of the Dead"

HISTORY: (Official History of the Conan Universe #1) - Crom is one of the primeval gods of the Hyborian Age, a part of time that existed toward the end of the Stone age and before the Bronze Age (between 15,000 and 4,000 years ago). Worshipped by ancient Cimmerian tribes, Crom was a grim and savage god who cared little for mankind except to allow them to exist. The Cimmerians believed he ruled a land where the souls of the dead wandered aimlessly for all eternity. Crom and his far flung brood of diverse immortals dominated much of prehistoric Earth from beyond a veil of mystery and with a silence unlike the later immortals of the Golden Age of Mythology.

More info about Crom

Many references in oaths Conan utters refer to "Crom's eye!" implying that Crom only has one eye. In Savage Sword of Conan #157, while struggling against demons in a dream, Conan told Crom that if he ever met up with him, he would take his other eye. This is a common motif in Celtic and Germanic mythologies. I would imagine at one point Crom had two eyes but either gave one as payment for something or lost it in battle. I believe Crom comes from the Irish pagan deity Crom Cruaich or Cremm Crioch and is usually translated as the Lord of the Mound (as listed under aliases) and less often as 'the bloody bent one'.--Greg O

Crom Cruaich - "Bowed One of the Mound," Irish; also known as Cenn Cruaich, "The Lord of the Mound" or Crom Dubh, "The Black Bowed One" and "The Crooked One of the Hill." An ancient sacrificial God (God of death and rebirth) who is particularly associated with Lughnassad, or late July, early August. The last Sunday in July is still called, "Domhnach Crom Dubh" (Crom's Sunday) even though it has been Christianized as the day of the spectacular pilgrimage up St. Patrick's Mountain.....information from High Priestess Green Hag's site on Crom.
She further speculates the Crom was, in fact, the Dagda.

Allegedly, worship of Crom was abolished by St. Patrick.
Crom was situated in within the sidhe [sic] of the subterranean mounds in Tullyhaw, but St. Patrick traveled there and had his idols destroyed.

Yet another source reports him as "one of several gods of agriculture and fertility, Crom was distinctive in the fact that he was crippled, supposedly as the result of a magical blow dealt him by St. Patrick."

"...the bloody cult of Crom Cruaich in County Caven demanded human sacrifice to a serpent deity and the dismantling of this cult by Christianity <St. Patrick> is now remembered as the 'snakes being driven from Ireland.' "