Author: Daan Nijssen

About two centuries ago linguists became increasingly aware of the similarities between the European and South Asian languages. They concluded that these languages must have had a common ancestor. The question who the speakers of this proto-language were, from which Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and many others were descended, has concerned scholars ever since.  Unfortunately, the search for these proto-Indo-Europeans has had some destructive side effects in modern history, including the racial doctrines of the nazi’s. Nevertheless, despite all the pseudo-scientific and racialist ideas that this subject has inspired, there has been a lot of quality research on the proto-Indo-Europeans as well in recent decades. One of the most distinguished post-WWII scholars of Indo-European studies is James Patrick Mallory, who has spent most of his career trying to find the proto-Indo-European homeland and to reconstruct the migration patterns of their descendants. The conclusions of his investigations have been published in his monograph In Search of the Indo-Europeans (1989).

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In ancient times the steppes of Central Asia were home to numerous tribal federations. Since the proto-Indo-Europeans had first domesticated the horse around 4000 BC and started using it for warfare, a new way of life had originated on the plains of southern Russia. Originally, this way of life was restricted to Indo-European speaking peoples, but somewhere during the first millennium BC the Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic tribes north of China started adopting this lifestyle as well. They soon became masters of equestrian warfare and formed a mighty tribal federation known as the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu were probably the most succesful and longest lived tribal federation in history, changing shape, homeland, and names over the course of centuries. Beside Xiongnu, these tribes were known as Chionites, Hephtalites, Huna, and Huns. Who were these people?

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Ancient China has an incredibly rich historiographical tradition that is nearly as vast and complex as that of the Greeks. At the basis of this tradition lay Sima Qian’s ‘Records of the Grand Historian’, a monumental work on China’s history that spans the period between the reign of the mythical Yellow Emperor and that of the Han emperor Wu, Sima Qian’s contemporary. Sima Qian has been called the Chinese Herodotus, which at first glance seems to be a textbook example of the Eurocentric tendency to compare great eastern people to their western counterparts, but there are indeed some significant similarities between the two. Nevertheless, Sima Qian’s magnum opus – the Records of the Grand Historian, has a lot of unique Chinese characteristics as well.

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Akkadian has been one of the most influential languages in history. For
thousands of years it was the lingua franca of the Near East and the vast majority of cuneiform sources was written in this language. Knowledge of the Akkadian language and the cuneiform script in which it was written enables you to explore the Ancient Near East yourself. But how do you learn this difficult language and this even more complex script without going to university? Luckily, there is a way to learn Akkadian and the cuneiform script in no more than three months.

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The swift rise of the Persian Empire is one of the most remarkable developments of Antiquity. Within mere decades this new superpower subdued all the lands between the Aegean Sea and the steppes of Central Asia, including world powers like Lydia and Babylon. Most of these conquests were carried out by one man: Cyrus the Great. How did he bring such a vast area under his rule in such a short time?

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The Histories of Herodotus are the best known historiographical work from Antiquity. Other Greek and Roman historians have written longer and more accurate histories, but none of them has become as popular. The Histories were copied over and over again for nearly 2500 years and have survived almost intact. Why do the Histories of Herodotus fascinate us so much?

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