Andrew Eubanks — The Lost Historian

From Encolombia.com It has often been said that history begins at Sumer. Traditionally, historians have constrained the jurisdiction of history to an arbitrary time frame. For example, a certain number of years have to pass before an event is considered history. On the other end of the timeline, history has traditionally been defined as written history. The invention of the written word, which is usually ascribed to Sumer in around 3500 BCE, is seen as the transition mark between history and what is considered prehistory.  By now, because of some of the topics I've written about before , I'm sure you are well aware that my definition of history is much broader. To me, history is anything that happened in the past— from just a moment ago all the way to, until we can go farther, the Big Bang itself.  To me, history is not confined to 5522 years of the written record but rather 13.8 billion years.  That being said, the transition from societies without writing to societies w...

  Original art from MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images This article continues from the previous entry in the History of America series, "The Lost Colony: The Story of Roanoke." The English colony of Roanoke had been left alone. Their leader, John White, was stuck in England as the Anglo-Spanish War raged across the seas. But Roanoke, according to one theory, wasn’t a place of refuge where one could find peace at this moment. On the contrary, it was currently being raided and destroyed by an invading force of natives. Historically, Roanoke sat in a delicate balance of the formerly friendly Croatan tribe and the traditionally hostile Secotan tribe. But this group of natives, or American Indians, were different. They weren’t Croatan and they weren’t Secotan but they were destroying everything the English had built. In fact, though the English did not know it, this new group of invaders had already conquered and consumed the Secotans, the English colonists’ historical nemesis. Thi...

  Original art by Teruya Yamamoto Part One: The Age of the Gods There are many retellings of the beginning of the Age of the Gods. This is one such retelling. There was a time when the Heaven and the Earth were not yet separated. Yin and Yang had not been divided. Everything existed as one in a chaotic, egg-like mass. And so, this mass chaotically yet naturally divided into two. One side contained everything pure and clear within the mass and ascended to become Heaven, forming relatively quickly. The other side contained everything heavy and impure, settling down to slowly form the Earth with some difficulty, going through a phase where the lands floated upon the Earth as if the Earth were water.  During this primordial time, a cloud-like mist existed in the Void between Heaven and Earth. Inside this mist was an abstract shape sometimes described as a reed-shoot before immediately transforming into a human shape. This was the first god, divine being or kami. While it became as...

  Original illustration by North Wind Picture Archives As an American and as a history writer, I feel that I have a need to write about, review and elaborate upon the history of the American nation of which I am a part. While the United States of America, as a country, is a multicultural realm (like many, if not all, other states), there remains a core group—a core nation to its history. As the world's sole superpower, the United States plays a key role in the modern day. Understanding this core nation to the United States, therefore, is key in understanding our entire modern world.  This is not to minimize the other peoples and nations who play a great role in the history of the United States, namely the American Indians who were present before the current American nation, nor the Spanish who explored the region before the current American nation nor later waves of immigrants. But to understand the history of the American nation, one must start with the earliest actors from w...

Original art: murals of the Moldovița  Monastery in Romania This war would change the course of history and the world forever. It would begin a domino effect that had an impact so large that it marks the ending of an era. The major powers that had simply always existed in the Europe-Middle East-Africa region would fall into serious decline and finally be wiped out by a power and a movement that is important to the world today. And yet, the war is not common knowledge.  There are a few reasons this could be. For one, the name of the war ascribed to it by historians is the "Byzantine-Sasanian War of 602-628" or some variant thereof which doesn't really stay in your mind all that well. Alternatively, another possibility that the war is so forgotten is that its major combatants no longer exist and the states that rose in their wake did not adopt their history as their own.  Nevertheless, the Final Roman-Persian War, as I will call the event, led to the end of both the Ro...

Original art by Ettore Mazza Ice. It was all one could see for miles upon miles. Even the trees blended in with the white surroundings, covered in snow. Even the gray sky seemed to blend in so that all one saw at any point was a field of white and gray. However, one feature stuck out like a sore thumb. A herd of woolly mammoth was trudging its way through the snow and ice, the animal's brown hair signaling to anybody in the vicinity that they were there. While other animals had adapted to the climate with white fur, the ranging mammoth had not. They didn't need to rely on camouflage for protection. Their humongous size, sharp tusks and group-based movements were sufficient protection for the mammoth.  However, a pack of other living beings slowly approach the mammoths without their knowing. Covered in white pelts from previous victims of the hunt, these humans were prepared to take down the ultimate game. Mammoth hunting was not an every-day occurrence. Rather, it was a specia...