That link is interesting in that it goes from "Herodotus to ibn khaldoun" but Cyrene was 200 years old when Herodotus got there so... from an "ancient history" perspective Ibn Khaldoun writing about the berbers founding Libya is kind of the equivalent of Gibbon writing about Rome - I mean, yeah, it's important but he was reliant on sources that weren't entirely reliable at the time and the historical record has pretty much blown everything he had to say away. Here's the thing: desert societies are always precarious. Ask the Anasazi, ask the Assyrians, ask the Egyptians. Libya exists, as far as I know, because it was Cyrene. The north coast of Africa became less relevant in no small part because everything fell to ruin in the Peloponnesian War, and then when the Romans were busy picking over the Greeks' sloppy seconds they fucked up the African Coast something serious. By the time of the Islamic conquest, anyone with any pull ended up in Spain while anyone whose life sucked ended up in Africa. So yeah. It never really had a chance. But really, it was never really a place that had much going on anyway. By the bye, Cyrene is the home of silphium, one of my favorite little bits of folklore. I may have developed a low-budg indie script about some adventuresome botanists who head out to Libya in search of silphium only to find haoma at which point things get extremely altered states slash red one. There was a time when I figured spending a couple days shooting b-roll and key shots on Socotra would have been within the realm of possibility, but that time has passed. Read the silphium box here. You can read the bit about asafoetida; it's kind of a trip. But the silphium thing is...evocative.
i disagree with the assertion that it never had much going on, given that it was rome's breadbasket and rich as hell for quite a while after the time you discussed - i think if you're gonna point to the romans fucking up the coast you should point to deforestation and not to the whole "salting the earth" thing - sure, they fucked up the city for a while, but it rebounded into a bigass metropolis and only really lost relevance after getting bounced back and forth between rebels, vandals, eastern romans, and arabs for like 400 years libya wasn't just cyrene: there was a lot of shit in roman africa and i think it's not correct to characterize north africa-west-of-egypt as "the greeks' sloppy seconds" and punic ruins. a bunch of important stuff happened in between "rome moves in" and "everything is islam" and if things turned out a bit differently it sure as hell could have "had a chance", or at least could have declined a lot slower also north africa was like. extremely important in the spread of christianity and popped out more bishops and heresies than anybody knew what to do with so it's like even culturally speaking it's not like it was a backwater given that saint mutherfuckin augustine was the bishop of HIPPO i dunno man. i don't disagree with the first half of your post (old historians are lying bastards at the best of times and it's a dangerous game living in the desert), but i deeply disagree with your conclusion and i think it's an unhelpful oversimplification silphium is neat as hell, i agree with that - i would watch the hell out of that movie too
Look - we started talking about the permanence of the Sahara and ended up at the historical origins of native Libyans. I've done my level best to keep up and keep pointed in the direction you wanna take this but I also wanna point out that while we're talking your passion? I'm just pointing out that the Sahara is an old desert.
hey I'm not trying to be a dick about it, it's that i want to clarify some things that i actually have knowledge about / want to contribute to discussion on here for once instead of floating around complaining about my life like i normally do - I'm sorry for breathing down your neck, i didn't intend it at the same time if i was saying smth inaccurate about sound design or moviemaking or watches or etc the things you know a lot about, i would want to be corrected / for people who know more to come in and share because I'm an ignorant person generally so it's like, i thought i could share some stuff that i thought was interesting so i apologize for using your comments to jump off on rambling / making you need to 'keep up with' a discussion that doesn't interest you: next time I'll just comment on the main body of the post to avoid this kind of thing i guess
Please don't and please keep being you. This is stuff I like hearing about, especially culture and language and religion and art. So if you have interesting side tangents, I'd love to hear them.next time I'll just comment on the main body of the post to avoid this kind of thing i guess
And much as the Romans did to Utica so did the late 20th century do to Upstate New York. Some “fun” historical parallels and, of course, city and townships names. http://yorkstaters.blogspot.com/2006/01/whats-in-name-no2-origins-of-classical.html?m=1