A Geek History of Time - Episode 164 - Dwarves! Huh! Good God, Y'all Part II

Episode Date: June 25, 2022

I said good day sir. You don't ever plan anything around the Eagles because the Eagles represent the grace of God. You heathen bastards. One of vanilla nabish name. Well you know works are people too. I'm thinking of that one called they got taken out with one punch. So he's got a wall, a gall, a gall, and a wall. Every time you mention the Eagles, I think done Henley.

Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.

This is a geek history of time. Where we connect Nurgere to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock. I'm a world history and English teacher here in Northern California. And in my capacity as an English teacher, I have been teaching my sixth grade English students the Sherlock Holmes story, the adventure of the speckled band, which is a lot of fun, partly because I'm a Sherlock Holmes fan to begin with, especially after we had done an episode talking about him.

And it occurs to me that your point at the end of our last episode was close to the mark, but I think it can be expanded slightly. You mentioned how anti-semitism is an inescapable part of English art. And I think it can be broadened. I don't think it's just anti-semitism. I think it can be broadened. I don't think it's just anti-Semitism. I think it's xenophobia. Because general island culture. Generalized xenophobia because again,

I'm teaching the adventure of the speckled band. And one of the things that makes the bad guy in that story inherently suspicious to Holmes and Watson and the reader, remember he was writing for a Victorian English audience, was that Dr. Grimsby Roy lot of stoke Moran. That's a lot of names. Yes, well, you know, one of the the last surviving heir of one of the oldest sacks and families remaining in England is just about word for word the line from the story. mother fucker, partly because he allows a group of Romani to camp on his land. Wow. And he will sometimes disappear with them for days at a time. And I'm using the term Romani.

Right. Conan Doyle did not use the term Romani. Yeah. He used the G word and like it's just it's just taken for granted that oh yeah, I mean, it can sort with those people. Must be suspicious. Oh yeah, no, there's multiple references to thieving slur, you know, and you know, when a young woman, when the sister of the young woman who goes to Holmes for help, tells the story of her sister's suspicious death, they immediately jumped to, well, she mentioned a speckled band.

Could it be the spotted handkerchiefs they wear? So often it could have been. Wow. You know, I mean, it was just like, and I actually had to take a moment or two in the process of teaching the story to the kids to say, okay, understand, these are negative racist stereotypes that are just being blatantly thrown out there. Right.

We don't use this word anymore to talk about these people. Don't use this word to talk about these people because it is now, it is a slur. Right. You know, and so, so yeah, I don't, I think, I think that there is anti-semitism, but I think anti-semitism is part of a larger strain of just xenophobia. Like there are other times in other stories written by Englishmen where the Irish, who like they're literally just on the other side of a goddamn straight. Like it's not even, they're not even that foreign,

but apparently they were foreign enough to Victorian Englishmen to be demonized, you know, and described in these in these caricature-esque, you know, monstrous kind of ways. It's like, okay, you all really are an island culture, and you really do have some serious, serious phobias about anybody who ain't part of your tribe. serious, serious phobias about anybody who ain't part of your tribe. So yeah, that's, that's what I've been doing. Who are you and what have you been up to? Well, I'm Damien Harmonia. I'm a Latin teacher, a drama teacher, as soon to be his three teacher up here in Northern California. And I found a new cafe. And I, you know, I always try to find a place just I like, I like ambiance and what have you. And I, you know, I always try to find a place just I like I like ambiance and what have you.

And this place actually had a sign out front said, you better be bare in a mask when you come in here. Said something similar. I was like, okay, cool. This is this is already cafe. And it's down on 11th Street and Cathedral Square, which I think you recognize that as being formerly a different comic place. This currently though, the there and back cafe, their mokas are good, their ambiance is fun. I have a video that I will show you after because the floor is a map of Tolkien's Hobbit world. Oh, that is Middle Earth. Shit. Isn't that also, no, I was thinking Midgard. I always mix those up. It's kind of like my mixing up Heinlein and Herbert. Kind of, but, but it's a little bit more

forgivable with, with Middle-Earth and Midgard because Midgard is literally where the name Middle-Earth came from. Right. Because again, Tolkien like looted the poetry and prose edels for everything he could. Well, they've got it on the floor when you walk in. So you can quite simply walk into Mordor. Nice. Yes. So I would be willing to go there even before you mentioned that. Yeah.

It sounded like the kind of place I wanted to go to and now I need to go there literally just to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Hey, hey, good. Hey. So, so yeah, that's that's I found that I encourage anybody who's in the local Sacramento area to go to that cafe, give them your business. They have nice good hand pies. Their mocos are pretty good. I loved this. Yeah. I love this salad. My son enjoyed cranberry scone. My daughter really enjoyed her drink. It was a polyjuice potion. And my son really enjoyed his lavender lemonade. So it was all good all around. So I strongly recommend people check out there and back again, cafe.

Okay. Very cool. Yeah. They even have a Shirkutari board, which is called a Shire Cutari board. It's just adorable. So it's it's it's good. It's good. They're building it. Yeah. All right. Yeah. No. I'm I'm I'm already pumped. Like I'm ready to go now. Yeah. So. So when last we left, you were you'd introduce the diaspora. Yes, specifically. Okay. So there are many diaspora. Yeah. Cause it's a Greek word. So it would

be a right. There, there have been many diaspora throughout human history. We talk about the Black diaspora, we talk about the Irish diaspora. Right. You know, any group of people migrating from a homeland to any number of other places is a diaspora. Right. And the Jewish diaspora is one of many. Okay. And that's the one you're going to focus on. This is the one I'm going to focus okay. And again, before I delve into this, I want once more like I did at the beginning of the last episode, I want to give a very, very heartfelt thank you to a friend of the show, Tessa, for acting as my sensitivity reader being as I'm not only am I a Gentile, I'm a Catholic. And so anytime I'm going to talk about Jewish anything, I should make sure I'm, you know, I have my head on straight, I'm, you know, being sensitive to issues. And one of the things that she did mention to me was that the term diaspora,

especially when talking about the Jewish diaspora, has been used in ways that can sometimes be kind of a dog whistle, because it can be used in a way to try to characterize Jewish people as invaders, as foreign, as not belonging in places where they've now lived for a thousand years. Right. You know, and so I want to write it right at the outset. I want to make very, very clear that, you know, I am specifically, I'm looking at this pattern of migration in order to try to find out whether there was an element of anti-Semitism in the archetype from its beginning or not. And I'm not trying to characterize anybody as not belonging anywhere, everybody belongs everywhere.

You know, anywhere, anywhere anybody wants to live, they have a right to make that their home. But you are talking specifically about the history of the movement of these people Yes, over time into others. Yes, okay. And so when we talk about the spread of Jewish populations out of the Levant, out of the Middle East, into other parts of the world, one of the things that comes up very quickly is the ethnic divisions or the ethnic groups within Judaism. And so the first group and the group that, as an American, if somebody says the word Jewish to you, the group that you are probably going to picture

in your head are the Ashkenazim. Okay. And these are Jews who are descended from Jewish populations in central and eastern Europe taking their name from the medieval Hebrew word for Germany. Okay. I should know. This is your uh, late 1800s. Yeah. Um, escaping many pogroms, uh, American immigration. Yes. Correct. The 50% stayed basically in New York. The other 50% continued on westward to varying degrees. Yeah. To the rest of the country. Yeah. This explains why the American imagination is that it's Ashkenazan when you say a Jewish person. That's what you think of yeah, yeah, okay now the next group

That comes up that gets mentioned are the Sephardim or Sephardic Jews Who are descended from populations in Spain, Portugal and North Africa? Right, okay, so Right. Okay. So there is area, I believe is I believe so. Yes. Yes. And so they are descended from groups who left Judea and moved into hispania. Right. State Mediterranean. Yeah. Yeah. Well, stayed state Mediterranean and remained Yeah, stayed well, stayed, stayed Mediterranean and remained or moved into that part of the world, which then after, after Roman control of Iberia faltered, first it was, it wasn't the vandals, no, the, oh man. Anyway, one, one of the barbarian tribes responsible

for the invasion of Rome in the four 70s took control and their dinosaur cultured. Yes, it was the Vizagothics. Thank you. Vizagothics Spain. So they gave me the date. I was like, oh, I know who you're talking about. Yeah, yeah.

So we can tag team this stuff. So then they lived in in Visigothics Bay and then they came under the rule of the Moors as you mentioned right There was a real flowering of scholarship both religious and medical and scientific within Sephardic communities in Iberia and North Africa during what is what is often referred to as the Muslim golden age. Right.

And I want to say that was the Abbasid caliphate. But there were there were great many Jewish scholars active in in that part of Europe, and a great many rabbinic traditions that are now part of Jewish culture more broadly date back to developments within that population in that part of the world. And then the third broad group are the Miss

Rahim or Easterners. And now what's interesting about this term is this can be very broadly applied or very narrowly applied. It can be taken to mean any non-European Jews, which sometimes has meant Jewish populations who never left the Middle East. Sure. It's also been applied to Yemeni Jews or Jewish populations in Africa. And the term has actually been used by the Israeli government to refer to groups that were targeted by immigration plans in the same way that U.S. immigration laws were designed to keep many populations out of this country.

So the definition of Mizrahiim is one that, I'm not really qualified as a Gentile who go into very much more, you know, talking about the shades of meaning of that. Sure. It's broadly broadly, third group is. Okay. Okay. And so that now brings us to the Roman Empire

because I mentioned Germany, Germany, I mentioned Hispania. Right. And I know we're gonna get back to fantasy literature and to Warhammer 40K eventually, I promise, but to get there, we've got to start here. So Pompey conquered Jerusalem in 63 BCE. Okay.

Now over the following century, there were multiple conquests and revolts within what became the province of Judea. Mm-hmm. And those conquests of different parts of the territory and those revolts by different populations led to tens of thousands of Jews being carried out of Judea and into the rest of the Roman Empire either being just like deported like you're a troublemaker GTFO. Right. Or they were defeated by the Romans, which frequently meant, hey, by the way, you're our property now.

Right. You know, welcome to slavery. And so we know that there was a community of manumitted Jewish slaves on the right bank of the Tiber in Rome within the first century CE. Yes. After the first Jewish Roman war in 66 CE, which was a huge revolt, which actually led to the construction of the Colosseum, because the

first Jewish Roman War is the destruction of the second temple. Right. And the funds from the looting of the second temple were used to pay for the construction of the Colosseum. It is also frequently, it's kind of taken for granted. We don't really have any hard documentary evidence, but it's taken for granted that the Romans probably would have also used captured Jewish slaves to build the structure. Yeah.

Because that was the kind of thing they did if Biftein was an they did if, you know, if Biftehman was an empire like, you know, yes, because they were assholes like that. Like, oh, yeah. So yeah, now, now, not only did you watch us loot your most holy site in the world, but now we're going to make you build this thing. And a big part of this thing is going to be boss reliefs, carvings, showing us, looting your most holy site. Right. Because, you know, you fucked with us. So now this is what you got to get. Right. Because the Romans were like that. Um, and so tens of thousands more Jews were forcibly deported from Jerusalem

and the wake of that rebellion. And these refugees became the founders of what we now call the Sephardum and Ashkenazan communities elsewhere within the empire. I assume that these are the three largest groups of three most known groups in history and that there's other groups as well. There are there are subgroups. Okay. These are kind of like if you want to use a taxonomic kind of definition, these would be like families. Okay. And then you'd have genie and then species beneath that. Right. Right. Like you'd start with a very broad grace. Right. And then kind of get more, you'd narrow down to more specific kind of definitions. Okay. you narrowed down to more specific kind of definitions. Okay.

So because I mean there are significant differences, for instance within the Ashkenazi group, there are significant differences between, you know, French, Jewish traditions and Russian Jewish traditions, but they're both Ashkenazans. Sure, but you're talking about their masculinity groups. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. The only reason I ask is because I'm remembering the story of Noah's children and there were three of them. Gem, Jepeth, and, or no, Shem, Jepeth, and Ham. Yeah. And they went in three different directions. And, you know, you've got that. And then I also remember like the three main

non-herculee's myths, increase tend to be Odysseus. The three main travele ones, Odysseus, Jason and Perseus. And again, they go in three different directions. Yeah. And it's essentially the same three directions, both times.

Yeah, I think. And it's all kind same three directions both times. Yeah, I think. And it's all kind of originating from that Eastern Mediterranean area, which would make sense that those would be the same three directions each time, but it is kind of interesting that we still... It's an interesting parallel. I'm going to go with, because of the way the timelines work on all of that, I'm going to say that we're getting into another kind of, you know, Mediterranean or psyche archetype kind of thing. That makes sense. Also, trade winds are a thing. But yeah, yeah, yeah, just as it's, like,

it's a purely practical thing. And getting all the young, you know, woo, out of the way. Yeah, and also that. Parthians, you know, followed those trade winds and set up places. So you're gonna end up going to where there's places. So, yeah. Okay, so carry on. So, and this is where I wanna take a quick side note to point out the obvious.

Sure. Wherever Jewish enclaves sprung up, Jews became important participants in larger community. Okay. Everywhere they went, they became an important part of the larger community. Okay. Everywhere they went, they became an important part of the larger community to the extent that Jews remained separated from the people around them, a great deal of that was inflicted on them by their neighbors. Right. Okay. You're different, you're weird. You're not the same religion as us. We're afraid God is not going to like us if we're

too nice to you. So you're in this for there. Yeah, right, you know um and the contributions of Jewish artists poets writers scholars craft people and doctors to the cultural legacy of Europe and the world Mm-hmm are worthy of their own study and have made all of humanity far richer than we would be without them Okay, okay Before I get into anything else, I want to make that really clear. People belong wherever the fuck they want to belong. Right. Okay. And people's success is often despite their ostracization. Yeah. And the stereotype, Yeah, and and the stereo to and and I also this this one just bugs the shit out of me so so good So I've got I've got to pick this one out separately sure, I know where you're going here too the the Because because this bug I don't know how much I ran to do about it with Henry Ford, but it just it bugs the shit out of me

the the stereotype of the stereotype of, you know, Jews being in control of the financial system or Jews having all the money. The reason for that is that in early medieval Europe, where Ashkenazam communities got founded and, you know, where they settled and where they they set themselves up. Their Christian neighbors were forbidden by the church from engaging in financial speculation or the loaning of money at interest. Right. Now, this is an important service. You need to be able to borrow money.

Like if you want to have a sophisticated enough economy, at some point you need to have somebody who's lending money. Like, and if you want to have a sophisticated enough economy, at some point, you need to have somebody who's lending money. And if you're going to incentivize lending money, you have to allow people to charge interest. Otherwise, why would I let go of my money now? I can't spend it. Yes. Yes. So, so the reason that arose is because they were pushed into that job because their neighbors wouldn't do it. And then their neighbors got jealous about the fact that they were making money off of it. Right.

And that they were successful at it. Right. And so that then got weaponized against them. Yeah. Like no assholes, you pushed them into this job. The least you can do is look at them and go, all right, you did well for yourselves. Awesome. Go you. Also, what kind of stupid, like, the reason you don't charge interest, I think, goes back to God. And so, you want to obey God and treat everybody like brothers. Yeah. And so your solution is God won't see

this work around. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm not, no, I'm not the one doing it. So, so it's, so it's, it's in, in a way, it's not so much. God isn't going to see it. It's, I'm going to make these people escape goat. And God won't see that part. Well, yeah. That's the thing. It's it's it's part of the calculus is just like that that doesn't get taken into account. It's like it's not that God doesn't see it. It's like, well, you know, I'm just working a system. I did you did you actually read what Jesus had to say like about working to be the one person he attacked

violently yeah, yeah, the one the one time he actually flipped his shit and all the tables. Yeah, it was like Now this specific thing that you are now going like no, no, no, no, I wasn't touching base. He was touching base So I'm okay Because I technically, and it's that whole like, it's that really fun, parsimonious nature that just absolutely. Yeah, and it's just a rank legalism. It's worse than legalism because legalism, I actually think has a place. When you are trying to, and again, atheist here, anti-theist here, when you are trying to divine what God meant, I think parsing the shit out of a language

out of his commandments and all this kind of stuff absolutely works. Legalism, Dowshell not murdered, is murder mean intentional killing? Does it murder mean, you know, just regular, or we talk about the man's law? It's warfare. Like what are we,

what are we talking about here? That's important. I think that that's a valid thing. Now I'm also kind of a black and white guy. So it's like, yo, if it's if it's warfare, that's just state-sponsored murder. So fucking stop that too. But what are, okay, cool, you know. Using legalism to like basically make God reroll his D20. I try to put God at disadvantage. Right. Like like the fucking cheekiness that it takes, like it's, I have more respect for people who are like, well, we did anal, so technically I'm still a virgin. I have more respect for people who are like, well, we did anal, so technically I'm still

a virgin. I have more respect for that because at least they're trying something new, you know? Yeah, there's at least some there's some creativity there. Yeah, you know, and they're going to enjoy some of it. Like they will find a way. It'll be and if they're not, well of it. Like they will find a way, it'll be, and if they're not, well, they should both. But yeah.

Is that kind of like, this means I still get into heaven though. Yeah. It's that weird kind of, I don't like the guy, but Bill Mar have this great thing about how people are doing the purity ball thing. And how people are doing the purity ball thing and the people who designed the purity ball thing never thought of buts X

and therefore that's the way around it. So to stay morally pure, you could do buts stuff because then you keep like, I mean, it was that kind of fucked up logic and he was pointing it out and of course he's pointing it out in in a very boomer like yeah well yeah of course yeah yeah because it's Bill Marr but it was helpful yeah particular story like yeah but it's that hypocrisy that that rank like as soon as you pointed out to someone and they're like you could see it in their eyes that they're know they're full of shit. Oh yeah. And then they double and triple down anyway. Yeah.

Yeah. And it just like drives me nuts. Drive me nuts. Oh yeah. So, okay. They tricked God by getting others to do. To do this sinful thing. You've right. For them, yeah.

Right. So, yeah. And so with that important rant out of the way, you're kind of getting back to the timeline. Now that we're just documented presence, and we're gonna focus here on the Ashkenazim as a primary population, because if there's any group of people who

were most likely to have come into contact with the people who wrote the pros etta, or the ancestors that people wrote the pros etta, it would be Ashkenazan because that's the part of what we're talking about, right? So the earliest documented presence of Jews in central Europe dates to the second century CE. And this is in what was the Roman province of Pannonia, which you immediately recognize what that means. But for anybody who's, you know, not a scholar of ancient Roman geography, Roman geography. We're talking about Western Russia, modern day Ukraine, and the peninsula, well Balkans, and Crimea, and into Hungary, modern.

And so we have epigraphic evidence from grave sites, which again, for anybody who's not a history nerd like the two of us, epigraphic evidence means literally tombstones, epigraphic. Right. Yeah. Carved into a tombstone or carved into a stone. Yeah.

So documentation, so we have names on tombstones that indicate their word Jews here because we can look at the names and we can recognize that culturally. Now documentation from that time period suggests that these groups arrived as populations that were either part of or were traveling with Syrian troops in the Roman army. And the documentary sources indicate that for anybody who wasn't part of

their population, it was actually really difficult to differentiate them, the Jewish people culturally or linguistically, from the Syrians that they were traveling with. Okay. We do know that they, archeological evidence indicates that there were small kind of enclave communities of specifically Jewish folks. And again, they were either troops within the imperial legions, or they were some kind of support population. Oh, Zillaries, like Zillaries or whatever. The Romans handed Pannonia off to the Huns in 433.

Right. And there's no evidence of a Jewish community remaining after the Roman withdrawal. Okay. So late empire, the Romans are like, okay, look, we, we, we can't defend all this territory. You guys, here you go, it's yours. We're watching. Yeah. You want it? You got it. It's your problem now. And those Jewish populations left with the Romans as, as part of that Roman kind of

over Roman diaspora. Yeah. It's really is immigration. It's not diaspora because they're in many ways leaving their province and going back to a homeland. Yeah. So yeah. And so now at this point, I guess, you kind of Yeah, at this point in the conversation, this was something that grabbed my attention and I was like, oh, hey, wait a minute. There were a couple of scholars in the 1970s into the 1980s who put forward a theory that the Ashkenazim were more likely descended, this is their theory was, they were more likely descended from casars or casars than Judea and her Middle Eastern Jews. They pointed to the conversion of the Casar cons

somewhere between the 740s and 920s CE. And these were blonde hair, really buffed guys that could talk to Sabretooth Tigers in Antarctica. Nice. No. No. No. This was a Turkic group who controlled, they controlled the territory, the story of their conversions can't interest. And they controlled the territory where they had Christians on one side of them, and they had Muslims on the other side of them. And it was kind of their version of Sadats. I'm going to like find a third way. Mm hmm. Was like, okay, well, these two groups like want to kill each other. So, you know, and they had they had contact with Jewish traders. And there was there was, you know, some some some subpopulations that were there.

And so the cons converted to Judaism. Okay. Sometime during that period, and there's coin evidence that Involtaibru script, and there's a whole big huge debate about was there a conversion genuine? How much of how many of the people actually converted? Like there's this whole big thing.

But there were these scholars who said, you know, it makes more sense, you know, looking at the, looking at the distances involved in the geography and timelines and whatever they said it makes more sense. It seems to make more sense that Ashkenazam would be descended from the K-Zars rather than Middle Eastern Jewish populations.

And this theory has been disproven by modern genetic studies, because looking at surviving descendants of the Ksars, looking at surviving Ashkenaz, Jewish people and looking at are looking at surviving Ashkenazi Jewish people and looking at Middle Eastern Jews, studies of the Dyrgyn home have shown that modern Ashkenazi populations have a lot more in common with Middle Eastern Jews than they do with K-Zars. So that theory essentially got disproven by modern technology. And now that I've brought that up, I feel like it's important given the state of the world that I pause and point out something else that should be obvious. Genetics are not destiny.

Genetics are even necessarily tied to identity. There is no such thing as superior or inferior genes. And even if Ashkenazim had been proven to be descended from the Ksars, they'd be no less Jewish than anybody else. Now, I'm gonna push back a bit. I do think that there are some genes that are superior to others.

For instance, Levi's way better than Wranglers, Wranglers, infinitely better than George Ash. And guess can just fuck all the way off. Okay, I will agree with everything after your first point. Okay. But that first point, I will fight you. Okay, we have the great denim schism here. Yeah, pretty much, yeah, pretty much.

You godless heathen. Yeah. Yeah. You godful heathen. Yeah. You godful heathen. I don't know what you want. Hey, hey, hey, hey, I became a Catholic. I'm not a heathen anymore. Sure. And so the whole debate essentially was fueled by identity politics.

Mm-hmm. And there's a whole debate related to it within scholarship and I'm a Gentile, and as such, I'm not qualified to get into any of it, but the debate is a fascinating one to me. But I'm totally unqualified away and it's totally not my thing to comment on. Sure. So we know that there were Jewish communities in

Gaul by 465 CE in Brittany and 533 in Orléans. Okay. The earliest we know of Jewish communities north of the Alps is in the 8th and 9th centuries. Wait, Brittany is north of the Alps. Well, I'm, okay, directly north of the Alps. Brittany is over in France. When I say north of the Alps, we're talking about in Germany, in modern day Austrian, that directly to the north of the Alps. Directly to the north of the Alps.

Okay. Straight shot north. Okay. It's kind of like that distinction of like, you've seen that meme of, do you mean to tell me that Caesar who's been dead for more than 70 years is a reason why we have this salad? And it's like, yeah, you're not wrong. You're not wrong, but you're so wrong.

Damn, but you're so wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Okay. So north of the Alps, you mean directly north of the Alps. Yeah. Yeah. So, so Germany, modern day Germany, modern day, Austria. So the earliest we know of them being there is in the eighth and ninth centuries. Okay. And this migration was at least partially made possible by Big Chuck and his reign over the Holy Roman Empire. Okay. Big Chuck, of course, being Charlemagne, because Big Chuck. And I always have to say this, the Holy Roman Empire, Asterisk, it was neither Holy nor Roman nor really an empire, but moving on.

And the earliest record we have of Jewish settlement in Scandinavia, remember we're talking about the poetic and prose edas. Right. The earliest record we have of Jewish settlement in Scandinavia dates to the 16th century. So well after Christianity has destroyed the native culture of that area. Yeah. the native culture of that area. Yeah, which brings me back around to the Edas, the earliest written record we have, the dwarf is a mythic arch type.

That is not a reference to Jews. Yeah, as far as we can tell, the poetic and prosettas were first written down in the 13th century by Snory Sturlison in Iceland. All of the stories in both of those collections are based on a much, much, much older oral tradition, as we would recognize it, Norse paganism, likely dates the fourth or fifth centuries, just on what archeological evidence that we found. And so based on all of this evidence, it seems pretty clear that the mythological creatures that were the full gloric ancestors of modern dwarfs were dreamed up by people who couldn't be

anti-Semitic because they never met Jewish people. Right. That's okay. Yeah. I'm fully convinced on that. That being said, which I have in my notes, paused for deep breath. Yeah. Which brings us back around to Tolkien and then to Dungeons and Dragons. So now I didn't have, I don't really have this in my notes, but I think it's then worth noting that so this archetype existed prior to the arrival of any Jewish people in these parts of Europe. I was going to say you still have your proletariat archetype. You still have this proletarian kind of archetype. And then which by the way, is not an urban archetype at that point. No, it's really not.

It's a liminal archetype. Like you said, they stand at doorways. They stand at portals to other realms and things like that. That is decidedly not urban, which I think very because most anti-semitism is tied into an anti-urban thing as well. Oh, yeah, there's definitely a strand of anti-urbanism for sure. Because the anti-semitism that you see is never like, oh, with all their ranching. like, oh, with all their ranching. Yeah, or living as they did back in Russia and their peasant farming communities.

Like, I know. Well, see, pogroms would absolutely roast through there. Like, that was a thing. Yeah, they totally would, but the deal there was, they have farmland, we want the farmland, so we're going to kill them all and take it. Right. Right. You know, it wasn't wasn't everybody was a peasant.

So part of why they were being targeted for hate wasn't that they were peasants. Like part of the reason that anti-Semites target Jews for hatred is because of the idea that they're connected to this urban system that is the subject of this distrust. Right. You know, and like that didn't exist, like that couldn't be a thing for the thousand years after, you know, after the birth of this archetype because none of these people lived in cities, right? Right, right. Like, you know, it's not until, you know, the late Viking age, that we really start seeing large-scale cities

that we'd recognize as urban centers anywhere in the Scandinavian world, but anyway. So the thing is, so we have the roots of this archetype all the way back in the four some fifth centuries with the beginning of Dorst paganism, and all of the folklore that goes along with it, and then some time in the Middle Ages, early Middle Ages or later Middle Ages, depending on what part of Europe you're talking about. Sure. We have the Ashkenazim showing up, arriving, looking for opportunities, looking for trying

to get away from this other group who was persecuting them where they came from, moving to a new place. Right. And sadly, finding that we're going to get persecuted there too, because people are shitty everywhere. Yep. But they show up. And we have this archetype floating in the back of everybody's

head who already lives there. And then these folks show up. And as a culture, they value education, they value craftsmanship. They stick together because of they stick together because because you got. Yeah, exactly. You know, when it's like, you can only be over there. It's like, well, I guess I know who my neighbors are. Yeah.

And also, this is the only way I can be safe in this community. They've already pushed me to the margin. So yeah. And, you know, and they have this very powerful, they attach a lot of value to education and learning and the opportunity to get education and to learn. They're a very highly literate group of people. So that leads to resentment from their neighbors because like, well, you know, look at you, a high-falutin smart. So there was this set of tropes that then got attached to them that already existed from this non-human group in folklore.

See what I'm saying? Yeah, I mean, I was going to bring this up earlier. I think you called the word accretion or synchretism? I just think about the Buddha, the escheticism and all that until you get to Chinese Buddha. Then he's a fat guy. And it's because he was over time because of the goodness of him, he was also attached to a character that had to do with good fortune and good luck and joy, and those things molded and became that thing. And so I think that this is kind of what happened. Like clearly the magic that dwarves were was the magic that dwarves were.

But over time, there's that group of people over there. He didn't do it, have beards. Don't those people have beards? Hmm. I bet they also do this and that and this and that and this and that. And pretty soon, rumor becomes fact. Pretty much. Yeah. And pretty soon rumor becomes fact pretty much yeah and so

And so we then see Because like I brought up the Nebelonghalid and Vognor and so by the time the Nebelonghalid was being written down by German folklorists Mm-hmm and by the time Wagner started writing his opera well, yeah All of these anti-Semitic things are in full effect by the time Wagner started writing his opera, well, yeah, all of those anti-Semitic things are in full effect by that time, because they've had all that time to coalesce in that way. Yeah.

And in that place too. And in that place. Right. And so that then brings us back to Tolkien, who may or may not have been like trying to respond to like Wagner or may have, I don't know, I don't know what we can't know what was going on in his head, but he wrote what he wrote and he tried to do better by it as he went on.

Sure. And then that brings us for the purposes of the study of the archetype to D&D, Dungeons, Dragons, and A D&D. And so the races that were presented in original D&D and then in A D&D were clearly derived like straight from Tolkien. Yeah, to the point where I wasn't there as seasoned asist. There was and then they made one very important change, renamed Hobbit's Halflings. And that got the Paul Zantz company and the Tolkien estate off their backs.

Right. company and the Tolkien estate off their backs. And Guy Gax and company used the plural dwarves out of Tolkien's writing rather than actually fixing his grammar and using what he even he admitted was more correct, which would be dwarfs. The plural dwarves with VES, there's actually, there's actually been a lot of ink spilled on that because Tolkien admitted later on that it sounded better to him, but he recognized that grammatically because of the way English works, it was actually wrong. But he saw that it got picked up and lots of other people started using it as the plural and it actually made him really happy

because he saw it as kind of his thumbprint being left on the English language. Sure. That there was this irregular plural kind of in the same way that the plural of goose is geese. Which is- You don't see this as a regular. I mean, I don't see those, is a regular. I mean, goose comes from a Germanic word

and the u goes to e in plural conventions. Scarves is the plural of scarf. Yeah. So, but the, if you are a, I'm trying to think, not a use defined, but a these are the rules.

Right. If you're a linguist of the stripe that is like, no, no, this is the way it's supposed to work. Right. And so they're breaking the rules, right? Um, then, then it's incorrect, but it's become the more common commonly used, uh, plural. So anyway, it's like our pronunciation of comfortable. Yes. Yeah. Instead of comfortable. Yes. Yeah.

So Guy Gaxx and Ar handbook and the first monster manual, dwarves are hardy, taciturn, minors, and crafts people. They love the earth and the treasures that can be found within it. They can lean toward greediness and are suspicious of outsiders. Okay. They have a general antipathy for elves, which is stolen whole cloth from Tolkien again, and a burning hatred of orcs, where they covered orcs and talking about all their baggage in another episode. That's the whole other kettle of fish. Now at this point, an interesting addition to the war that wasn't part of Tolkien, that wasn't part of Tolkien, at least not strictly codified as such, is that dwarves live in clans that are loosely related to each other, and they ally with each other and have

feuds with one another and grudges that they hold. And the dwarf default alignment in the monster manual is lawful good. Later, you made a pun about this last episode, the doorgar or grade warms were lawful evil. They're the underground version of dwarves, which is funny because dwarves already version of dwarves, which is funny because dwarves already. Yeah, they're the deep, deep, deep, underdark way down near the base of the crust of the planet. Right. And then even deeper than them are the Darro who were introduced at the same time as the Durga or the Monster Manual, too.

They were chaotic evil. The Durga are lawful evil. But what's interesting is the Darrow are actually lifted from a completely different source. And they're more eldritch horror adjacent than they are tied to any kind of classical folklore. And I tried to look it up, but I couldn't find it. I know that their source, the name originally came from an essentially 100% sure how serious he was, whether it was a menta science fixture of the SCAB was genuinely crazy, but they were this subterranean gnome like, you know, crazy dwarf group who had this city far beneath the Earth's crust and they could perform mind control and it was the whole thing. Anyway, the Darrow derived

from a different source. They come from a different place. Okay. So then we got a shift. We now carry the archetype forward from TSR to Games Workshop. Okay. Now we're back to Warhammer. Yeah, well, yeah, we're getting there. We're gradually getting closer. So Citadel miniatures, which was the company that games workshop spring off of. Initially, they were just a miniatures company

and they made miniatures of all kinds. And they put out dwarf miniatures for players to use in their tabletop games. Well, then they came up with the idea of, you know what, what if we just came up like, you know, if you don't want to go through all the trouble, like rolling up a character, you just want to put models on the table and just have a war game.

And I just want to throw like all of the orcs that I've got because I run my weekly game. I just want to run them on the table and put like, you know, three heroic guys on the table and just just have them have a battle. Like, that's all I want to do. And so they came up with Warhammer Fantasy Battle, where you could do just that. And then that got more structured and more codified. And they actually came up with their own setting for it. And they came up with their own background for all the different races. And they built now. And they came out with their own background for all the different races and they built

now and then they started making miniatures specifically for the game. And when that happened, when the game developed to that point, the dwarfs, game's workshop got around being sued by Tolkien by pluralizing it correctly. In the old world of warhammer, they were D&D dwarves without the default good alignment because the old world was a lot more morally gray. They took the clan idea and they ramped that up to 11. Clans in warhammer held onto grudges as a literal religious obligation. And you could actuallyges as a literal religious obligation. And you could actually have, as a relic that your army could carry onto the battlefield, you could have a unit carry the clan's book of grudges,

which was a sacred record of the debts of honor owed to those who have wronged the Dwarfish people. Oh, I love it. Yeah. And so all of their trappings, at this point, all the trappings are dorsdermanic, plated beards, braids and all the beards, taking all the things away. Right. Right. Huge cartoonish big horns on their helmets, their heavy drinkers, they're loud, they're cantankerous, they're, they're, you don't ever, you don't ever meet a dwarf.

You might meet a dwarf who's kind of taciturn, but the moment you poke him the right way, he starts roaring, like there, there, that kind of, I don't wanna say billiast, well, yeah, billiast kind of temperament, there, there, that kind of, yeah, kind of characters. Sure. At the same time, they were deeply, deeply traditional ancestor worship was a central

part of their religion. Okay. It's part of the reason why they hold on to grudges so long is this is something that was done to our ancestors. We got on our ancestors by never forgetting it ever. And so they were also cursed with a greedy streak. Okay. Skilled builders and artificers, they were insular to the point of near xenophobia and very, very wealthy.

So the anti-Semitic tropes are still there. Yes. But they're not, they're not at the forefront of the characterization. Right. That makes sense. They're, they're secondary traits. They're still there, but they're kind of, they're, they're closer to background noise. Yeah. All right. And so now while we're talking about those tropes, and I promise this would come up. While we're talking about those tropes, JK Rowling's goblins are dwarves by a different

and uglier name. Right. Their miners, they live underground. They have lots of all the gold. Not just lots of all the gold. Right. They're kind of antagonists. They're kind of helpers, like when they want to be. Sure. Um, they're shifty. You can't really trust them. Like, like they are, they are at once. You can, you can totally trust them. If the wording of the agreement is right. But if you're not careful,

they're going to outmaneuver you. And so you're slippery. You got to be, you got to worry about it. Um, and the anti, and the, and the rest of the anti-Semitic tropes attached to him are frankly just gross. Hook knows his squat bodies, yeah, literally monsters physically, but clever. And like I said, legalistic, they control all the money. And they're kept down as second class subjects in human

wizarding society. Yeah. It's, it's, um, I mean, she might as well have just been looking at the propaganda of it, uh, like posters. Yeah. Of the 1930s. Pretty much like it really didn't take any imagination to describe the govlinins in this way. Yeah. And as if that wasn't bad enough. And of course it is. The recent dumpster fire of a video game Hogwarts Legacy involves putting the player in the driver's seat to put down or prevent a goblin revolt in the 1800s.

And it has whistles and it doesn't even qualify as dog because they're revoltingly obvious. So just giant fog horns. Just giant goddamn fog horns to use your phrasing. Yeah. So, Joanne, if I may call you Joanne, sincerely, and with all the passion I can muster, fuck you. And I'll kidn.

Tolkien engaged in fetishization and serratyping, but at least he did it out of a place of admiration. And then and then when he realized he'd fucked up, he kind of he tried to make his worth, his work less troublesome. You just slapped a bunch of shitty trips together. And when you've been called out, you've tried to use your position as a white woman to claim victimhood. Also, you're a turf. Yeah. Fuck you. Anyway, back to games workshop. And to the grim darkness of the far future. So Warhammer 40K is Warhammer fantasy battle in space. Like that's it's literally that's what it says on the tin. That's what it is at the found at the beginnings of the game that's literally how it started now the two have diverged from one another over the almost 40 years now since since they they born but at the beginning that's it's literally what it was was like oh hey what we did this, but then we made it like science fictiony.

Right. And then they were off to the races. And while we're at it, let's turn it into an over-the-top parody of everything we see going on in our own politics right now, because, you know, the other thing that's a constant in British literature is a sardonic, sarcastic sense of humor. So, you know, we're going to run with that. And so they had space elves who are the L-Dar, and that's one of my favorite armies pointy-headed space elves. And, you know, and then they introduced Orcs with a K, we talked about that in this

episode. They have undead in the form. This is one of the most creative ones they came up with was the Necron's, who are souls, because there's still a magical element in the game. There are souls that have been forced into robotic bodies. And when you blow up the robot, the soul goes back to a central computer, gets downloaded into another machine and then marches back out. And they look skeletal and it's essentially a skeleton army led by Lich Lords. Oh wow. But it's... It's typological.

Yeah. Um, and so, you know, so they took all these ideas out of the fantasy game and they turn them into science fiction. And dwarfs got turned into the squats. And so the backstory for the squats at the beginning of the game was that there was a human Terran diaspora back in the ancient ancient history of the game. Sure. During the dark age of Technology, humanity left Earth and spread out using

the earliest warp drives spread all over the galaxy, lost contact with Earth, and then were cut off from Earth for millennia. And one particular group of these colonists headed toward the Galactic Core. And near the Galactic Core, they wound up on these very dense, very high-gravity worlds with incredibly high radiation levels from everything that's going on in the space around them. So I guess who would thrive there. So over generations, these human colonists got heavier bone structure, got shorter,

started, got harder, and they developed mining technology and the ability to build cities underground. Which, essentially, from the radiation somewhat. Yeah, and so they mutated over time. And in the language of the Imperium, they became abhuman. They're human, but they're different.

They've diverted genetically from mainline human. And so they became the squats. They're referred to by everybody else in the Imperium as the squats, because that's what they look like. And it is a kind of a point of legend within the design studio and the culture of 40k that the design when the designers were coming up with the concepts behind the squats, they were sitting in a pub and doing a lot of drinking. And so in a game that was full of over the top humor, right, the squats were more over the top than many of the other races. They were a little bit funnier, a little bit goofier in a lot of ways. They carried over the idea of the ancestor worship for Warhammer fantasy battle.

They carried over the idea of holding onto grudges for literally forever. But they then introduced because squats have shorter legs and so they have, they have a lower movement stat than regular humans. So a regular human would move four inches of turn if I'm remembering right. A squat has a movement rate of three. Sure. So in order to make up for that on the battlefield, they used a lot of bikes and a lot of trikes. And so one of the images that's associated with early squats is a dwarf on a chopper with gigantic rear wheels and a big long ape hanger handlebars

literally a leather bike or vest and a Viking helmet. Nice. And, and, and that's, and, and then a, you know, a bolt pistol in one hand and, you know, big, big sunglasses. And, and, you know, and it was just so over the top. And everybody, everybody got a kick out of the squats, but not a lot of people played them. everybody got a kick out of the squats, but not a lot of people played them. Now they wound up getting an awful lot more lore. There was a lot more developed for them as a culture and for for their background as a faction within the epic game, which instead of like Warhammer 40K is normally played,

you might have you have a really big horde army. If you're playing Orcs, you might have 50 models on the table. Okay. So we're talking about like a company-sized kind of kind of engagement. Right. With Epic, you are throwing an entire army, battalion-sized units against each other. And so the scale of the models is much smaller. Right. And each, each model represents a squad rather than an individual soldier or it might represent even a full platoon. Sure. And so within Epic, the squats got all kinds of toys. They got big war machines that were they, they had mining trains that would travel armored mining trains that would travel across mining trains that would travel across the surface of their planets carrying ore to star ports. And so when they went to war, they would armor

up these trains even more in Mount Huge guns on them. And so they had all of this kind of technological stuff. And part of the backstory was expanded to say that because of the circumstances of their settlement and their needs in their new homes, the squats had then turned away from certain aspects of technology, like they stole the idea of Butler and G. Hodford doing, you have no AIs anywhere in human technology in Warhammer 40K because that's heretical. It's an affront to the machine god, you don't do that. Whereas, you know, in the early days of the game, it was kind of flirted with that. Whereas, you know, in the early days of the game, it was kind of flirted with that, well, you know, they do things that the tech magi consider heretical. But they're allied to the Imperium,

they're still basically human. And so, you know, they're on friendly terms, but sometimes there might be skirmishes. And so they had this this role, kind of within within the lower. And then at the end of second edition, third edition came out. And all of a sudden, there was no army book coming out. There was no codex coming out for squats. Eldar got a new book, space marines, obviously got a new book, because everybody plays fucking space marines.

Orcs got a new book, the dark Eldar got a new book. The Eldar got a new, you know, everybody gets a new book and they're like, what about squats? And, you know, you've given everybody else a book, but like where where did our where did our dwarves go dwarves in space man come on we want our bikers. And I saw something like this in the game X wing. It's called X wing. Yeah, And they came out with first, you had X-wings and tie fighters. Then you had Y-wings and you had tie-anders, etters and you had bombers. And you had A-wings. Cool. Cool. And you had tie defenders and tie phantoms. Why are you getting there? I mean, okay. They had B-wings. All right. Cool. You had E-wings.

K-wings. Then you had the Millennium had e-wings, K-wings. Then you had the Millennium Falcon, then you had the Dash Renderer ship. Then you had the Fire Sprite, okay, cool, all right, yeah. And then you got the IG 2000, then you got the Jump Master Jet 5000, you know, Dengar ship, then you got the Huns tooth, and then you got like the Tana 4, and you got 5,000, you know, danggaardship. Then you got the hands to it. And then you got like the Tana 4. And you got a transport. All right, nice. Then you got the 95 headhunters

and then you got scum and villainy faction and then you got like a tie carrier and then you got these decimators and you just start getting all this shit. And it's like, okay, cool. This is all really fun and you're getting all my shit. And it's like, okay, cool, this is all really fun and you're getting all my money. But the problem is, is that like the game is called X-Wing.

The most iconic ship in the series is the X-Wing. It should not be obsolete because you added new ships. So yeah, my question is this, everybody else got all these new rule books. Was there anything that needed improvement with the dwarves or could they still hang in bang with everyone, even with their improved rule books? Well, no.

And the problem there is less about power creep, which is what you're getting at there in X-Win. It's less about power creep, which is what you're getting at there in X-Wing. It's less about power creep and it's more about the fact that the flow and structure and architecture of the game changed very dramatically between second and third. Second edition was, okay, we're gonna take the first edition and we're gonna throw all the whipped cream and all the frosting and all the sprinkles on top of it. And it's just like all the awesome in the world

and it was amazing. And then somebody in the marketing department went, okay, you know what, this is great, this is awesome. We're very happy we're doing okay with that, but you know You know what would make us a lot more money long term Would be getting a younger demographic starting the game so instead of targeting 18 and 20 year olds We need to make this a game that we can get 11 and 12 year olds to to bug their parents to get them stuff for and get them started then. And then we're going to be able to hold

on to them for that many more years. Right. So we need to we need to kind of kind of age down the game a little bit. At least that's my conspiracy theory. Sure. And it's one that's shared by a lot of fans. Makes a lot of sense, I mean. Yeah. And so the jump from second edition to third edition was a radical, radical simplification of the rules. And so a lot of the stuff that had made different factions what they were, had to be jiggered around to work within the

new rules environment. Okay. Like they did away with movement, stab movement as a statistic entirely. Well that's everybody, everybody, if you're an infantryman, you move six inches. If you're on a bike, you move 12. If you're in a tank, you can move up to 12. Like, they just radically, that's one example of the way in which they simplify this stuff. Very, very dramatically. And so everybody needed a new rulebook, because it's like, okay,

how do I play my pointy head in space elves? Right. Like what, what are, how do their toys work now? And the same thing with squats and an army book never came out for them. So there was no way, unless you just said, okay, you know what, I'm just going to play them as Imperial guard. Sure, sure. But they're now I'm re-skimming. I'm not. Yeah, yeah, I'm re-skimming instead of actually having my own faction. re-skinning. I'm not. Yeah, yeah, I'm re-skinning instead of actually having my own faction. And so this became an issue and in the early 90s, I want to say it was 93. Okay. I think it was 93 might have been later. Somebody wrote to White Dwarf magazine, which is the mouthpiece of the Games Workshop Design Studio, basically. And they said, where are the squats? What happened?

And some anonymous editor, we don't know which member of the editorial staff it was who said it, gave the answer in the letters column, said to this individual, you know, maybe they, you know, decided to pack all their stuff up and leave the galaxy. Maybe they got eaten by the tyrannids and they're, they've been destroyed completely. Sadly, I just need to tell you that you're not going to see the squats again. They're gone. We're not doing anything with them. We're not going to revive the line. Okay. Basically, we only have so much production capacity. We weren't making enough money off of them, and so they've been left behind. Okay. Well, what's interesting is that response,

one part of that response got seized on by the community, the 40K fandom. And first, the fandom said, oh my God, games workshop just murdered the squads. They've all been eaten by the tearing ins. Well, you know, if you actually read the guy's letter, that's not really what he said. Right. He said, maybe this, maybe that, maybe this, maybe that, you know.

But that one thing, it was like, oh my God, you just sacrificed, you just retconned them in a sacrifice to the tearing inid hive mind, you know. And that got picked up. And then in Black Library novels and other like published material, writers who were being commissioned by Games Workshop took that idea and then made it canonical. And so it became it became part of the background lore that somewhere along the way, the squats had been devoured by the tyrannid hive fleet. Okay. And that got referenced as, you know, background text and stuff and other people's codices for the next five, six editions of the game. And like I mentioned previously,

there was a running joke within the fandom that anytime you mentioned squats, we reset the clock. And it's going to be that much longer before GW actually comes back around and says, now you know what, let's bring back the squats. Right. And so from 1994, or whenever it was that third edition came out, it was actually later than that, but I don't have the dates in front of me. From the release of third edition up until like last month, it was basically just understood that we're never going to see our space to warves again. Like GW and there were legends of in high level like staff meetings, like store managers.

And I can't corroborate this. And I've had people tell me that this is fabrication, but I worked in retail for Games Workshop for about a year and a half. A long time ago. And it was an urban legend to us red shirts that a store manager from somewhere in the UK had been at a games day in Nottingham talking to the planning guys that all the all the big waves design studio

right and one of the high ranking guys in the company had started his presentation by saying, and before I start, if anybody asks me any questions about squats, you're fired. Right. And everybody laughs. And then he gets part way, you get through what he has to say. And he says, are there any questions? And the very first guy raises his hand, smartass says,

well, okay, but what about squats? And the urban legend went, and the urban legend went, okay, but what about squats? And the urban legend went and the urban legend went, he looked him right in the eye and said, you're fired. Pack your shit, get out. Like, oh, ha ha, just serious, like, no, he really has a mat on about this. Right. Because there was also the legend that there was kind of a feud within the design studio between the couple or three guys who were behind the original design of the squats and

then being goofy the way they were and over the top and kind of comedic. And the other faction within the studio kind of headed by this one guy who were very hard core about, no man, this is the Grimdark for our future. This is serious business, capital S, capital B, you know. And, and like he was the one who dropped the axe ultimately on the squats, and like anybody bring it up, just pissed him off, because that shit doesn't belong in my game, you know, right. And how much of that is just, you know, people having had a bad experience with this one guy and wanting to blame him for shit and how much of it might be

have a kernel of truth. I'm not qualified to answer again, because like I wasn't there. But those were the kinds of stories that were circulated for, you know, 25 years within the fandom. for 25 years within the fandom. And so then, last month, like I said, April 1st, we see this video that makes a joke about, part of the effect of the video is you see a smaller ship docking with a derelict imperial battleship that's clearly been ruined in some space battle. And then you're looking at the airlock opening and you know,

10-stramatic music is playing and then the airlock doors open and there's nobody there. And you hear down here and the camera shifts down and there's this kind of silhouette of a figure in some kind of kind of power hummer that's this short squat figure. And then that fades away and this dwarfish-looking kind of face glyph shows up on the screen. And then it cuts to black. And everybody's like, no. Yeah, right. Oh, yeah. and again, like I said, April first April, April fool's ha ha. Okay. They they got they got me good Followed by the following day them saying um, what's this about April huh April what now? And then actually showing us a model and everybody freaking out And so they've now they've reintroduced squats and the models are going to be out. You're going to be able to actually put them on the tabletop and another couple of months. And they have

rebranded them in some interesting ways. They're not calling them squats anymore for one thing. They are the leagues of Votan. Okay. And they've been giving us kind of dribs and drabs of their new background. They've kind of retconned some things. And now the leagues of Votan, again, it's leagues plural.

An individual league is an extended kind of kin group. Right. An individual soldier of the Votan leagues is called a kin as in Kinsman. Sure. Kinswoman. Sure. They have actually, the models that we have already seen in previews

have included male and female figures, which is a new development amongst all of the races in 40K. You didn't see like Eldar were one of the few races where you saw female models as part of the army, like as a regular thing, them in dark Eldar. Most everything else was just a gigantic sausage party. Right. Although it works are technically genderless, but the code is male. But anyway, so they're so they're male and female, and we still see beards on all of the male figures, and they are highly technologically advanced race. They have they have much more advanced technology than the Imperium does. They've held on to just like the earlier squats.

They have held on to more of the technological legacy of old Earth. And they're still descended from settlers who moved out into the core of the galaxy. But an article I actually just read today that was put out by Games Workshop as a preview. Now there are clone race. They are, they are, each individual kin is built on what they call the gene skin. So like on a loom. Okay. Which is interesting because a similar idea is in a doctor who, because the time lords don't have biological parents.

Right. don't have biological parents. In the sense that we do, they are themselves created on a genetic loom, as it turned they use. And so now we have the vote 10 who have their gene, genetic skeen. And individual kin can have different bioengineered traits, like they might be able to see in the infrared spectrum, they might have an extra thick, hide, different kinds of things. So they're technologically advanced, and there is this element of forced kind of evolution or conscious evolution involved. Yeah. And accelerated too. Accelerated. And so, you know, I kind of, it's interesting to me that this is now the direction that the archetype has now taken in this way. Well, I think this comes back to your original question.

in this way. Well, I think this comes back to your original question. That they're leaning back into. Yeah, it does. And the thing is, I'm not sure because I think part of it is that I'm living in this moment. And so whatever it is that's going on is, you know, the water I'm swimming in. Right. It's much harder to see what thread to pull on to prove this. You know, and also because they've only just announced this and we just have dribs and drabs of information about what they're going to look like. Right. And so, you know, there's conjecture involved. But I think the fact that they're bringing them back at all is an interesting statement

about the nostalgia kick we're kind of all on as a culture. Yes And I dare say that the the hyper focus on Ken and genetics and things like that Absolutely mirrors our own. I mean think about how many friends you know who now know what percentage Nigerian they are. Yeah. Or, you know, the, the amount of relatives you know who are like, oh, I didn't even know we had this in us, you know, and that kind of thing. So people are very obsessed with blood quantum right now, which is never a good sign, but no, yeah. But I think it's, it's quite possibly filling that lacking role. Otherwise. Yeah.

So yeah. Okay. I mean, that's kind of that's kind of the history up to this moment. And, you know, sadly, a lot of it is stained by these these ugly unfortunate, you know, anti-Semitic kind of kind of tropes that got sucked into all of it. Right. And, you know, the intensity of how much there is anti-Semitism involved in this interpretation, I think is something we can't know yet. This early in the game, you know, but you can maybe sniff around the edges. I mean, I come back to the flag of Keckistan. Yeah. I mean, you've got a lot of people blowing a lot of whistles. Yeah. So and and again, a 30 old intent doesn't this doesn't mean anything, right? So they they very well could look at it and go like, man, we were hell anti-Semitic in the time.

So we need to not do that. Let's make sure we don't do that. Here we go, here's this, here's that, here's this. Let's remove these references, let's not do this. Let's deemphasize that. And at the end of the day, some dipshit is gonna still be like, yeah, man, I'm going to play a

Jew squad. Yeah. So like again, a 30 old tent, you know, it does not mean as much as we like it to. Yeah. But you know, also can just kick that person away from your table. So this is true. Yeah. So.

So anyway, that's that's kind of where this this comes to an end. I like it. I like it. You know, I'm I'm very excited. To see what what the new models are going to look like because the technology to to create the models just looks so much better. Sure, sure. You know, if you compare a model from back when squats were still a thing to anything being put out right now, the difference is phenomenal. So I'm going to go. Oh, yeah, night and day. Stoke, yeah.

Cool. So what is your takeaway? I think in some ways that this might be again, I think Cash's king that this might be again, I think cash is king first of all, but secondly, I think that someone's conscience could be such that they're like, yeah, we need to slight distance ourselves from the anti-semitism part, knowing that there's going to be a segment of them who don't. But I think that desire to do so is also cash-based.

Yeah, well, anytime you're talking about a company making a decision. Right. So it's worth it more to them to not be accused down the road of using anti-Semitic tropes still in this day and age, et cetera, et cetera. I think it's more worth it to them on their brand to be like, you know, when somebody goes and challenges them, they're like, yeah, no, we had a remarkably disappointing history. And but as you can see by our new line, which is on sale for 20% off today, you'll note that, you know, we don't do that anymore. We're actually making recompense.

So yeah. So that's, I guess that's my take away. It's like at the end of the day, it's still a game that wants to entertain people. And the reason why I want to entertain people is to make money off of them. And they've done the calculus. This is why I like it when businesses come out as woke, quote unquote, because I'm like, good, that means that we're doing something as a culture because for them to pay attention

to their bottom line, which is their job, and see that bigotry is not what they want, then there you go. Yeah. But yeah. It's part of the nuance involved in like, you know, corporate wokeness. Right. You know, with formative, with formative loqueness. Yeah, with pride month coming up is, you know,

something that always comes up as part of discussions. Any of that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, you're making a buck off of us. What are you doing for us? Yeah. Yeah. So what you're reading? I am rereading Sherlock Holmes. Nice. Um, because trying to get a classroom full of 21st century sixth graders to understand the language of Arthur Conan Doyle has driven me to the point of like, you know what, I just need to sit down and read this

for my own enjoyment. Because if I don't, this is just gonna be such a deadly slog, I'm never gonna get through it. Sure. So yeah, I will always recommend anybody who either hasn't read them or has read them, but hasn't done it in a while to go back and reread the

home stories because they are perennial. They're always entertaining. And so that's my recommendation. Cool. How about you? I'm going to recommend the great influenza, the story of the deadliest pandemic in history, by..., it's the light full. Oh, it is. I have been reading the most depressing stuff lately, but it's by John Barry. So go get that. It's fairly inexpensive in most places now

because it came out a few years back. But I strongly recommend you give that a read and then you make a worksheet for yourself and just do a T chart and say 1918, 2020, you know, and just see see what you come up with. So we're going to people find you on the TikTok, the Instagram, all the socials, they want your home address, you're not giving that out. Actually, what do you say? No. So you can find me on TikTok as Mr. underscore BlaLock. You can find me on Twitter as EH BlaLock.

And we can be found collectively on Twitter as Geek History time. We can be found on the internet at GeekHistoryOfTime.com. And you can also, you have already found us, no doubt on either the Apple Podcast app or on Stitcher, whichever of those places you found us on, please go make sure you have subscribed, make sure you give us a review,

give us the five stars, You know that we've earned. And where can you be found, good sir? You can find me at Daharmony on Twitter and Insta. You can also find me the first Friday of most months. By the time this airs, I think, will have just finished the June 24th show. So come see me doing capital punishment on August 5th. That'll be the first show of our new year, which means we've been at this for six years. That'll be the first show of our seventh year. Holy cow. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So yeah, come see capital punishment down at Luna's. You got to bring a proof of vaccination, a good sense of humor and $10 and then some money for nachos or wine or something. So make a night of it.

Bring your, your waxed up, waxed up, boo, and come on down and laugh at our puns. So yeah, I'm good. Cool. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, Kazad, Kazad, Kazad, I menu. next time. Kazad, Kazad, Kazad, I menu.