Children of the Days: a Calendar of Human History
Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, who reached a wide American audience in 2009 with Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, has built his career on a genre-defying blend of history, fiction and political analysis that he describes as “obsessed with remembering”. In Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History, he compresses that obsession into a form modeled on the medieval book of days.
Instead of a typical “today in history” almanac, Children of the Days is a series of one-page responses to historical events, people and ideas--closer to riffs than essays. Each is tied more or less to a specific day of the year.
Beginning with the reminder that January 1 “is not the first day of the year for the Mayas, the Jews, the Arabs, the Chinese or many other inhabitants of this world” and ending with the Hebrew meaning of “Abracadabra”, Children of the Days is unabashedly multicultural. Galeano has a strong bias in favor of historical anecdotes from Latin America, Africa and Asia, but he never romanticizes the non-Western world.
He celebrates not only well-known historical figures, but forgotten heroes and martyrs. He draws unlikely connections and ignores existing cultural hierarchies, discussing the significance of Tarzan’s howl at greater length than responses to Michelangelo’s David. Some themes recur: lost libraries, new knowledge, old prejudices and daring acts of resistance to tyranny. Even when his subjects are familiar, Galeano’s conclusions are always surprising
This review previously appeared in Shelf Awarenesss for Readers
What Kind of History Buff Are You?
We've been hanging out together at History in the Margins for two years now: come rain, come shine, come crazy deadline schedule. With a few exceptions*, I assume you have a basic interest in history or you wouldn't keep coming back. But just what kind of history buff are you? I'm hoping you'll answer a few questions to give me a clue:
- Have you always been interested in history or did high school history classes taught by the football coach put you off history for years?
- Do you have a favorite period or theme? A cluster of them? Or are you a happy time traveler?
- Do you visit historical sites when you travel? If you do, do you prefer ruins or re-constructions? Living history demonstrations or scholarly museums? (I won't ask you to choose your favorite historical site if you don't ask me to choose mine.)
- What's the best work of history or historical fiction you've read recently? (Mankind: The Story of All of Us is not a useful answer.)
Feel free to give me your answers, and anything else you'd like to share, in the comments section, by e-mail, or by whatever means of communication you prefer. (Messenger pigeons are probably not a good idea. They upset the cat.) In order to sweeten the pot, anyone who answers by the end of May will have a chance to win a copy of one of my favorite history books from the last year.
Thanks for listening. Stay tuned for more historical bits.
*Hi, Mom.
Image credit: michelangelus / 123RF Stock Photo
Prehistoric Redheads
Like every other redhead I know, I have a mental list of notable gingers from history: Richard the Lion-Hearted, Christopher Columbus, Elizabeth I, Thomas Jefferson, Lucille Ball…* It's a natural defense against phrases like "red-headed stepchild" and that popular playground taunt, "I'd rather be dead than red on the head." **
Not speaking for anyone else, my famous red-head list has never included anyone from the ancient world. I picture the population of the ancient world, from Babylon to Rome, with dark hair. Red heads didn't seem to march onto the stage of world history until Rome ran into the Germanic and Celtic peoples.
So I was fascinated to read a recent article claiming that red-hair was more ancient and more widely distributed than I knew. You can read the article here, but the basic argument is that two of the three red-hair genes can be traced to West Asia about 70,000 years ago--contemporary with the earliest humans to live outside of Africa.
Tracing the red hair gene may not be that important to the 98% of the population that aren't carrot-tops But it is only one of the ways that DNA testing and other modern scientific techniques are re-shaping our knowledge of the prehistoric and ancient world, from the evolution of foodstuffs to the domestication of animals. The distant past is growing a little less distant all the time.
* Don't laugh. Ball may have played a ditz on the screen, but she was a smart, tough lady in real life who made history behind the camera as the first woman to run a major television studio.
** Alas! This sort of thing isn't limited to children. An otherwise adult friend of mine told me several times that he thinks red hair is "creepy". He only stopped after I invoked the popular trope of red-haired temper and threatened to pop him one.