In some ways, Howard's Hyborian Age stories featuring Conan were a response to scientific revelations of his day indicating the plausibility of a vanished age p

In some ways, Howard's Hyborian Age stories featuring Conan were a response to scientific revelations of his day indicating the plausibility of a vanished age prior to recorded history. Aschulean hand axes have been dated to 1.76 million years ago, Oldowan tools were made up to 2.6 Mya. Just really smart apes, sure, but who would know if they had a breakaway 5,000 years of brilliance reflected mainly through an extensive oral tradition and crafts with exceptionally disposable materials. Not known in Howard's day, but Göbekli Tepe is an extensive temple complex in Turkey that predates when we thought sophisticated organized societies emerged, and seems like something his Hyboreans might have built. If you want to get way out on a limb, our theory about how monkeys got to the new world is pretty suspicious. Currently, we theorize that a breeding population managed to accidentally raft across the Atlantic exactly one time in all of history, but this is so rare it didn't happen for other animals, and never took them to the much closer North America from there. Might as well guess some ancient extinct navigators brought some monkeys along as pets, then died out and left the monkeys as the only evidence. Crazy and unsupported conjecture, but why not, par for current theories.