MODES OF THOUGHT IN ANTERRAN LITERATURE
c667, 2nd year classics
file: 101
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Raquel: Okay, okay, I got it.
Professor: Yeah, it's, it's not hard.
Raquel: Totally,No problem and this button stops–
Professor: Yeah, see that? Levels, right? So, if you just keep an eye on that, then, well, that looks great.
Raquel: Got it, okay. And then, post it.
Professor: Right. Post it to the classroom webpage. I don't really know anything about that, so... You got the one-sheet from Carol?
Raquel: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty easy.
Professor: Ok, alright.,
Okay, hi. Hello. Great, glad you're all here. Let's take our seats please.Some quick housekeeping, alright. This is Modes of Thought in Anterran Literature, Second Year Literature, and Classics. Thanks. The syllabus number is L 6 6 0, and because of the classics thing, C 6 6 7. L 6 6 0, C 6 6 7. So your course list from the registrar should have one of those two numbers on it, or else you fucked up, and you're in the wrong place.
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Sorry, wait, what?
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Just put C667. They don't include it in the intellectual history major automatically, but if that's your major, that's, that's your major, yeah.Just talk to your advisor. They can switch the credits around. I've never seen anyone have a problem. Okay, cool. All righty then. Modes of thought in Anterran Literature. Modes of thought in Anteran literature. So we're gonna start off with a story from Mem Ehafi.
Raquel: I just got a text from Carol in the front office. She says there's a phone call for you. I think it's urgent.
Professor: It's, it's nothing. Don't worry about it.
Raquel: Okay, sure. Yeah.
Professor: I'm gonna start off with a story. I'm reading here from Mem Ehafi. He was a writer in early in the second empire. So we're talking roughly 68, 000 BCE. Quote, Teotia, first mother of the world, divine human female was sorrowful in the darkness, which went everywhere and was under everything. And she exclaimed, Why should I be alone and know that I am alone?
And her tears filled the rivers and the oceans. In her anguish, she bent her hands and her fingers until at last she removed the fourth finger from her left hand and planted it in the darkness, nursing it with the milk of her breast until Ecopa was born. Already a grown man with full beard and broad shoulders and legs that straddled the mountains.
And he said to her, You are the mother of the world. I will build a city from your milk. But his voice, being the voice of a god, was too strong for her and set the winds in motion and made the clouds in the rain. And her ears bled, and her head was crushed from the sound, and her body was crushed from the sound, and she became the stars.
This is how Teotia became the mother of earth and heaven. End quote. Okay, that's one version of the creation myth of Antera. There are a bunch of others, and we'll get into those. But there are two points in starting off with this. One, this is the only civilization we know of that has a human foremother.So that's really intriguing. Usually they start off with gods, right?The other point, and this might seem subtle, but get into it with me here. She says this line, Why should I be alone and know that I am alone? This is the oldest known reference to knowledge as a liability, a dangerous thing, even a lethal thing.
And it comes almost 65, 000 years before the Bible and the story of the Garden of Eden, right? Amazing. So, okay, what is the Interrent Civilization?In order to get into the meat of this course, right, the modes of thought, the literature, we need to understand a little bit more about the culture itself the raw data.
So let's do the historiography thing.Most of you know that six, no, It's seven years ago now, seven years ago, there was an archeological discovery of enormous significance. A Chinese submarine accidentally went down. It was a terrible tragedy. All 133 sailors aboard the sub perished, but, but when the military sent down rescue drones.
They got some very interesting pictures and it turns out the sub had fallen smack in front of what we now call isosceles three, right? The three sided pyramid in the northeastern quadrant of the main city. The Chinese cordoned off the site very quickly and they've been extremely closed lipped about their findings but since it was initially at least an international rescue effort, we did get some data.
And the scientific community continues to share research as best they can, considering how just incredibly stupid the politics around this are.So, okay, so here's what we know. Way out in the middle of the southern quadrant of the Pacific Ocean, about 1, 300 kilometers southwest of Papeete Island, At a depth of 4, 500 meters below the surface, in what they call the Abyssopelagic Zone, the ruins of an ancient city were found.
Shortly after, a road was discovered that stretches out from the city northeast. In the direction of that road, about 17 kilometers away, a second site was discovered two years after the initial find. They called the first city Prime A and the second city, wait for it. You got it. Prime B.Obviously we've come to know these by different names, but we'll get to that.
The carbon dating on the site that they have done so far brings us to the date 82, 500 BCE. So yeah, 84, 000 years ago. It's well before the oldest known culture, the Australian aboriginals though some scholars debate the 50, 000 BCE date for the aboriginal culture either way without doubt at all, this is the oldest known human civilization and it predates anything even vaguely close to it on a societal or technological scale.
by almost 60, 000 years. It is incredible. It's the coolest thing. What do we have to build our understanding of the Antaran culture? What's the hard evidence? We have the archaeology, They've done some amazing work down there considering the depth just Incredible really they're using sonar and also this really cool new technology called LIDAR and we've got amazing 3d maps Yeah, LIDAR say it. It's fun to say. LIDAR.
Anyway the imagery it's all strictly topographical So we don't know what's beneath the surface That's a metaphor? That's deep, man. Yeah, deep. That's a good one. What's, what's your name? Chris. Chris? Okay, I'm just gonna put a little gold star next to your name. So, okay, besides the maps, we have some photography of the sites which is all low light, underwater photography, which really lends it this kind of Blair Witch through night vision goggles vibe.For samples, well, there's not a ton. But they have managed to bring a few fascinating things up. And we'll get into that stuff pretty deeply, I can assure you. Sorry. Ah, yeah, I wish, man. But no, most likely we won't get to see any of the samples in person. They're being studied at the Beijing University.
And like I said, politics, the Chinese government really kind of keeping us out. The facility they have in Beijing is amazing. I've been there and I know some of the professors there pretty well. So you know, I'm in touch with them on the reg. Does anybody stay’ on the reg’ anymore? No. Good for me. I'm bringing it back.
Again, I'm not going to go deep into the historiography stuff, but if you want more to look at, I would start off with Reed's Anerran Historiography. And also Arroyo and Oscar, The Place of Anterra. The Place of Anterra is a really good one. Okay, are there any questions on that stuff so far?
Oh, sorry, I didn't get your names yet. You, go ahead.
Yeah, that's not too surprising. I mean, actually it is, because that book is fascinating. But it goes out of print all the time. Which is why it's not surprising you can't find it. But, I mean, considering how incredible and game-changing Anterra is.. I just don't know why these materials are hard to find. It makes no sense to me. I don't know.
All right. So the evidence can be broken into art, technology, and writing. Art, technology, and writing. Yeah. If this were a surface based culture, we would look at the DNA at the site, but because of the conditions and the depth, we just have the DNA from a whole lot of fish, so not much use there.
Okay. Art. You'll get a better grip on this after you've done the reading for next week. But meanwhile, in the Anterran tradition, we have architecture and sculpture and carving.You'll see how the styles refine and evolve over the various periods - which we call empires, right? - In just the most extraordinary way.
We're going to start with the carvings in the old city of Prime A and branch out from there. It's hard to track in a linear sense. But we will be moving chronologically through the material as much as we can.
Raquel
Carol texted me like four times. So I don't know if you want to go see what's happening.
Professor
No, it's, it's okay. Okay. We're good. Thank you.
Raquel
Of course.
Professor
Thank you. Okay, for technology. Seems like Anterra was a Bronze Age culture. Which expanded our understanding of when the Bronze Age began. But yeah, they have simple machines that are roughly equivalent to what we'll see in early Egypt or probably more appropriately early Mayan cultures.
Like both of those societies, the Anterrans were able to accomplish incredibly complex goals. With very simple machines. So it's remarkable. Some of what they were doing, we still just don't understand. Lastly, writing. This is our focus, right? Inside the buildings, on both sites, Prime A and Prime B, the walls are covered in thousands of characters.
Thousands. The writing goes on practically every surface in the city. We have not yet found a wall that did not have at least one glyph carved in it.We'll go into some of the writing and the linguistics later as well. But what's shocking to me is the level of sort of obsession That this culture seemed to have with the written word and how it literally was the space in which they lived.
So the writing can be broken up into four main subjects. Don't write this down. We don't need to take notes yet. Religion. History. Trade. And philosophy. So that's where we're going to put our focus during this class.The last thing that I will add to our little introduction today.Is a story from raw seminar.There's an Interan philosopher roughly 6, 500 BCE. So still second empire. She tells a story about a man who was at a banquet and the man was at the banquet and he overheard a plot to kill the king. And the man figured the king should be alerted that he would want to know, right? That he would want to know so much that maybe the king would reward him with jewels and titles for saving his life.
So in this moment, Ra Samana explains the man is standing in the light of knowing. I call it the light beam of knowing, linguistically, but it's interesting. And the king is, get this, in the cave of ignorance. That's Plato's cave. Only this is about, I don't know, 62, 000 years, 64, 000 years before Plato. So the man goes and he tells the king about the plot and the king doesn't believe him.
The king says, no way everyone loves me. It's utterly unthinkable. Why would anyone want to kill me? So the man realizes, That he was wrong. He had thought he was standing in the light of knowledge, but in fact, He was in a cave of not knowing. In fact, he had gone from before he knew this, being in a cave of not knowing, because he didn't know about the plot to assassinate the king, to an even darker cave of not knowing, which was that the king, who he respected and admired, wouldn't even listen to him.
That's the point of our class together. Okay, we're going to be reading the most ancient writings from human civilization and as we learn, we may only be stepping from one cave of not knowing into a deeper and darker and scarier cave. So that's our journey together, folks, all right. Ow! Ah! Jesus! Ears. You guys heard that?
It's not just me, right? Ah! Wow. Whew. Sorry. I'll, we'll look into that for next week. Make sure that doesn't happen again. Weird. Anyway, thank you guys. I'll see you next week. We're doing more of the Creation Myths. And I'll It's a good idea to read the first two chapters in the book. You're probably not going to do that, but you should.
Alright, thanks everybody.
Raquel? You can hit the recorder. Okay, thank you.
Modes of Thought in Anterran Literature. This podcast is made possible by Harbidge University, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Peeler Prize in Archaeological Literature, and the Harbidge Family Trust, with in kind donation and production assistance from Wolf of the Door Studios.
For more information and a reading guide, Please visit wlfdr.com