MODES OF THOUGHT IN ANTERRAN LITERATURE
c667, 2nd year classics
file: 201
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INT. THE PROFESSOR’S OFFICE - DAY
Professor: Yeah, come in.
Chris: Hey, Professor. You wanted to see me?
Professor: Hey, Chris. How are you? Yeah, come in. Sit down.
Chris: What's going on?
Professor: Well, I noticed that you dropped my class this semester.
Chris: Yeah, I had to cut down on my course load.
Professor: Listen, you don't believe a word I say about Anterra, right? You think I'm completely full of shit.
Chris: Did someone say something to you?
Professor: Don't waste your time equivocating, Chris. Just tell me what you really think. I have my big boy pants on, okay? I can take it.
Chris: Okay. You're right. I do not believe Anterra exists.
Professor: That's what I figured. Let's take a walk.
Chris: Have you been outside?
Professor: No, it's nice out this morning.
Chris: It's raining.
Professor: Well, I need to move. I've been sitting all day. Come on. Where are you from? Where's home?
Chris: Florida.
Professor: Doesn't it rain in Gainesville?
Chris: Why'd you think I left? If I'd gotten into UCLA, I'd be on the beach right now.
Professor: 100 percent sun worshiper, huh?
Chris: I don't know about worship, but…
EXT. OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSITY BUILDING - DAY
Professor: Oh, shit.
Chris: Told you.
Professor: You know, that's actually why I wanted to talk to you.
Chris: So I can tell you it's raining and then not believe me?
Professor: Sort of, yeah. Look, Chris, in my experience there are two kinds of teachers. Well, two kinds of people, really. On the one hand you have people who want comfort. I can't blame them, right? But they're like, magnetically repulsed by any kind of disagreement.
Chris: You mean every teacher I've ever met?
Professor: Every goddamn one. It's like the intoxication of comfort, like Odysseus.
Chris: And the lotus eaters.
Professor: Yeah.
Chris: So what's the other kind?
Professor: The other kind of person wants the truth. That's the high they're chasing. Real, actual truth.
Chris: And you're looking for truth?
Professor: I hope so. I, uh, it's hard to be sure, right? But I do, I like being around people who push back. You know, echo chambers. It's not that they make me uncomfortable, but they're boring.
Chris: I'm a little confused.
Professor: About what?
Chris: You wrote a book on Uruk and the Chico Norte. Everyone thought you were going to be the next Joseph Campbell. But then this weird Anterra thing? With zero evidence? You must know people are talking about you behind your back.
Professor: I do, you know, and I admit the evidence is getting harder to find. But it is there.
Chris: But it's all second hand, Professor. You're making claims about an entire civilization based on second hand reports. That could be–
Professor: Tainted?
Chris: Or worse.
Professor: After you.
Chrisr: And, I don't know, I'm not sure I understand why you risk it. Your reputation, I mean.
Professor: Remember that paper you wrote on Gilgamesh last year?
Chris: You read that?
Professor: Yeah.
Chris: How'd you dig that up?
Professor: Chris, I research ancient texts from around the globe for a living. Okay? I can find a paper you wrote last year in my own department.
Chris: Fair enough.
Professor: I could tell you were engaged with the material. You know, it meant something to you. You read multiple translations. You tried to hear the voice of that author. All the way back there in time. Almost four thousand years ago.
Chris: Definitely. That's why I switched majors.
Professor: My friend, did you speak to me? Why am I awake? Why am I so upset? Did a god pass by? Why do I feel so weak? I had a dream, I know, and it's the dream that upsets me. At the foot of the shaded mountain, in a ravine, I looked up, and the mountain fell over on top of us. We were helpless. We were like flies.
Chris: Tablet 4, first column. You've got a crazy good memory.
Professor: Yeah, it's the fish oil supplements.
Chris: Yeah, my mom takes that shit. She bought them on QVC. But, what does it mean?
Professor: Well, you know, Gilgamesh and Enkidu are going down to the Cedar Forest to cut down the trees, um, that belong to that god Humbaba.
Chris: Right.
Professor: And, Gilgamesh is nervous, so he's having this series of bad dreams, but Enkidu tells him, it's okay, it's actually a good omen. So they go deeper and deeper into the forest, and the sun disappears, and Humbaba's following them from a distance, like circling and hunting them.
Chris: Mm-hmm. Right.
Professor: And they're overwhelmed by this black heat as Humbaba attacks. But they manage to wound him, and in wounding him, they strike a bargain, right?
Chris: Yeah.
Professor: Humbaba lets them take enough wood to build a palace. This seems like a fair deal. But in Enkidu thinks they still need to kill Mb Baba and Gilgamesh says, no, he, he has like empathy for the God.
Chris: Hmm.
So he stops in Enkidu. They disagree about this. Humbaba attacks them again. This black heat comes and both the heroes are almost broken. But then divine intervention, right?
Chris: Right. Classic.
Professor: Thirteen winds come to their aid and Gilgamesh does in fact kill Humbaba. So they disagreed. They got attacked again. Seems like it's okay. But then fucking Gilgamesh cuts off Humbaba's head and leaves it stuck on a pole at the edge of the forest. And Enkidu realizes they might have gone too far. And this is my favorite part.
Chris: Right.
Professor: Because when he says at the end of that sequence. He says, we have ruined what was not meant to be ruined without making his voice heard.
Chris: The arrogance of man?
Professor: I don't think so. I don't think it's just hubris. I think, I think this story is about how important it is to have someone disagree with you, and, and how that plays out in real time.
Chris: Because Enkidu disagreed with Gilgamesh.
Professor: Yeah, I mean he goes back and forth whether or not they should go to the Cedar Forest, but he's not a yes man.
Chris: I'm not following.
Professor: We're all Gilgamesh, right? You are. I am.
Chris: Okay.
Professor: People like you and me, we don't need yes men. It feels good, feels great, but it is fucking useless. You're saying you want me to doubt you. I want you to come back to class and put all that doubt to work.
Chris: Should I be flattered?
Professor: Well, honestly, yes. I don't know if you know this, but I'm the next Joseph Campbell.
A door opens.
Professor: Look, I know you don't believe me, and, uh, that's an asset, but I, I want you to see this.
Chris: What's this?
Professor: Well, down here in the archives we store the things we need to keep safe. And, uh, the university has a few worthwhile things, nothing too dramatic.
Chris: I have a non zero amount of fear that you're about to murder me right now.
Professor: I only murder PhD students, so you can start to sweat when you get your master's. Look, check this out. This is something I got my hands on from my friends in Beijing.
Chris: Whoa, what?
Professor: Take a look. It's dated to 64,000 BCE.
Chris: That can't be real. It's a knife.
Professor: It's a stone and bronze ceremonial blade, exactly. Look at this. Do you recognize the writing here on the handle?
Chris: No, is it Chico Norte?
Professor: No, not Chico Norte. Not cuneiform, not hieroglyphics, not Linear A. It's not Sumerian, it's not Assyrian or Babylonian. Nobody had ever seen these kinds of glyphs before. But that's Anteran. That's a whole new language.
Chris: And you didn't make this?
Professor: No.
Chris: So it's real?
Professor: As far as I can tell, Chris, with the limited access that I have, it's entirely real. But we did the carbon dating ourselves. It is solid. This comes from a civilization that is 68,000 years older than anything we knew about before. Found at the bottom of the ocean.
Chris: Well, how did it wind up there?
Professor: Well, that's… That's something we should figure out, right? Together.
Chris: How?
Professor: I'm not sure yet. But I, I think Gilgamesh was trying to find out too.
Chris: Wait, what?
Professor: His quest, right? For the man who survived the flood.
Chris: You think he was looking for someone from Anterra?
Professor: Or the descendants of Anterra.
Chris: But where? Sumeria was in the Middle East. Anterra is across the globe and at the bottom of the ocean.
Professor: Yeah. Yeah, well, that's why I need your help. So, come to class today, okay? You'll see what I'm talking about.
INT. LECTURE HALL - DAY
Professor: Oh, Hai Rong.. Do you, do you know how this thing works?
Hai Rong: Raquel isn't back yet?
Professor: No, and I've been trying to make this recorder work and I'm about to smash it.
Hai Rong: Hey, hey, here. Let me see. Ok. There. Talk.
Professor: Hello? Hello?
Hai Rong: It's recording. Oh, nice. Okay. Thank you. Every time they give me a new laptop, I swear. It's just more confusing than the last time.
Hai Rong: Yeah, they definitely do that on purpose.
Professor: Damn right. It's a conspiracy. Yep. Okay. Well, let's get started. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Good to see you. As a reminder, Before we kick in here, I have a sign up sheet over by the door. So, let's get the fall term paper thesis meetings on the books, okay? We don't want to fall behind before we even begin. And yes, by we, I mean you. And by fall behind, I mean fuck up your grade. So pick a time, bring in some ideas, and it'll be quick and painless, okay?
All right, there are a couple of things we want to address over the course of this semester. Uh, the first is the end of the second empire, and the second is the story of the flood. Today we're going to start, and I mean just start, to look into flood mythology and how it may or may not relate to Anterra.
Now, the elephant in the room, of course, is that Anterra is at the bottom of the ocean, right? So that begs a lot of questions. How did it get there? What happened to the rest of the civilization? Are there traces of Antaron culture in other ancient societies? Sumerian, Babylonian, Indo European, Australasian, etc. Well, we don't know. That's the answer. I know it's not particularly satisfying, um, but, but, it's an opportunity, too. It's our chance to expand, the world's knowledge, if that kind of thing is interesting to you, and it should be.
Student: Are you talking about Atlantis?
Professor: What?
Student: Are you talking about Atlantis?
Professor: Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, that word is a big no no. We don't say that in this class. Anterra, the word we use to describe the society, comes from their description of themselves as the before people. So we call them before Earth or Anterra. But whether they have any relation to that myth of a lost city under the ocean, we just don't know. And we don't have anything we can point to right now that connects them to that myth. Plus, the city that Plato wrought is tied to all kinds of pseudoscience and racism and eugenics theory. I mean, it's bad. Bad stuff. A whole lot of half truths and bias confirmed idiocy. So, okay, we'll leave that alone for now.
Now, the first written reference to the Great Flood is in Anybody? Anybody know? Yep. The Epic of Gilgamesh. In this version of the myth, The Enlil decides to wipe out humanity because, and I love this, they've become too noisy. One of the gods, only one, decides to warn a hero, in this case a man named Utnapishtim, in the Akkadian version the guy is called Atrahasis, and gives him instructions on how to build an ark. And he does, he builds an ark. Loads on his family and a bunch of animals and they survive the flood. When the boat lands on a mountaintop, they send out birds. Does any of this sound familiar? Finally, the waters recede and they repopulate the world.
So the Near East is rife with these myths. Israel, Sumeria, Babylon, Akkadia, Assyria, they all have them. And we're going to come back to this part of the world in a minute. But what about other cultures? Yes, flood myths are found in the East as well. So in Hindu mythology, there's the Manvantara Sandhya, where Vishnu, via an avatar, of course, warns the first man, Manu, of the impending flood, who survives by building a boat and loading it with cattle. In ancient Chinese mythology, we have the Great Flood of Ganyu. Uh, which is a very different sort of flood myth because the flood is a natural disaster. It's not a divine punishment and the heroes are praised for mitigating the disaster, which seems kind of sensible, right? I mean, not exactly the norm in mythology. Hi, Chris. Welcome back.
Chris: Sorry I'm late.
Professor: Actually, perfect timing. We were just talking about the flood myths that are common across the mythology of different cultures.
Chris: Don't some psychologists believe that the flood imagery is physiological rather than historical?
Professor: What do you mean?
Chris: That humans dream of floods when their bladders are full and they're asleep.
Professor: Yeah, that's a theory. Yes, um, kind of hard to substantiate, but it's good to have you back, Chris. Okay, so back to the Middle East. The consistencies that we're seeing in the myths. Being a divine punishment and then resulting in a god mourning a man.
Modes of Thought in Anterran Literature. This podcast is made possible by Harbridge University, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Peeler Prize in Archaeological Literature, and the Harbridge Family Trust. With an in-kind donation and production assistance from Wolf at the Door Studios. For more information and a reading list, please visit wlfdr.com.