{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1477",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1477,
    "subject": "Reply: Re: (urth) Dead Languages; Literally, \"Apu-Punchau\"? ...",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-04-02T20:50:08+00:00",
    "last": "1999-04-02T20:50:08+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0024-0136@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Mitchell A. Bailey",
        "address": "mab at lindau.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-04-02T20:50:08+00:00",
      "subject": "Reply: Re: (urth) Dead Languages; Literally, \"Apu-Punchau\"? ...",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Mark Millman wrote:\n\nOn Friday 2 April 1999 at 5:47 am GMT, Mitchell A. Bailey wrote:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "[snip]\n\nUntil some points made in the recent \"Thorn\"\ndiscussions, however, it never occured to me\nto question the literal authenticity of the name\n\"Apu-Punchau\". The name is Quechua, the\ntongue of the Incas of Peru, and means roughly\n\"Lord Sun-God\". I'm not a Quechua scholar, but\nI am interested enough to own a book which\nincludes a Quechua glossary.\n\nI'm wondering if the use of Quechua is a sub-\nstitution of the same sort for some future auto-\nchthonous language, or whether Sev actually\ntraveled back in time to live among the pre-\nimperial Inca, c. 1200 AD?\n\n[snip]"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "My guess would be (and from this I'm sure that you can tell I tend\ntoward the conservative in Wolfean criticism) that your first sug-\ngestion (i.e., that Quechua is a stand-in for some post-historic\nlanguage) is the correct explanation.  If the cities of the twentieth\ncentury are vanished into dust, I think it unlikely--though I admit not\nimpossible--that any Incan city would remain to serve at the Stone\nTown.  Furthermore, if there had been an \"unscheduled\" (so to\nspeak) total solar eclipse in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, I'd\nimagine there would be some sort of record of it.  Even if Tzadkiel\nhad managed the Ship so that the eclipse were seen only in the\nWestern Hemisphere, we could expect the Maya to have recog-\nnized it as unusual and to have recorded it, though of course the\nInca or proto-Inca wouldn't have left such a record.  I suppose it's\npossible that the Ship was so located that the eclipse was strictly\nlocal, but I don't think this likely; I'd argue for greater Ship size\nand distance from Urth during the eclipse, as mantis discussed\nyesterday."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Thanks Mark. When I considered that possibility, I recognized that it is\nproblematic also, especially if you accept the \"near future\" theory. \nConsider: some very long, forgotten period of time prior to Sev's\n\"native\" time, long before the reign of Manarch Typhon as well, there\nexisted an isolated primitive indigenous people somewhere on Earth\npresumably not far from the later Commonwealth. Typhon's empire was\npreceded by one or more super-technological epochs in which all Earth's\ninhabitants presumably would have at least some access to advanced\ntechnology and contact with each other and the galactic human culture.\nFurthermore such a culture (even our present-day civilization) would no\ndoubt take notice of Tzadkiel's ship approaching, and respond in some\nsignificant fashion. I envision an Earth nearly covered by cities and\nfeats of civil engineering Trantor-style, perhaps broken up here and\nthere by biome-parks.\n\nFor there to have later been autochthons as Sev described implies tht\nthe first galactic empire fell hard and spectacularly, taking with it\ntrade, travel, communications, and industry, leaving large numbers of\npeople living at a neolithic level for many generations. Then at a much\nlater time the grosser more decadent empire which eventually produced\nTyphon arose. \n\nThe text doesn't rule this out, in fact there could be some support for\nit. But it practically requires that Sev is of a future at least tens if\nnot hundreds of millenia hence."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}