The problem of Cthulhu

brunians at brunians.org · 20 Jun 2007, 13:12 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: brunians at brunians.org (brunians at brunians.org)
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 09:12:13 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: (urth) The problem of Cthulhu
In-Reply-To: <46791F20.1030306 at io.com>
References: <135522.2581.qm at web32402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
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	<11530.67.142.130.61.1182296319.squirrel at brunians.org>
	<467889C4.7050907 at io.com>
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>>>> I think that all of this is related to various species of humans who
>>>> were around in the deep past. There were (especially) surviving
>>>> populations of neanderthals and such in Scandanavia when the aryan
>>>> types got there.

>>> *snicker* This is literally the premise of _The Thirteenth
>>> Warrior_/_Eaters of the Dead_.

>> Yes it is.

>> Why should that be amusing?

> Because of the dual meaning of Aryan (notional fair-skinned race vs.
> Indo-European root culture).

You see, the first one never occurs to me. It's based on several mistaken
notions.

A good starting point for understanding how strange the material is is
realizing that Sanskrit is not like other languages. It is fixed. It is a
literary language (though there is and tends to be a community of several
thousand people who are raised as native speakers), and the when you go to
learn it, the very first thing you do is learn to make the 50 or so sounds
that are associated with the Sanskrit letters (which can be written, by
the way with any arbitrary set of symbols).

Thus, the language is not subject to phoneme drift as a natural language
is. In other words, no one knows how old it is. 19th and 20th century
scholars used to say it dates back 3500 years or so: the only thing we
know about this number is that it is wrong. It could be 5,000 years old,
it could be 50,000 years old.

>                         The movie opens with Ibn Faldan, an exiled
> Persian, being sent to Scandanaavia, and there are *still* proto-humans
>   there, ages after the blondes have taken up residence.

Yes, this is what the sagas say also. I think you will get in trouble
thinking of neanderthals as proto-humans. They are as human as you if not
more so. They were skilled engineers, among other things, and also your
ancestors if you are even part-European.

.

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