Ancients...

By Cynthia Higginbotham ·

TML message #4203From bundle 347

Hans writes:

>>>3) Additional point
>>> Has anyone thought how dumb imperial archaeologists must be to not
>>>have realised WHO the ancients were?
>>
>>I wonder how they EVER figured it out, myself.  They have 421 (or
>>somewhat fewer) DIFFERENT cultures and technologies.  They don't even
>>use the same kind of screws from site to site.  So how did ANYONE ever
>>leap to the conclusion that they all belonged to one race?

>421 huh? You know, that is just one of the glaring holes in the whole
>Grandfather story. "He kept careful count of his descendants and made
>sure he killed them all". Yeah, sure. But what about the children that
>they had unknown to him? Say during the second millenium of the war when
>those surviving must've begun to suspect what he was up to, and in any
>case needed allies. Not to mention all the programmed clones they must've
>made to decoy Grandfather into killing a clone instead of the real thing.
>Phoey!

     ...hmmm.  I don't call that a "glaring hole", I call it a "plot
hook".  So Grandfather kept careful count and killed them all?  BWAH-HA-HA!
     And then of course, we have plot hook #2: Once somebody decided
that all 421+ sites actually belonged to the same culture, every
technological ruin that either dates between 500,000 - 300,000 years ago or
is undatable has been lumped into the "Ancients (Droyne)" category by
Imperial archaeologists.  <snicker, snicker!>  Older ruins are either mis-
dated or ignored, because "the only starfaring culture predating the
Vilani is the Ancients, so this MUST be an Ancient site..."  (Except of
course for the hypothetical Primoridials, which are only known from a site
that NO ONE has found and entered, so how are they known??)
     I can only guess that the Imperium is using the worst of Vilani
and Solomani archaeological traditions...

>  "Free speech gives a man the right to talk about the
>'psycology' of an amoeba, but I don't have to listen".
>                  Elihu Nivens in 'The Puppet Masters'

- -- someone else who reads Heinlein, eh?


- -- Via DLG Pro v0.991

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