Episode 02 Early Mythology
EPISODE 01
COURSE OVERVIEW
INT. LECTURE HALL - DAY
A recording device clicks on.
PROFESSOR
--Yeah its on. No, I see the light now. We’re good. Thanks Raquel. Everyone give it up for your very accomplished and technically savvy T.A. Raquel.
Weak applause.
RAQUEL
Thank you, thank you.
PROFESSOR
Ok. Let’s settle in. This is the fun part. Or one of them. Actually its all pretty fun to me, but that’s why I teach Anterran history, so, you know, caveat preemptor. Raquel- will you hit the lights.
RAQUEL
Yep.
Footsteps and a distant click. A projector clicks on, its fan whirring a bit. There’s a murmuring among the students.
PROFESSOR
Ok. Yeah its cool, right? Ok these carvings are found in a building that’s in the north west quarter of the city. Its hard to get a sense of the scale in this image- its pretty dark down there. But this is about 25 meters across, 12 meters high. 25 meters! I mean, its huge, is the uh technical term. And as you can see when we zoom in a bit...
Click. Next slide.
PROFESSOR
Here we can see the glyphs. And these are tiny- each character is about three quarters of an inch. So that wall is covered with carvings of 9000 individual characters. And that’s just ONE WALL. And there are lots more. Lots.
Coughing. Papers shuffle.
PROFESSOR
Ok, hit the lights Raquel? Thanks. So, we’re going to get into the writing and language subjects in a different week, so I’m going to move away from the glyphs for now and start to go into some of what we’ve uncovered so far by translating this wall. Starting with--
Squeak of a dry erase pen on a white board.
PROFESSOR
Teotia. The mother of the gods. This is just one example of how utterly different the Anterran culture is from any other civilization we know, and its just... its fucking wild! Now, in the translations we have- and more are coming in constantly- we have a lot of different creation myths and sagas. But Teotia is always the first, the prime mover, the Logos. And what’s utterly unbelievable about Teotia is that she was a human.
Pause.
PROFESSOR
This wall is in a building in the old city of Prima A, its shaped like a 3 sided pyramid with the top lopped off. Seems to be a religious building- there’s a hearth-like structure in the middle and some sort of altar. And the carvings on this wall that we’re looking at today, these are attributed to Rah
Kamali, who was active in the first empire, so yeah, about 73,000 BCE.
He continues.
PROFESSOR
Story goes like this: Teotia lived in darkness, and was sorrowful. Right? Same as the story from Mem Ehafi last wake. But in this one, she falls asleep, weeping. Then she wakes up woke up in a green field with strong soil. When she opened her eyes, the darkness was gone. And she wandered the earth, which was flat and brown, and decided it was boring. Ha- this is very punk rock. She was bored! So she made the plants and rivers and oceans and animals to make it more interesting. Well the word seems to translate as both ‘interesting,’ and ‘beautiful.’ Crazy right? I wish we thought interesting and beautiful were the same thing.
Giggles.
PROFESSOR
But Teotia didn’t stop there. Every night she’d go to sleep, and the world turn dark- the ‘light-beams would leave,’ is the phrase. And when she awoke, everything was flat and brown again. So she would make the plants and the rivers and the oceans and the animals. But it wasn’t sticking- it would never last. It wasn’t enough to keep the darkness away for good.
Beat.
PROFESSOR
So Teotia made other humans to be her children. It doesn’t explain HOW she did this, so we have a virgin birth situation here, and in this case, multiple virgins births, because she had a litter of 9 children. And that helped- now the light would stay as long as someone was awake- but if they all slept at the same time the light would go and everything would be wiped clean again. She did this for 9999 years.
Pause.
PROFESSOR
So finally Teotia decides they need a god. A god who would never sleep, and that way the light would stay on and the world wouldn’t reset all the time. So she tore the fourth finger from her left hand- this image comes back again and again- she tore the fourth finger from her left hand and sucked on it. And when all the blood was gone out of it, she buried it in the dirt, and this is how she made Ikopaa, the second birth. Ikopaa had eyes all over its body, so if some closed, others would still be open. And Ikopaa watched, as Teotia and her humans grew and multiplied and built their city. And she’s still watching us today. Which is why the world stays as it is. Cool right?
Pause.
PROFESSOR
So what do we see in this story that relates to our subject- Modes of Thought? Well, ok, first- there’s the human foremother situation- I keep bringing that up because its just so unusual. Second, this story is built around the concept of object permanence. This is the notion that we know, if we close our eyes, that the objects around us are STILL THERE. Babies don’t have that, yet, right? So when you play peek-a-boo with an infant, they literally think you disappear each time you hide your face... that’s why they think its so fun- you’re actually disappearing and reappearing right before their eyes! The world is a much more magical place when you’re a dumb little kid, huh?
Click. Gasps. Sounds in the hallway.
PROFESSOR
Its fine, its fine. The emergency lights kicked in. Must be a blackout or something. Let’s just be careful on the stairs, yeah? Ok. See you next week. Hey Raquel? Gotta sec?
Students shuffle out. The following conversation takes place quietly, away from the mic.
PROFESSOR
Hey, uh, what do you know about Qiang Tao? Is she a new transfer student or has she been, like, around?
RAQUEL
Huh. I don’t know. I hadn’t met her before this class.
PROFESSOR
Ok. Hmm.
RAQUEL
You think, what?
PROFESSOR
I don’t know. Its just good to be careful.
RAQUEL
I could take her out for a drink, if that would be helpful?
PROFESSOR
I think that’s a great idea, actually. You wouldn’t mind?
RAQUEL
Not at all. She’s, well...
PROFESSOR
Ah.
RAQUEL
Yeah.
PROFESSOR
Well, here, here’s a few bucks- no no let me- take her out, find out her story, ok? She hasn’t said a word in class, and I don’t want to go digging around in admissions, so, this is just easier, you know?
RAQUEL
Sure thing.
PROFESSOR
Just a friendly drink.
RAQUEL
My pleasure.
PROFESSOR
Easy tiger.
RAQUEL
Ha.
PROFESSOR
Ok thanks--