Maybe some saw the glee after the arrival of "The Timelines of History" at the Rockhouse and the following is an example since the book presents a peach of a way to go back to any time in history to see what things were happening anywhere in the world. It's interesting for its own sake and it's also a good diversion thirty-six hours or so after surgery.
Ed: when it starts itching like a three-ring flea circus?
You have been here, mate.
The Year 900 showed us ...
The beginning of the Christian reconquest of Spain. Maybe you recall the Moors had invaded Spain from north Africa and that was one of the first Muslim 'incursions' into Europe. Islam had only come into existence a couple of hundred years before that time.
The Mayans relinquish their settlements in the lowlands and move to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
Constantinople remains the first city of the world for commerce, arts, etc. Constantinople was the right half of the Roman Empire and the left half collapsed when Rome fell. Constantinople was not much affected by it so that city thrived while Rome fell to ruin.
This was the time of the Pueblo Indians in the American Southwest.
The oldest Hebrew manuscript of the First Testament dates to only five years previous to this.
The Silas has been intrigued forever with these kinds of perspectives. The interested student can spin off in twelve different directions from it but there's also the overall focus since it's interesting to me to see this time of change in the Mayans in parallel with the ascendancy of Constantinople. They're vastly different aspects of cultural evolution but they were coexistent.
There's the potential to play antique sci fi with it since we can ask what might have happened if the Roman Empire had not split in two to create one leadership in Rome and the other in Constantinople. If that had not happened, would the empire have been more or less likely to fall when it did.
That story would have been a best-seller ... a millenium ago. If you're clever then it could be today since that thinking extends to whether the unified church would have been more resistant to the Protestant uprising and perhaps would thus have prevented the metaphysical chaos which came from that.
Ed: we might not have that idiotic Ark in Kentucky?
Roger that, Noah
The Rockhouse is not much supportive of Protestantism since the view here is Christians stole religion from the Jews. Muslims stole it from the Jews also but added Jesus for spice as a prophet. Then the Christians started stealing Christianity from each other and we got Preacher Let's Make a Deal in Atlanta who was begging for a jetplane. The Rockhouse has a wee (cough) theological problem with that.
The nascent Vatican in Rome at this time is reminiscent of Walter F. Miller's book about "A Canticle for Leibowitz" which, what do you know, is another on the Rockhouse Required Reading List due to its description of the recovery from a nuke war in which science is preserved by monks in the desert working by candlelight and going blind from it.
The synopsis of that story will keep for another time since the point is the similarity between that and building the Vatican out of the ruins of Rome to become what it is today. The Silas is not a Catholic and has no interest in becoming one but always viewed Catholicism as the Mother Church. The view of the preservation of knowledge by the original Catholic Church relative to that of the Leibowitzian Order in the Canticle is a remarkable thing and highly worthwhile to consider. Five stars on that one.
Note: "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is just about as dark as sci fi gets but it's delivered in an exceptionally-gifted way.
"The Timelines of History" is another five star recommendation and it was $23 including the shipping from Amazon.
Ed: you douche! You could have bought a nice bud for that!
Um, I already have the nice bud, mate. The book is what I read while I smoke it. Sometimes you want to see paintings by Dali and at other times you want to see what was happening in Constantinople in the Year 900.
Ed: I don't!
Well, smoke some of this, li'l grasshopper. You will.
Ed: when it starts itching like a three-ring flea circus?
You have been here, mate.
The Year 900 showed us ...
The beginning of the Christian reconquest of Spain. Maybe you recall the Moors had invaded Spain from north Africa and that was one of the first Muslim 'incursions' into Europe. Islam had only come into existence a couple of hundred years before that time.
The Mayans relinquish their settlements in the lowlands and move to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
Constantinople remains the first city of the world for commerce, arts, etc. Constantinople was the right half of the Roman Empire and the left half collapsed when Rome fell. Constantinople was not much affected by it so that city thrived while Rome fell to ruin.
This was the time of the Pueblo Indians in the American Southwest.
The oldest Hebrew manuscript of the First Testament dates to only five years previous to this.
The Silas has been intrigued forever with these kinds of perspectives. The interested student can spin off in twelve different directions from it but there's also the overall focus since it's interesting to me to see this time of change in the Mayans in parallel with the ascendancy of Constantinople. They're vastly different aspects of cultural evolution but they were coexistent.
There's the potential to play antique sci fi with it since we can ask what might have happened if the Roman Empire had not split in two to create one leadership in Rome and the other in Constantinople. If that had not happened, would the empire have been more or less likely to fall when it did.
That story would have been a best-seller ... a millenium ago. If you're clever then it could be today since that thinking extends to whether the unified church would have been more resistant to the Protestant uprising and perhaps would thus have prevented the metaphysical chaos which came from that.
Ed: we might not have that idiotic Ark in Kentucky?
Roger that, Noah
The Rockhouse is not much supportive of Protestantism since the view here is Christians stole religion from the Jews. Muslims stole it from the Jews also but added Jesus for spice as a prophet. Then the Christians started stealing Christianity from each other and we got Preacher Let's Make a Deal in Atlanta who was begging for a jetplane. The Rockhouse has a wee (cough) theological problem with that.
The nascent Vatican in Rome at this time is reminiscent of Walter F. Miller's book about "A Canticle for Leibowitz" which, what do you know, is another on the Rockhouse Required Reading List due to its description of the recovery from a nuke war in which science is preserved by monks in the desert working by candlelight and going blind from it.
The synopsis of that story will keep for another time since the point is the similarity between that and building the Vatican out of the ruins of Rome to become what it is today. The Silas is not a Catholic and has no interest in becoming one but always viewed Catholicism as the Mother Church. The view of the preservation of knowledge by the original Catholic Church relative to that of the Leibowitzian Order in the Canticle is a remarkable thing and highly worthwhile to consider. Five stars on that one.
Note: "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is just about as dark as sci fi gets but it's delivered in an exceptionally-gifted way.
"The Timelines of History" is another five star recommendation and it was $23 including the shipping from Amazon.
Ed: you douche! You could have bought a nice bud for that!
Um, I already have the nice bud, mate. The book is what I read while I smoke it. Sometimes you want to see paintings by Dali and at other times you want to see what was happening in Constantinople in the Year 900.
Ed: I don't!
Well, smoke some of this, li'l grasshopper. You will.
No comments:
Post a Comment