>The line in the chronicle stating, "Uruk was defeated," may refer to a military conquest, but could as easily mean that it lost its position of leadership
Interesting (but not surprising?) that semantic drift has been with us since the beginning of language.
A word that once meant "succeeded in time" can shift in usage over a few scant generations (and motivated, "my side winning is as inevitable as the passage of time" rhetoric) to eventually become a synonym with "defeated in battle."
Indeed. I mean, the Mother of all Drifts comes with the entire logographic system shifting to accommodate more and more meanings, and abstract concepts ...
... enough to support a flourishing civilization (several) over thousands of years.-
Also, the parallels with today (power, war, "leadership" ...), "our highways are covered with weed and no wine nor syrup flows forth ..." are considerable.-
There is too much waiting to be excavated, discovered... Eridu sits as if it never existed, abandoned, buried. So many answers around us, unseen, mostly buried.
What particularly irks my mind is Ayanis Kalesi, and more specifically, the stonework over 20 meters beneath Lake Van discovered by Tawson Ceylon. Elaborate stonework, that deep, and our trusty gatekeepers say it's a medieval Urartian fortress. And yet, if we notice, on the land portion, this so called castle has lower layers that do not match Urartian stonework. But 24 meters beneath Lake Van? A rosette carved into the block?
We are finding many smaller sites around Gobekli Tepe and elsewhere... We've found stone mounds beneath the Baltic sea. Then there's Dwarka and the Gulf of Khambhat! And we do have more than a piece of wood to work with, but we dwell on it still.
I really wish we would get collectively obsessed with this all and impel more work. I look at Ukraine, Iran, other potential conflagrations, with whispers of nuclear... exceptions?, economic disintegration etc, and I fear, another setback. Even in 2026, there is so much to discover.
Interesting (but not surprising?) that semantic drift has been with us since the beginning of language.
A word that once meant "succeeded in time" can shift in usage over a few scant generations (and motivated, "my side winning is as inevitable as the passage of time" rhetoric) to eventually become a synonym with "defeated in battle."
Indeed. I mean, the Mother of all Drifts comes with the entire logographic system shifting to accommodate more and more meanings, and abstract concepts ...
... enough to support a flourishing civilization (several) over thousands of years.-
Also, the parallels with today (power, war, "leadership" ...), "our highways are covered with weed and no wine nor syrup flows forth ..." are considerable.-
Certainly. Meet the new humanity, same as the old humanity...
There is too much waiting to be excavated, discovered... Eridu sits as if it never existed, abandoned, buried. So many answers around us, unseen, mostly buried.
What particularly irks my mind is Ayanis Kalesi, and more specifically, the stonework over 20 meters beneath Lake Van discovered by Tawson Ceylon. Elaborate stonework, that deep, and our trusty gatekeepers say it's a medieval Urartian fortress. And yet, if we notice, on the land portion, this so called castle has lower layers that do not match Urartian stonework. But 24 meters beneath Lake Van? A rosette carved into the block?
We are finding many smaller sites around Gobekli Tepe and elsewhere... We've found stone mounds beneath the Baltic sea. Then there's Dwarka and the Gulf of Khambhat! And we do have more than a piece of wood to work with, but we dwell on it still.
I really wish we would get collectively obsessed with this all and impel more work. I look at Ukraine, Iran, other potential conflagrations, with whispers of nuclear... exceptions?, economic disintegration etc, and I fear, another setback. Even in 2026, there is so much to discover.
> really wish we would get collectively obsessed with this
Idem. Spot on.-
Sadly that takes a (global) level of stability that we are well outside of nowadays.-
Not to mention how - peculiarity - these sites tend to be around hotspots themselves?