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[Seej]

Or, perhaps it was just a walled settlement with a big gate on the front. The reason the settlement is no longer there is because it took them way too long to close a gate that big when anyone tried to invade

[Violet]

Yeah, it does sound a lot like Troy or something, with a big wall and a big gate...

[DrPiranha]

[Leeravitz]

I wouldn't disagree with this. If you were working to the model of, say, ancient London, then an extensively urbanised settlement (complete with walls, harbours and guard towers) ultimately falls into ruin, and gets superseded by a settlement of considerably more simplicity and rusticity. On the one hand, it doesn't sound to me as if Perplex City ever entered into a 'dark age' - rather that progress was *always* cumulative (as per the Academy Museum page) - and that means that Perplexians remaining unaware of their own inheritance does seem a trifle bizarre.

However, its clear that society *did* shift in some way - the Academy's early days (as related in the coded extracts from Dinah) sound as if they occurred within the context of a culture similar to that of Elizabethan or 17th century English society. The early history of the City, in contrast, with its amphitheatres, 'ancient drama', silver mines and Old High Perplexian, sounds much more Greco - Roman in infrastructural terms. So, maybe, for some reason, aspects of past history were gradually forgotten or lost by suceeding generations.

To use a London analogy: its only in fairly recent times (thanks to bomb damage sustained during the Blitz) that archaeology has recovered the siting of the Roman wall around the city, and, previously, this had been forgotten about for something like 500 years...

If we know that Sente was born in the region of Vingate, then it's plausible to suggest (on the basis of analogy with London, Jerusalem etc.) that there were originally gates around the City which passed their names to certain regions, long after the actual walls and gates fell into disuse and disrepair, and were forgotten. The obvious possibility that 'Vingate' might have been one through which transferals of wine, and other such beverages, were made and taxed sounds pretty plausible to me - and again, there's something Roman about wine having once been a vital prop to the ancient Perplexian economy. Admittedly, one has to take some liberties with Earth languages to establish the analogy (by way of Latin, French, English), but we already have some indications that Perplexian is an oddly mix and match language by our standards - sometimes very English in construction, sometimes hiding significant analogies with Polish, Italian etc. etc.

[erekose]

[Seej]

[BrianEnigma]

[Violet]

This is all taking too long, I say bring in the JCBs - Speed Archaeology is in order

[Leeravitz]

Archaeologically, the gate is not the only anomalous find we know of - within the Academy grounds, there is also said to be a mosaic that is dated 4,000 years old. Now, whether this is meant to indicate it is dated to c. 4000 BC, or a couple of hundred years later (if we count 4000 from the current date), it seems to be older/as old as the oldest neolithic type settlements in the region. This might indicate that another civilization had inhabited the site before the City folk arrived, I suppose. Maybe they initially lived in ruins that had been left by these previous peoples, until they either built over or incorporated such buildings, and they were lost to posterity??

[toongoon]

altho I love the idea of stargates and dhds

Sometimes an arch is an arch....



Imagine how this may look if they find this 4000 years from now.

[spugmeistress]

maybe its just one half of a giant mcdonalds sign, those pesky fast food joints do get everywhere...

rach =) (is in a silly mood) ;)

[Leeravitz]

Oddly enough, that was my first thought as well...

[daveg01]

It seems to me that they have found evidence of a civilisation development similar to the modern society of today, mabey before the cube there society was like our moden society but it changed when they found the cube.
"outlines of large buildings, even perhaps some "civic" buildings"[/quote][/quote]

[Violet]

'large' and 'civic' buildings are hardly modern inventions though

[DrPiranha]