unforum

[daveg01]

[sixsidedsquare]

gee i'm feeling kida [spec]ish.
[warning, the following should be ignored as they arre the ramblings of a crazed fool]

what if the shared 'history' we have with perplexcity is infact our future, and the point our historys diverge is a armeggedon style happening that wipes most of us out and leaves almost no trace, from which the smart people who were kept alive in the shelters (or whateva) form a new scientific society. And you may say 'but hey, that doesn't make them just part of our timeline and not an alternate reality' but infact the arg will culminate with the finding of the cube, decoding of it's surface, which tells us how the armeggedon happened, we stop it and save the world, thereby splitting the post armeggendon future of perplexcity into a differnt timeline and therefore different reality.

Phew, glad i got that out of my system.

[Violet]

I'm not sure how far back the Pxc history even stretches. We know ours back to before our species even existed in its current form. I know this blog entry mentions 1000 years back, and I have vague recollections of something further, but I can't find the reference. If anyone's got any theories on how far back the Perplexians have archaeological evidence from, that'd be great. It's been a long, hard day at school so am too tired to trawl through!

[Leeravitz]

As far as I can work out (and my maths is prone to balls up), there have been some fairly specific historical datings given, particularly on the Academy home site (under the Museum entry).

Confusion arises because of the BC/AC divide, which has little to do with our BC/AD divide (except it sounds similar). We can work backwards from today's equivalent dating to discover that AC dating began about the time that we would call 1737 AD. The Cube (famously) was found a few years prior to this, which disappointed a lot of people who imagined BC meant 'Before Cube' and AC 'After Cube'.

If we then work backwards through Perplexian times BC, we can trace the formal history back to circa 3000 BC. The Academy website is fairly clear on the details. It states that, going backwards, the period 700 BC to 0 BC was one of industrial development and consolidation. This is the period within which the Academy was set up, and on the basis of the language used in the note from Dinah, which relates to the Academy's early days, I estimate that Perplexian society seems to have reached something like the level of 'our' 16th or 17th century society (the period of our 'scientific revolution') at the early point of this period. Essentially, the Academy was formed in what was, to us, c. 1164 AD. This may imply that, by the time the period AC was reached, Perplexian society was already at a level of development comparable to 19th, 20th or 21st century technology - and, perhaps, that there was a 'time of turmoil' as a result.

Prior to this came a period of more intensive urbanisation from 1250 to 700 BC, which approximates to the European 'Dark Ages' - c. 487 AD to 1037 AD. We don't know much about this period, although it would appear to have been more peaceable and progressive than the comparable European era (elsewhere in our world during that time period, progress was also noticeable).

Preceding this period was one of expansion of the City, 2000 BC to 1250 BC (which approximates, I think, to c. 263 BC to 487 AD, our time). Again, we know little of the period, but on the basis of speculation, it sounds as if something similar to a Greco - Roman city state was flourishing in the region at the time. What is, perhaps, interesting is that the technological level of Perplex City at this period does not seem vastly different to that of the Earth societies that would have flourished contemporaneously. This may imply that the 'great acceleration' (and consequent divergence) in Perplexian development happened after this time.

Finally, the oldest period that Academy dates run back to is 3000 BC. This is, I think, approximately 737 BC our time. We know that the Perplexians were nomadic tribespeople at this stage. On the one hand, this is relatively unadvanced, if compared to the lifestyles of contemporary Iron Age civilizations on Earth, such as the Assyrians, Israelites, Archaic Greeks etc. On the other hand, it is not dissimilar to the level of society that European peoples, for instance, had attained at this time. However, Perplexian society had also developed writing at this stage. This was not, in our world, a normal attainment for peoples who lived nomadic lifestyles, in the manner of the Neolithic period.

If I have my date comparisons worked out correctly, then there is, indeed, some disjuncture here. Recorded history on Earth goes back as far as our own 3000 BC, and the first appearence of writing emerged itself after several centuries of prior civilized development. This is much further back than the Perplexian history thus far given to us. It is not impossible that the Perplexians were a nomad people who came to settle on the abandoned sites of more advanced peoples who had preceded them in the region, built up complex civilizations and then been lost to memory. This was not, in fact, an uncommon pattern in Earth history - the Indus Valley civilization of North India, for instance, collapsed c.1500 BC, our time, and we know little of why - it might have been thanks to the incursions of Aryan nomads into the region, and then again, they may merely have entered into India in order to take advantage of newly available lands. Certainly, however, their civilization rose essentially on the ruins of the Indus Valley predecessor. Something similar can be said of the Classical Greek emergence, from what we believe to be Dorian peoples, who swept into a land once controlled by Myceneans and Minoans, and who may or may not have inherited significant cultural traditions from their obscure predecessors.

In more recent times, Anglo - Saxon colonisation of Roman London after its abandonment demonstrates the former's inability to comprehend the civilization of the latter, only two centuries after it collapsed in Western Europe: the Anglo -Saxon believed that the remains of the great amphitheatres and roads they discovered in the ruined city must have been constructed by mythical giants...

[Violet]

So basically, it's possible that the Perplexians are an Atlantis-style people who didn't regress at any point in their history, and who seemingly hold Ancient Greece as a basis for a lot of study/philosophy etc. And something about nomads.

[Leeravitz]

No, I think the evidence is actually closer to implying that there may have been an Atlantis - style civilization *first*, and that fell, or was invaded, by the nomads. Then, a new civilization was built up (presumably by the nomads, although maybe they inherited some traditions from the prior civilization). This civilization seems to have gone through a period when it became like ancient Greece or Rome and then it kept on advancing, faster than earth civilizations did.

But that's all spec, really, based on the minimal amounts of info we've been given...

If my comments seem a bit dense, it's no doubt because I am a trained historian, and I can blab on about this stuff in the same way that other people talk about 4th dimensional tesseracts...

[Violet]

yeah, me too, I bore people to death about Ancient Greece!