Published on 12, July, 2020
I decided that I needed a new book to read and managed to find one on my bookshelf that I’d only half read so thought I’d finish it off: Tower, An epic History of the Tower of London by Nigel Jones. I just wondered what everyone else is reading at the moment? What does everyone else like to read?
I have just finished something the second part of a trilogy exploring anthropology and philosophy, purporting to demonstrste the immortality of consciousness. I was particularly interested when he started talking about the Minoans, but in fact these don't really get looked at that much. He's on Amazon under the moniker of Melampus. I thought he views on patriarchy and the Great Mother religions were a little old school though.
I have Sapiens coming up, but now I have got a present from last year to read, a fantasy novel called The Vorrh. Supposedly very good ...
The minoans sound interesting, I’d have been disappointed at only a short bit on them too! Sapiens sounds really good, I might have to have a look at that myself sometime. Are you interested in the history of humans? It’s probably good you’re reading a fantasy novel in between though, to give your brains break from the harder stuff.
There is an excellent series on the Minoans you can pick up on You Tube. Its premise is that basically the eruption of Thera was much bigger than previously supposed - possibly 7, not 6, on the vei index. There is evidence of massive tsunamis taken place around Santorini. The Minoans had built their citadel on a ticking bomb. They probably did have a city built on concentric rings, because the rings in great part had been the remains of calderas. They just had to be the basis for Plato's Atlantis, there is no way folk memory could hold so much detail about a past culture of 11 thousand years, for one thousand years, yes. But just how advanced they got is still a little unclear and it is certainly true from the looks of things that they did practise human sacrifice - at lest sometimes. They were certainly Neolithic to begin with, their are resemblances in their style to Catalogue Huyuk, but maybe developed great sophistication beyond that.
Riane Eisler reckons that the aggressive nastiness in human culture came from the invasion of patriarchal cultures, but probably all culture is chicken and egg. The violence was probably, already there, then cultural norms reflected it. All the same I do wonder what conditions can help keep the worm in the apple, that is, human destructivness, in check. Massive inequality, as now, is probably disastrous.
Her premise is certainly different from this Melampus's anyway.
I like dystopic novels too. It seems to be easier to envision dystopias than it is to envision utopias. Not sure where this new fantasy novel will fit into that.
nexus9 said:The mythical Melampus or the writer on Amazon?
The mythical one, not the writer.
nexus9 said:I have certainly read about the plague if Justinian.
It's just odd to me how it's never mentioned. It was devastating.
Plague will never go away. It just needs the right conditions.
Windscale said:Plague*s* - everybody when talking about plague generally means bubonic plague I think, but there are other types as well.
The Justinian Plague was bubonic, but there are different plagues. BTW good to see you around!