>Believe it or not, in my campaign these issues *are*
>relevant. That's the reason why I was uncertain about the right
>place for this thread (Digest or HWList).
>Actually our campaign is not centered on the classical
>Heortling Tula vs Evil Empire topos: we introduced a
>terrestrial astronaut PC in Glorantha
Wow. YG Does V!
Gianfranco, your questions and observations on the lists are always
insightful and entertaining. And though I'd probably enjoy taking a dive
into this subject of "Earth Science versus Gloranthan Reality" there are so
many variables at play that I am going to bow out personally, and just watch.
Keep it up!
However, I will take a crack at discussing the belief systems questions that you have raised.
>> The ancient
>> Egyptians, for instance, didn't change all that much
>> in thousands of
>> years.
>
>Are you sure?
>We tend to flat ancient cultures and ancient peoples
>when we look at them from 2002 AD.
This is a key issue. We tend to think they have not changed because
archeologists have not discovered significant material changes in the
remnants of their culture. However, we have no proof or evidence that
people's attitudes were always the same. I myself do not believe they were
a static and unchanging mind set for the entire period of ancient history.
I am not learned enough about their literature to prove otherwise, but I
can point to the proto-Greeks with more confidence.
I will use their literature as the example of changing attitudes. Homer is
the great hero who quantified attitudes, but his attitudes are quite
different from Hesiod, a near contemporary. Homer concentrates on the
Olympians, whereas Hesiod relates stories of a myriad of other non-Homeric
deities. Of course we don't have any evidence of what people thought before
Homer, but we can clearly see an increasing skepticism and materialism
after him. Plato and Aristotle set into motion perspectives which revised
Greek thought about the gods, eventually resulting in Neoplatonic
philosophy that has little to do with big-sized guys in the sky who turn
into swans to knock up the babes.
I think that the Egyptians, subject to their own history of invasions,
climate changes and new ideas, likely underwent some significant changes in
human attitude at well.
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