
Language at the End of the World (2017) - aaronharnly
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/64/mikanowski.php?
======
aaronharnly
What do you think — is it more lonely, or less, to have this phantom trace of
a communication from a destroyed culture and people, which more than likely we
will never be able to read? I find it so haunting, like a hand raised to the
window pane of a passing train — nearly a connection, but more painful for
being a missed one.

~~~
galaxyLogic
Well maybe but the more painful thing is how their whole civilization was
destroyed by colonialists.

I don't think there are any great secrets in those texts, just humanity.

The fact that we can not read these texts in fact tells us more than if we
could, it tells us it is possible to annihilate other cultures totally. It
tells us about the evil of colonialism.

~~~
pjmlp
When traveling around Mexico, I kept wondering how it would have been like
today, if we (Europeans) had behaved in a different way.

~~~
tronko
I think that somebody would have united all native populations against the
Aztecs. An European or else.

------
knolax
>"following a pattern called the reverse boustrophedon. Boustrophedon is a
Greek word meaning “in the manner of an ox,” and scripts written in it move
like an ox plowing a field, reversing direction with each line."

Some day a future civilization is going to have to attempt to decipher our
language in the same way.

