Juvenile fooleries (was Re: Neanderthal and PIE (Long!))

Hallo!

On Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:50:21 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> In my teens I made up a con-historical scenario
> in which Modern Man developed in Atlantis and invaded
> Eurasia and the Americas only when Atlantis began to
> sibmerge due to the geological effects of tectonic
> drift in the mid Atlantic, but once they did they
> quickly overwhelmed the Neanderthalers -- I even
> anachronistically had the Atlanteans call the to
> them newly discovered Neanderthalers 'New Men',
> a name which they had accidentally reapplied to
> themselves in modern times when their remains were
> discovered in a place named after a man named
> Neumann (Graecized Neander)!
I also dabbled with a conworld featuring a "classic-style"
Atlantis drowning in the mid-Atlantic when I was in my teens.
My Atlantis was a high-tech, even starfaring, civilization
that eventually bombed itself out of existence (however, it
was too late to meddle with Neanderthals: I placed it about
10,000 BC), but left behind a few colonies in neighbouring
planetary systems such as Tau Ceti.

Later, I scrapped that universe because I realized that it
was way too corny and Dänikenian.  Today, I fancy that
Atlantis was a civilization in pre-Celtic Britain - the
Elves of my conworld.  And *not* sci-fi high-tech.

>       Incidentally I also
> made up some further even more improbable ingredients,
> so that hybrids of Atlanteans and Neanders were
> usually infertile (like horse/donkey or lion/tiger
> hybrids) but also had their biological clocks
> severely messed up, so that they may mature or
> age extremely quickly or slowly, or have extremely
> short or long lifespans -- these two factors of
> aging and lifespan being independent of each other,
> so that some may e.g. become senile early and then
> live on in that state for centuries, while others
> were sempijuvenile.  Also they could have different
> degrees of Atlantean or Neandrian physical features,
> or even features exaggerated in one or the other
> direction.  These sterile hybrids -- by necessity
> decimated through the centuries once the Neanders died
> out, although some found they could interbreed
> with humans but not with each other -- of course
> became the Elves, Dwarves, Trolls and gods of the
> later human mythologies.
My juvenile Atlantean conworld did not feature such beings,
but it is very possible that stories of giants, trolls,
fomors and similar beings conserve memories of Neanderthal
encounters.

... brought to you by the Weeping Elf

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