Nexus - 0504 - New Times Magazine-pages

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the sort of algebraic shorthand that computers understand. Indeed, such is its purity that some historians think it did not just evolve, like other lan - guages, but was actually constructed from scratch. Here's an artificial language, found in an area of the world that had always intrigued me because of my research into the origins of agriculture; an area that I knew would be ideal for Atlantean survivors. It would be hard to imagine how or why the Aymara would find time to invent a language. Such developments are much more likely the product of an advanced civilisation like that of Atlantis. I am convinced that the Aymara language is another holographic fragment from a lost world. This artificial language, which hasn't evolved but remains pure, may just be a key to both our past and the future. Our belief in progress locks us into a lin- ear notion of time. We see ourselves pro- gressing towards the future, leaving the past behind, but this is only a modern fixation, a deep assumption about how to view time. The Aymara people of Lake Titicaca look at time another way. They treat the future as Tiahuanaco. The Polish researcher Arthur Posnansky linked behind them; they consider it a hidden place that they can't see, a Tiahuanaco with Aztlan, the mythical "white" island homeland of _ place at which they will inevitably arrive but need not focus on. the Aztecs. On the shores of Lake Titicaca live the Aymara. One Psychologically, the Aymara face the past. Sunday morning when we were living in London I read an article in the Times about the Aymara language, which really woke me Px has left us a detailed map to the greatest treasure of all. Fig. 25 up. Let me quote the relevant passage: We can follow his clues to find the capital city of Atlantis. Aymara is rigorous and simple—which means that its syntac - His account tells us that the city lay midway on the main tical rules always apply, and can be written out concisely in island facing towards the outer island. That narrows down the Awd ha talle ue that tha 5 56 i in the Times about the ‘Aymara language, which really woke me P lato has left us a detailed map to the greatest treasure of all. up. Let me quote the relevant passage: We can follow his clues to find the capital city of Atlantis. Aymara is rigorous and simple—which means that its syntac - His account tells us that the city lay midway on the main tical rules always apply, and can be written out concisely in island facing towards the outer island. That narrows down the search considerably (figure 24). And he tells us that the Fig. 26 city was completely surrounded by mountains. This ,) oo could only be true if the islands that lie off the mainland are themselves mountainous. And this is, in fact, the case for this area of Antarctica (figure 25). So when we com- bine these clues we find a location marked here that is the size of Pennsylvania (figure 26). Perhaps we might, in our lifetime, excavate the remains of an advanced civilisation beneath the Antarctic ice- sheet. Who knows what we might find in the Atlantean 9 libraries. Who knows what we will think of their art and their science. Is there, after all, wisdom to be mined from there? Whatever we discover, I am convinced that it will Go change the way we view ourselves and revolutionise the way we see time. The present need not be the only key to understanding time. It is not too late for us to listen to the wisdom of the ancients. The past can enrich and even guide our pre- sent. And the past might even turn out to be the key to our future. oo ‘ About the Speaker: G Rand Flem-Ath is co-author (with Rose Flem-Ath) of When The Sky Fell: In Search of Atlantis, published in 1995 by Stoddart Publishing (Ontario), Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London) and St Martin's Press (New York) (see review in NEXUS 3/01). 60 + NEXUS JUNE - JULY 1998