From: tony.ellis@futurenet.co.uk (Tony Ellis)
Subject: (urth) Re: migrations, humanity and Aunt Jeanine
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 12:58:49 +0100

Alga wrote:
>Tony, what if we (or I, forsaking the editorial we) were to accept that
>"abos" came from Earth, but we then rejected the Gondwanaland premise? What
>if we simply assumed that a boatload of mixed-sex colonists operating at our
>own considerably slower-than-light speed at some time in our own not-so-far
>future landed on Ste. Anne and, in the generations before a second,
>technically whizzier second ship (with subsequent ships)landed on Ste.
>Croix, "went native."

Surely if such earlier expeditions had ever taken place Marsch and
Number 5 would raise this theory themselves? Why would they suggest such
a way-out idea as a prehistoric migration if this was an option?

I also don't think that the novellas are set far enough in the future
for a STL crew to get to St Anne, and turn into the abos before the
later French colonists arrived. If the (presumably faster) French
colonists didn't pass the STL ship on the way, I think they would still
arrive before its crew could un-evolve the ability to use tools, which I
imagine would take millenia. 

(And why raise the Gondwanaland premise in the first place? Why have the
Old Wise One name-check Gondwanaland, Atlantis etc as if to confirm it?
)

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