From: "Tony Ellis" 
Subject: Re: (urth) Re: Tony's Ellis Island
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 14:29:49 +0100

Mantis wrote:
>Basically I wonder how your reading has accomodated Gondwanaland. There
>must be a hundred ways, or at least a few dozen. Rather than I list a few,
>I would rather you just tell me.

My reading is that at some era predating all known civilisations on Earth, a
(now long-dead) civilisation arose on Earth that developed space travel,
colonised St Anne, and became the 'abos'. Gondwanaland is one place, among
others, where that civilisation may have arisen.

And that's it. I don't think we're given enough information to draw any
further conclusions, so I don't try. I don't think we're meant to read
anything into the specific names given or into any dates that can be
attached to them, they're just another way of saying "On Earth, a very long
time ago."

>Your message above suggests you are looking at/for a single wave of
>colonization?

A single (pre 5000BC) wave is all that is needed to get a human race on St
Anne that can one day interbreed with French colonists, so yes. Except.

Except that the Old Wise One does say that "it may be that all are one
 stock" - in other words, as I understand it, that the Shadow Children may
be humans too. This would require an even earlier wave of colonisation from
Earth, or perhaps prion's theory that St Anne is where humanity originated.
The trouble is, making the Shadow Children human contradicts the picture
painstaklingly painted throughout the rest of the story of a non-sentient,
indigenous, telepathic life-form that is awakened to sentience by man's
arrival. "'We had no names before men came out of the sky,' the Old Wise One
said dreamily. 'We were mostly long, and lived in holes between the roots of
trees.'"

Never able to reconcile "it may be that all are one stock" with the rest of
the story, I've reluctantly assumed that this is just idle speculation on
the Old Wise One's part. But I keep trying.



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