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> Religion always seems like the default explanation for anything without an obvious use and it seems lazy. This is one of the bits I remember from reading A C
by jasonwatkinspdx 7mo ago
> Religion always seems like the default explanation for anything without an obvious use and it seems lazy.
This is one of the bits I remember from reading A Canticle for Leibowitz as a kid. It's about monks in a post nuclear armageddon world. At one point they find an ancient fallout shelter with a bathroom, and they interpret it as a spiritual space where a priest would sit on the "throne" and read "holy scrolls" held by the metal bar next to the throne...
I think we make that kind of mistake when doing armchair archeology or anthropology a lot.
- dekhn 7mo agoThe same joke is in David Macauley's Motel of the Mysteries (see drawing in https://www.byanyothernerd.com/2020/04/stranger-days-39-mysteries-of-motel.html https://www.byanyothernerd.com/2020/04/stranger-days-39-myst...).
- zem 7mo agorelatedly, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Report_on_Grand_Central_Terminal https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Report_on_Grand_Central_Termi...