Wash ,'War Stories'
[NAFDA] This is where we talk about the show! Anything that's aired in the US (including promos) is fair game. No spoilers though -- if you post one by accident, an admin will delete it.
Given that they spoke Latin and referred to the use of ships, etc., that a game from Egypt was on the ship, the time this took place could be anywhere from around 400 BCE to the 5th century, I guess.
I'm not sure if anyone can narrow it down further from that. I just don't think we have more clues on which to narrow.
Could have been. Which still puts it not as ancient as I was thinking before, so, maybe I just overcorrected in the recent direction.
I'm trying to pin down why I had that misapprehension and I can't, really. Probably just me getting it wrong
Well, the mummification of the corpses was a counter-indicator of the episode's "meanwhile, two thousand years ago..." approach. They should have been nothing but dust after all that time exposed to the elements.
I'm getting that "several thousand years" from the interview Cindy linked, btw. Probably should have contextualized that when I brought it up.
While the Allison Janney character may have been there for a couple of thousand years, I really didn't think that the boys had been. I mean, when did Spanish develop as a language separate from Latin and whatever the original Spanish people spoke?
On the other hand, I think that the Island has too many time oddities to make a straightforward chronology possible.
The wiki page on Senet (the board game that appeared) has some very interesting details about the game and its significance:
It was found in graves dating from about 1500BC. Thing is, where the game and Latin would coexist would be closer to 400 BC, IMO. I'm not sure the game was around for those thousand years in between though.
On the other hand, I think that the Island has too many time oddities to make a straightforward chronology possible.
That's a good point. Once the donkey wheel was built, who knows what might have happened.
If Allison Janney really did leave the Senet board for the kid to find, it wouldn't have to be contemporaneous with the ship people. She could have had it for a long time.
Were they speaking Spanish? I thought so initially, but my ear for languages is atrocious
Were they speaking Spanish? I thought so initially, but my ear for languages is atrocious
I thought it was Latin. It wasn't Spanish as far as I could hear - but then my Spanish is basic.
Reading up on the game of senet. It's thought to be the ancestor of backgammon. Huh.
I'm pretty sure it was Latin. Or, at least, it was supposed to be Latin, though some of the pronunciation might have been dubious.
Latin was a lingua franca for a long time, too. "CJ" could have been around since ancient days, and had it for her native language, until Claudia was shipwrecked in more modern times....
(My roommate's uncle, a nice Irish Catholic boy from Boston, was with a lost patrol in WWII Algeria, and was able to get aid & directions from a small mission of native Catholic nuns... the only language they had in common was Church Latin.)