Posts
As we discussed folklore, legends and mythology in the Wednesday Men's Bible Study Group 7:15BC, a memory popped into my mind about a High School reading assignment. I described a futuristic story about a discovery of a newspaper fragment in a city dump (sort of like the Dead Sea Scrolls) with the associated misconceived interpretation of the history the artifact partially revealed.
How ironic how my own memory can distort the actual story that I had read. History is full of misinterpretations by the present artifact found or memory passed on.
Upon extensive searching the internet, I discovered (and then remembered) the actual short story I was assigned to read. It was a 1956 reprint of a Harpers Magazine article "Digging the Weans" by Robert Nathan. That article and others was compiled into a book titled "The Weans".
An Archaeological Satire: Who were these Weans, whose eastern coast was guarded by a ferocious giantess, who worshipped (among others) a root deity and danced when the spirit came down, and whose final destruction and disappearance is shrouded in mystery?
"I have called these people the Weans, because certain archaeological findings incline us to the belief that they called their land the We, or the Us; actually, in the southern part of the continent, the word Weuns (or Weans) does appear, as wen as the glyph for \Vealls, and the word Theyuns."
In the search for Truth - digging deep may not be the only answer.
