The Atomic Priesthood and Messages From the Dead | Ola Wikander | Escaped Sapiens #45

On this episode of the podcast I speak with Ola Wikander about the field of “Nuclear Semiotics”, the scholarly discussion concerning communicating information about nuclear waste disposal into the far future. Ola is a Ugaritologist, Hebraist, Semitist, author, and Senior Lecturer at Lund University. He specializes in ancient languages and religions of the near east, and in particular the texts of Ugarit, which was a city state destroyed c. 1185 BC.

 

Assuming we work out a secure way of dealing with our nuclear waste, how do we let our descendants 10,000 years into the future know that that is what we have done, bearing in mind that the oldest written text is only around 5,000 years old. In 10,000 years our descendants will likely live in an entirely different symbolic universe. Borders (if borders still exist) will have shifted, our political systems will be entirely new, and none of the languages spoken today will be recognizable. Furthermore, even if we can make our message understandable, there is no guarantee that our descendants will listen or care. Museums all over the world are filled with deceased kings warning people not to move their bodies.

 

The discussion begins with the history, texts, religion, and destruction of Ugarit, as well as the links that Ugarit had to the early texts and religion of the israelites. It ends with nuclear waste, and the difficulties of transmitting information into the distant future. We cover some of the more unique suggested solutions to the problem, including `Atomic Priesthood', proposed by linguist Thomas Sebeok, a semi-religious council, responsible for passing on knowledge down the generations through artificially created ritual-and-legend.

 

Note: At around 13:00 minutes into the video we discuss techniques for learning new languages. Despite what was said in the video, there have been new developments: lately, an online lesson series teaching Ugaritic by immersion has actually been started by Benjamin Kantor - see here: https://biblicalhebrew.com/tv-show/immersion-ugaritic/

 

►Watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/WvCmG0w8vko

 

►For more information about Ola's research: https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/ola-wikander

 

►Follow Ola on Twitter: @OlaWikander These conversations are supported by the Andrea von Braun foundation (http://www.avbstiftung.de/), as an exploration of the rich, exciting, connected, scientifically literate, and (most importantly) sustainable future of humanity. The views expressed in these episodes are my own and those of my guests.

Many thanks to Bill Edwards for suggestion the topic of this interview.