DISCOVERY UNDER THE ICE!

I apologize for turning Funambulus into a monthly instead of its intended status as a hebdomedary (not a type of camel).  There is no web access in the frozen wastes of Antarctica, where I have been conducting research on an ancient civilization that extended southwards from what is now Zhong Shan, the Chinese Antarctic Station, to Dumont d'Urville, the coastal research station controlled by France.  I am excited for two reasons.  The first is that Princess Diaries will be playing tonight on TBS; the second is that I was able to discover the rudiments of a large city underneath the ice.  There is no drill more powerful than the Ǖberblitz, capable of drilling at 2000/2500rpm with its Nickel Metal Hydride pointy thing.

Unfortunately, because I left it at home, I had to use my little ice-pick to get to the spire of what I perceived to be some kind of ziggurat.  After three horrible weeks involving auto-cannibalism (my left arm was tastier than my right one) and drinking my own frozen tears (I would have brought Snickers bars, but I'm allergic to nuts), I was able to hit the globular structure that served as the very apex of the Antarctic structure.

There were words on it and stuff!  (See?  I'm already talking like an academic or something).  A cuneiform text, akin to Akkadian and Sumerian, read:   

 

I was able to transliterate this as:

g-nu-ma e-sash la na-bu-ú mhá-ma-mu
enüma plish lä nabû stamämü

Which obviously means: "He who consumes the Waddling Bird [the penguin] shall have his wretched neck touch the evil side of the axe." 

Plish ("evil") is the literary form of the plural plushämü ("very bad things").   Na-bu-ú is an onomatopoeic word for the bird we call the "penguin" (itself a word originally applied to the auk).  After reviewing a series of Nigerian pamphlets on microfilm, I was also able to determine that this ancient civilization, tentatively named The Ice Shelf Culture, was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci in 1501, after he was blown off course from the Falkland Islands.  So Antarctica should actually be named America-2.

© Paul Morris 2004.