- Correct me if I'm misunderstanding this, but I don't think "dating from the late bronze age to the mid-twelfth century BCE" makes sense, because the late Bronze Age was around 1000 BCE. Do you mean "mid-12th century BCE to late Bronze Age"?
So, The late bronze age would have been c. 1500 BC. while the Bronze Age Collapse happened sometime during the 1100s BC. In the middle east that transition to iron weaponry is believed to have occurred sometime around the late 1200s BC. So, my chronology works unless Wikipedia (whom i got my chronology from) is wrong.
- There has to be some term more clinical than "international language". Lingua Franca, maybe.
While its totally subjective, i actually considered that, but decided that Lingua Franca would be less clinical, but i will consider changing this.
- culturally consistent with Arabian nomadic tribes (Bedouins? Not sure who this refers to), influenced by civilizations in the greater Levant (which ones? How?) Needs to be more fleshed out. I get that this refers to a predecessor to the foundation, but you're telling me it's an entire civilization. That should be given more attention.
Honestly, the focus of the article isn't their culture, and I would likely spend too much time elaborating on something that isnt central to the plot if i did that. However, that being said, my intention was to not leave people in the dark as far as this groups culture went, after all it becomes hard to imagine people without associating them with some culture. As the Leader says in the final document, he basically approached some Arabian tribesmen living near the Sumerian frontier and (for vague reasons) they accepted his proposition to assimilate elements of their culture
Now, i was going on my historical knowledge when i wrote this, and iirc we don't really know what the northern Arabian nomads called themselves, but they had lots of shared cultural elements. Perhaps i could say that they were culturally consistent with Semites, but as far as i know that was only one group of this larger culture.
What does it even mean for something to have an imaginary number for an atomic number? That's nonsensical.
Which is why its anomalous. It doesn't make sense, that's the anomaly.
And why does it undergo a nuclear explosion when hit with "sufficient kinetic force"? Why is that not defined, if it's important enough to include?
Because its not necessary to the article itself. I concede that I only added it for fun, not because I thought it would improve that article.
That said, you ignore the fact that, in-universe the guy reading the 4k proposal has no reason to know what "sufficient kinetic force" means, all he needs to know to understand the skip is that, clearly they knew that they could hit the material really hard, and have it explode.
- General clinical tone (example; "amazingly" is probably not good phrasing, "we dubbed" should be something like "informally referred to as", etc.) Is real bad. Lots of informal language that reads more like dialogue than an official report. And the use of the first person is jarring.
Perhaps I didn't make it clear enough that this isn't an official report as much as it was the initial reaction of an archaeologist. So I will give you this one, and I will revise the article to make this clear. Also, in line with my previous statement, the use of first person was intentional.
But yes, the fact that it was essentially some dudes reaction to the info collected after a series of excavations is mean to explain his tone here.
- minor, but nuclear weapons? Weaponized lazers? Why? Why on Earth? What does that contribute to the narrative?
I will have to invoke the rule of cool here, but i do believe I have a valid reason for doing this. Its meant to show how their Foundation-esque attempts at studying an analyzing anomalies, as later stated in "Purpose" allowed them to not only use technological anomalies that were well beyond their own capabilities, but also that they were frequently faced with high-tech anomalies.
It also is meant to show the sheer variety of destructive things that escaped their containment during the bronze age collapse
Mechanical problems aside, the concept is underwhelming. This foundation predecessor isn't really given any depth, all the info in the article is just generic mission statement stuff that closely parallels the Foundation proper. It's not compelling to read another rehashing of the same paragraph-length explanation about "dying in darkness so you can live in the light". -1
I don't think i can do anything to convince you that the predecessor has depth (although, no doubt, it could be better developed had i added more supplementary information/documents, although I don't believe that I am talented enough to make the article NOT drag on after a certain point.)
The idea however was to show how spiritually close the modern Foundation is to the Keepers, so yes i intentionally paralleled them heavily.
As for you last statement, I don't think that my last document was a rehash of "dying in darkness so you can live in the light" (cause I honestly think its cringe and melodramatic). It has more or less The Leader lamenting his own actions, before resolving to continue his mission in spite of the likelihood that he will fail again. Not some long-winded explanation about the sacrifices that people make for the Foundation, which I don't address here.
