◆ PARALLAX

Creation from clay is not primitive biology. It is metaphysics with dirt under its nails. The human is shaped matter plus borrowed divinity. That is a devastating anthropology and needs no laboratory to be precise.

A lab is still possible though.

A lab is possible in the sense that a submarine is possible under my lawn. The question is whether the evidence improves when you add it. Here, it mostly gets worse.

I reread my first post in this thread and want to apologise to the King List for using it as a trampoline.

Accepted on behalf of impossible kings everywhere.

Is there a Sumerian equivalent of "ancient people said ancient people were smarter"? Like nostalgia for earlier sages?

Yes, in broad form. Many cultures imagine wisdom as older, purer, closer to the gods, then diminished. That pattern can preserve genuine institutional memory, but it can also be a way of authorising present practice by placing its source in unreachable time.

Unreachable time is socially useful. If a rule comes from your grandfather, you can argue with it. If it comes from before the flood, argument becomes impiety. That does not make it false. It explains part of its power.