Archaeology

Monday, 5th of Sol, *1012 A.C.***

Had a feather touched the ground, it would have shattered the overbearing silence that permeated the room. In an attempt to thwart the awkward situation, but only adding to it, the mustached professor unnecessarily uttered, “Quiet down class, quiet down.”

Heedless, he continued, “I understand that, frankly, this is... disturbing. But I feel that we had better go over it in some detail in order to verify the accuracy. Curiously enough, the general structure of society seems identical to how we had postulated it- Celestia as the royal head of state, her nobles forming her administration, her Royal guard protecting the nation, and the citizenry as peaceable as could be imagined. Nothing like the world of today! Now here, this Rose seems to have a different opinion on the state of affairs than did Twilight Sparkle, but, let us lay our modern understanding of the past before us, in order for a proper comparison to be had.

Initially at this time period, around 0 A.C., we postulated that everything that could possibly be going well for ponies, was. There was relative peace throughout the land as well as the fact that art and technology were flourishing at a rapid pace. Twilight Sparkle had just recently emerged onto the scene, helping start the initial move towards a greater use of mechanical technology. What she realized was that magical energy could be freed up for uses other than powering basic things, such as lights and vehicles, by using natural energy sources (she claims to have come to this realization at seeing the fantastically extravagant Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000, whatever that might be). Then suddenly, in the midst of this golden era, this renaissance so-to-speak, the liege of Equestria, Princess Celestia, the sun goddess disappeared.”

As the professor lapsed into a retelling common history, the scratching of pegasi quills slowed to a halt.

“It seems that in the power vacuum that was left behind, Twilight Sparkle attempted to maintain the great Equestrian peace. Yet, without a great goddess-figure to rally around, and her only partially trained, all sorts of ponies challenged her through methods that hadn’t even been conceived of for ages! They published lies and slander, sent false messengers of peace with hard iron tucked into their sleeves, eventually instigated riots in order to loosen the popular support for Princess Celestia’s protegee. It became too much, and she fled from Canterlot to pursue her own ideas in seclusion.

Shortly after Twilight Sparkle abandoned that certainly precarious post, it appears that Equestria was attacked from the north, though by who is uncertain. There seems to have been a coalition of Griffons and Centaurs, though this is certainly unconfirmed. Whoever it was, though, did sufficient damage to the infrastructure and stability of pony lives and Equestria suffered a dark age the likes of which we could not imagine. Disease was rampant, and the average lifespan of ponies drastically reduced. As ponies started caring more about survival and less about culture, all significant technological advances seem to have been dropped, the continued expansion of literary works was halted to an immediate stop, and many many important books were destroyed during the fall of Canterlot. After hundreds of years it seems that the region eventually stabilized, ponies had a chance to regain their senses and started to recreate civilization.”

“Only recently, as we’ve rediscovered our passion for knowledge, including knowledge of the past, did we start searching for answers to the mysteries of our ancient legends. It was 100 years ago, I believe, when the Twilight Sparkle cache was discovered, sparking an entire renaissance with the ideas and theories postulated in her works. No other reliable sources have been discovered since then, until these documents from this Roseluck pony. So far it seems that they are filled more with raw emotion and less with verifiable data, though someone will surely go through and compare this with what we’ve inferred from Twilight’s documents.

In any case, let us continue.”