Archaeology

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

“What does she mean when she says, ‘this is the way of our machine?’ I’m sure ponies back then didn’t want to hurt others just as much as we don’t want to hurt others now. So what does Rose mean when she says we are violently expanding?”

The professor mulled this over, thinking hard at the emotional words that he and his class had just read. With an exhalation that blew his wispy mustache around, the classroom authority said, “It is my intuition that we shall find out more about this in the next few chapters of the journals, but what she might be referring to is our method of food production. She says, ‘we have stripped our land of all its health, taking from it everything that we claim as ours.’

So, classically speaking, it is a fairly well documented fact that ponies seemed to exhibit a different style of food production than those other races- though we see that some of them have adopted our way of life over the centuries. It was ponies who first became sedentary, planting enough crops to lend them food without needing to be nomadic. Thus it was ponies who first felled great amounts of forest, claimed huge swaths of land. Rose apparently thought that we would implode due to loss of resources, yet we are already have a ship traveling to a nearby habitable planet! I cannot think of anything beyond that, though, so maybe we should stop interrupting and find out, hmmm?”

A young earth pony waved her hoof furiously in the air, “But doesn’t this directly challenge what we were taught about the doctrine of Manifest Destiny? Haven’t we always held that this was the mentality behind the expansion of Equestria? It seems like Rose is saying that the fundamental design of our way of life was the cause for expansion, rather than some conscious mentality of ‘It’s fate that we should expand because of how much cooler we are.’”

This had indeed occurred to the professor, who was subconsciously trying to figure a way around his own mental biases, in order to justify that which he had been mired in as ‘truth’ for his whole life. Finally, he realized what he had to say in order to maintain the status quo.

“According to our understanding of the past, there was an idea that the as-of-yet unsettled parts of the world ought to be migrated to and settled by ponies, in other words claimed for Equestria. This is visible through such outposts as Appleoosa, whose orchards we still get apples from today. What was once the frontier of Equestria, practically uncharted territory is now one of our centers of production. Is that not a good enough demonstration of manifest destiny?”

The young student was not satisfied. Petulantly, she said, “You still haven’t made any mention of Rose’s theory about our food production, and what role it played in that. I was never saying that ponies don’t have a ‘we are best’ mentality. We can still see it today! I just feel like you’re disregarding important information."

The wizened professor gave a condescending huff, “Anything she may have said about that is probably unscientific in its very nature- this is an ancient person after all. I believe it fair to say that we didn’t subconsciously take new territory then and we still don’t, no matter how we produce food. I think you ought to stick with peer-reviewed studies, dear Chella, and not believe everything you read.”

Properly chastised, the class asked no more questions.