VAGUELY MESOAMERICA — An ominous message carved into an obelisk in the temple-cum-catacomb-cum-aqueduct of an ancient indigenous city-state has been translated neatly into English as a jaunty rhyming verse, according to sources familiar with the dig.
“Nobody actually tells you how easy it is to resurrect a dead language,” commented proto-linguistics expert Ramon Serra when his team announced the findings. “Variable sentence structure, gendered language, gaps in meanings, that’s all fake. ‘Just translate the words, idiot!’ So we did. Turns out the temple priestesses weren’t afraid to slap ‘yea!’ and ‘oh!’ everywhere to hit syllable counts on this prophecy.”
“See this character here? Translates directly to ‘global warming,'” he continued. “This one here means ‘if.’ This big one here just means ‘the Devil,’ like, the one from the Bible. Couldn’t make it up if I tried.”
The full text of the world-ending proclamation is being withheld from the public, for what are surely sensible reasons, but Hard Drive has acquired brief excerpts through the coverage of local news sources.
“First line, ‘doom’ and ‘tomb’, that’s a classic; no notes there,” said Gabriela Siquier, an on-air reporter in a township near the historical site. “Then we get into, something something, ‘…skies, you will see; the end of mankind as you know it, it… be.’ Ay, güey, they stretched for that one.”
“Yadda yadda, ‘…sea level, boiling of homes; harken ye fools, as the eschaton comes.’ Wait, wait, ‘homes’ and ‘comes’? That’s some horseshit.”
Though some involved with the project are concerned as to what the message might mean for humanity, academic envoys at the dig site say this is a leap in their cultural research.
“Finally, proof that brow– er, ancient people possessed some level of true developed wisdom!” Ciaran Wickwire, a visiting anthropology scholar from a university in Wolverhampton, was quoted saying. “So insightful, so forward-thinking, that they knew English-speaking white people would inherit the earth and save themselves with this warning! Maybe they really did build this temple without help from the Greys. I’m ready to believe anything.”
At press time, attempts to extract the obelisk for further study have been temporarily halted after a local guide was killed by a poison-daubed arrow fired from the snakelike head of a wall relief.
