"The Roman Empire?"
Old Cat buried his head in the cupboard, sorting out the miscellaneous items. "The Roman Empire was a very typical centralized classical empire. Although its political stability was not as stable as that of ancient China, it was still the only huge country in history that almost ruled the entire Europe. At its peak, the Roman Empire's territory was large enough to include the Mediterranean Sea as an inland sea. After the fall of ancient Rome, until the disappearance of the earth, Europe was never unified again."
"The Western Roman Empire fell in the fifth century AD."
"Yes, in fact, Rome had been substantially divided in the fourth century. The Western Roman Empire fell at the hands of the Germans, Huns, and Goths during the barbarian invasion. That was the first large-scale ethnic migration in history."
Old Cat placed the bottles in the cupboard on the floor. "Since then, the glory of ancient Rome no longer existed, and Europe fell into a thousand-year war. Citizens became serfs, and the Church controlled people's thoughts. No one discussed philosophy and art anymore."
"Is this a retrogression?" Mai Dong asked.
"A spiral."
Old Cat paused. "Miss Mai Dong, history is a spiral. People sometimes go astray, but they won't go astray forever. In engineering, this is called negative feedback control."
"Wasn't the Middle Ages the Dark Ages?"
Tang Yue's voice sounded in the channel. "The Church was hostile to all those who opposed theology. The Inquisition declared them heretics, and then pushed them into the fire to be burned to death. Is that right?
I remember that Bruno and Copernicus were mentioned in my elementary school textbooks. "
"Then you should learn to look at problems beyond the elementary school textbooks."
"Anyway, the reputation of that group of swindlers is not very good."
Tang Yue muttered, "As a Chinese who studied materialism, I was born with the buff of criticizing religion."
"Your textbooks when you were in school gave you the impression that theology and science were hostile to each other. This view is very one-sided."
Old Cat explained, "Most of the time, the church is not hostile to science. On the contrary, many people in the church are proficient in mathematics and astronomy. The world's most famous and greatest physicist, Isaac Newton, was a theologian himself. Newton only spent twenty years studying mathematics, but he spent his whole life studying theology. He firmly believed in the existence of God."
"In that era, very few scholars could break away from religion because the schools they attended were all established by the church."
Old Cat continued, "Even in the Middle Ages, Europe was plagued by wars and plagues, and the education level of the common people was extremely low. Religious institutions objectively assumed the responsibility of spreading and continuing culture … although they would only teach you how many gods could dance on the tip of a needle."
"What's the use of teaching that?"
"In the Middle Ages and even in modern Europe, there was no such thing as using technology to develop a country."
Old Cat straightened up and said, "Philosophy and science are hobbies of the rich. Do you think mathematics and physics can be used in the potato field except for calculating the angle of the fountain in the garden for the king and predicting the range of cannonballs?"
"Ignorant Europeans." Tang Yue shook his head.
"The Asians of the same era were studying hard and taking the imperial examinations. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the empress dowager even played with horse-drawn trains. In terms of words, she was the earliest Marxist-Leninist in China," Old Cat said lightly. "How good could she be?"
Tang Yue dragged the solar panel out of the garage where the Mars Wanderer was charging.
The last time Old Cat drove the Mars Wanderer out to search for Chelomey, it accidentally fell into a pit and was seriously damaged. The entire front of the car was deformed, and all the glass was shattered. Now, the Mars Wanderer was similar to a convertible car. The front of the car was only left with a polygonal frame. The view was excellent, but air was leaking from all sides.
Every day, Mai Dong would discuss humanities and history with Old Cat. The human and cat would talk from Macedonia to ancient Rome to Carthage. Tang Yue found it difficult to interject. After all, he was terrible at history, so he could only clap from the side to liven things up.
With Old Cat around, it wasn't too difficult to roughly record history.
However, once the brush strokes went deep, there were many questions that even Old Cat couldn't answer. A large number of unsolved historical cases had yet to be solved. Old Cat wasn't a historian, so it could only use the results of its predecessors' research.
It was easy to stump Old Cat. Tang Yue often asked such questions.
"Was Zhu Yunwen burned to death?"
"What's the matter with the sound of the Candlelight Axe?"
"If the peasants didn't revolt, would the Manchus still be able to enter the Pass?"
Tomcat choked on its words.
Hundreds of thousands of words of manuscripts were converted into digital codes in Old Cat's hands before being broadcasted through the space station's antenna. The ability of numbers to carry information was far lower than text, so the broadcast took a long time.
As for the self-decoding system, it was a decoding method similar to a codebook, just like the Rosetta Stone. The person who received the message could use it to restore the code to the original text. When the message was broadcasted, the computer would incorporate the self-decoding system into the content of the text.
When designing the self-decoding system, Old Cat considered Chinese and English. Due to the large size of the Chinese character library, and the fact that the Chinese character structure was different and difficult to split, it was too difficult to achieve the free conversion of numbers and Chinese characters with a simple self-decoding system. Therefore, Old Cat used the English alphabet in the end.
In other words, intelligent life forms that received the signal could restore it to English.
After the disappearance of Earth, the last language that spread out was English.
However, the files on the hard drive on Mars were all in Chinese. Tang Yue and Mai Dong used Chinese characters to write the epitaph for human civilization.
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"Miss Mai Dong, can you spare some time in the next two days?"
At noon, Tang Yue and Old Cat were resting in Kunlun Station. Tang Yue was eating. As usual, it was compressed biscuits, sugar pickled tomatoes, and a glass of fresh water. Mai Dong was also eating. She also had a piece of bread.
"Hmm?
Spare some time?
How long will it take? "
"It will take at least four hours."
Old Cat replied, "We need you to go out of the cabin and check the upgraded heat-resistant tiles on the Eagle spacecraft."
Old Cat adopted Tang Yue's suggestion. The Eagle spacecraft was the only vehicle that could enter the atmosphere without disintegrating. In this desperate situation, it was the only hope. However, the lander must ensure that the heat-resistant tiles did not have any problems, so checking the upgraded ventral heat-resistant tiles on the lander was the first step.
Checking the heat-resistant tiles could not be done in the cabin. Mai Dong had to do the work outside the cabin.
Old Cat was really at his wit's end. He even dared to use a scrapped spacecraft.
"Check the Eagle spacecraft?" Mai Dong was taken aback. She slowly nodded. "Do the work outside the cabin?
Sure, I have time anytime. It just so happens that the space station's S1 solar panel's twisting mechanism has a small problem. It's not working very well, so we can solve it together. "
"There's a problem with the solar panel?" Tang Yue looked up with biscuit paste in his mouth. He was a little nervous.
"It's a very common glitch. The computer has done a self-check. It says that the sensor is broken. It just needs to be replaced."
Mai Dong was also nibbling on a biscuit. She took a bite of the compressed biscuit and sucked the water droplet floating in front of her into her mouth. "It's a normal circuit. There's no need to be nervous."
The Mars United Space Station had been operating for so many years. There were no major problems, but there were always minor problems. Usually, the astronauts would repair it and often go out of the cabin to change parts. It was also a daily task.
"Then go and rest later. Remember to conserve your energy."
Old Cat instructed. "We will begin the operation in twelve hours. I will give you the detailed operation steps when the time comes."
Mai Dong nodded.
"Alright, I understand."