Drew

Hope you don't object to an interjection? How do you apply this logic to many sports where handicap systems are in place in order to compensate for differences in expenditure/weight/experience/age etc?

It's all about shared experience is it not?
We could understand a lion... The experience and behaviors of lions are studied in depth. His "words" would match our existing knowledge and build upon it. He may have 48 different names for Antelope meat and we, only one... But we'd soon learn. Just as long as his tummy isn't rumbling whilst we are interviewing him!

A jellyfish is a different matter altogether.

Topics explored in the film Arrival. Worth a watch

It will remain so as it is supported by the West... As long as oil is required from the middle east. When the geopolitical focus on energy security has moved elsewhere all bets will suddenly be off. The tinderbox that is surpressed and simultaneously inflamed by Israels power (and support from the West) will explode into ethnic and religious violence. Quite where that ends up is a frightening, and nuclear tipped, question.

Good points. I would say one cannot or should not cast history as a permenant and unchanging construct. The events are fixed... But the interpretation of them is not. It is, and should be, fluid and developing as evidence and scholarship allow.
Education and understanding is the key... History should not be "written by the victor" in perpetuity.