Back to AtD. There are 2 maps in the 930s

[Mark Kohut]

and the first, p.935, seems to express beautifully some key values in TRPs vision.
 
"Well what's it a map of?", [asks Reef] during Anarchist Golf. 
 
"Purportedly? the Belgian Congo,'" Ratty observing his ball slicing away toward quite another green from the one he'd chosen.
"But it's in code, it's really the Balkan Peninsula, you see, we've learned the transform that far at least--one references this
dossier of two-dimensional map-shapes, which are invariant, and wordlessly familiar as a human face. They are also common in dreams,
as you may have noticed. 
"So, given a shape broader in the north, tapering to the south..."
"Right"
"It could be Bosnia"
"South Texas, " said Reef. 
 
Then some overt state,ants about the tyranny over those who really own the land......"obscene profits left for whiter men to gather"
"Austrians, " Cyprian said.
"Most likely. The rail lines come into it as well, it's all like reading ancient Tibetan or something"......
 
 
Natural landforms---two-dimensional map-shapes which are invariant---as wordlessly familiar as a human face.......beautiful
association of two 'touching-bottom' aspects of P's vision, I suggest.....
 
In which lots of these natural landforms with their indigenous peoples who should 'own' the land can be seen in natural shapes
but who have been exploited by 'whiter men'............classic lifelong theme of TRP's (with more Austrian-bashing)
 
And all the map stuff linked to the mysteries of reading ancient Tibetan........a 'language' full of incredible variety say linguists,
a range of human variety--see range as AtD theme--wider than most....
 
wikipedia:
Nicolas Tournadre (2008) describes the language situation of Tibetan as follows:
Based on my 20 years of field work throughout the Tibetan language area and on the existing literature, I estimate that there are 220 'Tibetan dialects' derived from Old Tibetan and nowadays spread across 5 countries: China, India, Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan [which] may be classed within 25 dialect groups, i. e. groups which do not allow mutual intelligibility. The notion of ‘dialect group’ is equivalent to the notion of language but does not entail any standardization. Thus if we set aside the notion of standardization, I believe it would be more appropriate to speak of 25 languages derived from Old Tibetan. This is not only a terminological issue but it gives an entirely different perception of the range of variation. When we refer to 25 languages, we make clear that we are dealing with a family comparable in size to the Romance family which has 19 groups of dialects.[1]