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Indigenous civilizations are far older and more complex than history suggests

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Re: Indigenous civilizations are far older and more complex than history suggests

#31

Post by sixstringtheory »

dorfsmay wrote: post #17
joecool1029 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The great pyramid is rather simple as far as art and cultural complexity goes. That may be so, but it remains as a feat of project unmatched in their history, the one great wonder that survived. I am not sure how many would be able to name the pyramids that came after. There's a huge amount of precision involved and a huge amount of effort required of the culture to complete. Similarly you could argue that with spa…

The International Space Station gas happened since, which has been continuously lived in. That's an achievement compared to a short trip on the moon kicking a few rocks.

And we’re getting more efficient at launching vehicles to transit. We have the same boosters being reused!

Re: Indigenous civilizations are far older and more complex than history suggests

#32

Post by kingkawn »

tux1968 wrote: post #4

Aren't all civilizations far older and more complex than history can account for? We don't really know how the pyramids arrived, or a detailed history of England back very far -- who created Stonehenge? It's interesting that the migration out of Africa and over to the Americas happened so much longer ago than previously thought, but it doesn't change what happened when the European settlers arrived. The author seems…

In order to move forward from this cycle of history it is meaningful to look at how the spoils of the conquerors continue to accrue for their descendants in unequal measure. The history you are eager to dismiss as the past is well alive, history in name only.

Re: Indigenous civilizations are far older and more complex than history suggests

#33

Post by staplers »

tux1968 wrote: post #19
ZenPsycho wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The justification frequently used for western colonialism/conquest is the principle of “Terra Nullius”, in short, the native peoples with their primative technology are not fully utilising the land, and we’re doing them a favor by conquering them. it turns out after the fact that in many respects, particularly with regards to agriculture, land management, diplomacy, and some areas of engineering, the native people we…

For sure. But there are countless other examples of people being conquered too, all over the world, and not just by Europeans. There is no justification needed, other than that's what humans did back then. It was a much more primitive and brutal example of survival of the fittest. And as much as it offends our sensibilities now, it is the very path that leads us to where we find ourselves today. We can struggle to be…

  our ancestors lived in a very different and harsh reality
You are justifying colonialism through "the world sucks get over it". First Nations have been attacked and their land stolen within the LAST DECADE. The Tar Sands battle is a recent popular example.

You couldn't be more ignorant to the facts.

Re: Indigenous civilizations are far older and more complex than history suggests

#34

Post by eropple »

soperj wrote: post #28
cmurf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back then? Hawaii was made a state in 1959. There was still quite a lot of colonization related conflict happening in the 20th century.

The people of Hawaii actively campaigned for statehood in 1959. Not quite understanding the context of your argument here.

They did, yes. Have you ever looked into how they got there?

The Republic of Hawaii, founded at the very end of the 19th century led to annexation by the United States (one since admitted to and apologized for, as it happens) and it wasn't until the fifties that largely non-native plantation owners were sufficiently pushed back to have those little things like "democracy" actually mean much of anything.

Outside of this specific example, the Scramble for Africa is generally not considered to have ended until 1914, with the results of it and similar Middle Eastern colonial efforts not really shaking out until after the Second World War.

Re: Indigenous civilizations are far older and more complex than history suggests

#35

Post by eropple »

flukus wrote: post #26
ZenPsycho wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The justification frequently used for western colonialism/conquest is the principle of “Terra Nullius”, in short, the native peoples with their primative technology are not fully utilising the land, and we’re doing them a favor by conquering them. it turns out after the fact that in many respects, particularly with regards to agriculture, land management, diplomacy, and some areas of engineering, the native people we…

> The justification frequently used for western colonialism/conquest is the principle of “Terra Nullius”, in short, the native peoples with their primative technology are not fully utilising the land, and we’re doing them a favor by conquering them. That is debatable ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_nullius#History ), the term/concept may not have even existed during the land grabbing periods of colonialism.

Regardless, it's a common retroactive justification. The idea that the Americas were "empty" when Europeans arrived was taught to me in the late nineties. (Never was it stated why, and my teachers got very uncomfortable when I pointed it out.)

Re: Indigenous civilizations are far older and more complex than history suggests

#36

Post by redahs »

joecool1029 wrote: post #7

I was looking at some of Egypt's history. Kind of interesting the Old Kingdom figured out pyramids, built the biggest only around 100 years after the first, then it was all downhill from there. Makes me wonder if we hit a high point landing people on the moon, and everything's just going to go downhill for the next few thousand years.

If the thesis of Progress & Poverty is correct, then the cyclic nature of civilization is due primarily to the tendency of the labor cost of acquiring unimproved land for productive workers to increase faster than the rate at which wages can be accumulated to acquire it. If this is the case, then the decline of our present phase of civilization may have begun in the 1930s, when state governments in the United States begun replacing property taxes with sales taxes, as the share of total government revenues raised from property taxes has now fallen from 40-50% to less than 10%, and the share is even lower in other countries.

However while the Roman Republic relied primarily a 1-3% annual property tax on wealth to fund its early expansion from 509BC, it had abandoned public assessed domestic property taxes by 167BC at the latest, yet the the Roman Empire reached its height in 117AD. So the point in time at which a country eliminates domestic property taxes on landed wealth in order to maximize the private capture of rent for its political class is unlikely to represent the peak or maximum of the civilization, but rather an initial inflection point, in which case a peak of our current phase of civilization during the 1960s may have been possible, with the inflection point occurring earlier.

Re: Indigenous civilizations are far older and more complex than history suggests

#37

Post by tux1968 »

staplers wrote: post #33
tux1968 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. But there are countless other examples of people being conquered too, all over the world, and not just by Europeans. There is no justification needed, other than that's what humans did back then. It was a much more primitive and brutal example of survival of the fittest. And as much as it offends our sensibilities now, it is the very path that leads us to where we find ourselves today. We can struggle to be…

our ancestors lived in a very different and harsh reality You are justifying colonialism through "the world sucks get over it". First Nations have been attacked and their land stolen within the LAST DECADE. The Tar Sands battle is a recent popular example. You couldn't be more ignorant to the facts.

I admit to being ignorant of the details in the Tar Sands case, but I don't think that it's relevant to what I was trying to say really. If an injustice is being visited upon a Native population, i'm all for them prevailing in a fight to restore fairness.

But human history is what it is, regardless of our modern sensibilities and desire to do better moving forward. Out in the raw brutal nature that existed for most of human history, strong men conquered and weaker men perished, that's just the way it was. Nature was trying to kill us all, and everyone was trying to survive the best they could to pass their genes on. Even at the expense of their neighbors. That is the script for most of history, and we can't go back and change it. It is what has helped us get to this point today where we're talking to each other over incredible technologies and enjoying a much easier life than Kings of old. It's not nice, it's not picturesque, it's just the simple reality of it.

Re: Indigenous civilizations are far older and more complex than history suggests

#38

Post by dmix »

staplers wrote: post #33
tux1968 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. But there are countless other examples of people being conquered too, all over the world, and not just by Europeans. There is no justification needed, other than that's what humans did back then. It was a much more primitive and brutal example of survival of the fittest. And as much as it offends our sensibilities now, it is the very path that leads us to where we find ourselves today. We can struggle to be…

our ancestors lived in a very different and harsh reality You are justifying colonialism through "the world sucks get over it". First Nations have been attacked and their land stolen within the LAST DECADE. The Tar Sands battle is a recent popular example. You couldn't be more ignorant to the facts.

Debating the world as it was in 1492-1800s is hardly relevant to colonization in the 'modern world'.

Even the mindset of World War 1 where 70k French or German people would die in a single day vs even the 1960s with Vietnam war (where The ideological parties who are obsessed with viewing history through the lenses of these power dynamics as the only defining metric are inherently irrational and intentionally ignorant of all of the macro/micro-level realities of the lifestyles of all people at that times. The difference between a colonizer and a local war lord starts to look very thin once you take a high level view of history, factoring in the historical day-to-day realities of the era.

If you're going to talk about colonization, as it is used in modern political discourse, keep it in your political debates not historical ones.

Otherwise it took time and the invention of political and legal systems to constrain these sorts of power abuses. But to only judge those in history who held a particular imbalance in power is a ridiculous way to view history. And an ever worse ideological foundation on which to run a country (as we've seen with countless examples of failures in history where economic/social systems were built around power imbalances as the prime motivation over the actual realities and needs of people within a society).

Re: Indigenous civilizations are far older and more complex than history suggests

#39

Post by [deleted] »

soperj wrote: post #28
cmurf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back then? Hawaii was made a state in 1959. There was still quite a lot of colonization related conflict happening in the 20th century.

The people of Hawaii actively campaigned for statehood in 1959. Not quite understanding the context of your argument here.

[deleted]

Re: Indigenous civilizations are far older and more complex than history suggests

#40

Post by staplers »

tux1968 wrote: post #37
staplers wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

our ancestors lived in a very different and harsh reality You are justifying colonialism through "the world sucks get over it". First Nations have been attacked and their land stolen within the LAST DECADE. The Tar Sands battle is a recent popular example. You couldn't be more ignorant to the facts.

I admit to being ignorant of the details in the Tar Sands case, but I don't think that it's relevant to what I was trying to say really. If an injustice is being visited upon a Native population, i'm all for them prevailing in a fight to restore fairness. But human history is what it is, regardless of our modern sensibilities and desire to do better moving forward. Out in the raw brutal nature that existed for most o…

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