Indigenous civilizations are far older and more complex than history suggests • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by max76 » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

UweSchmidt wrote: post #59

max76 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What’s most going to be remembered of our culture in 5000 years? There is a good chance that computers will have an uninterrupted existence for the next 5000 years, and we’ll be remembered for creating the first network with 1billion+ users, similarly to how the Romans are remembered for their roads and aqueducts. This is a particularly exciting case because large amounts of data we generate could survive! In the c…

It has been suggested that since we have exhausted the easily accessible ressources on this planet, human civilization would have a hard time restarting from scratch. Either this society continues (and solves huge environmental challenges along the way), or we have a scifi scenario, where a group of humans on faraway planets forget about old Earth, or no one will be able to remember or rediscover us.

We could have pre-industrial civilizations that arise on Earth if we exhaust the natural resources. I imagine that we have enough scrap metal lying around to not prohibit post-disaster civilizations from working with metal.

It’s really a matter of how bad the ecological disaster is, I can imagine a point where it’s bad enough to cause a collapse of our current civilizations but not bad enough to prohibit smaller less technologically advanced civilizations.

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

#72

Post by devoply » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 6:15 PM UTC

TomMckenny wrote: post #24

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…

Also, somehow "Terra Nullius" only gets applied after the fact. I imagine violently chasing off the owner of a deer lease to convert it to more efficient use would not be smiled upon. Even though deer hunting is exactly what Native Americans were doing with the land originally. And building housing on someone else's golf-course or occupying and building on a long empty city lot you don't own are both unimaginably ill…

Fact is might makes right and then you make up bullshit to justify it. See human rights. It's not like any of this is over, it's just convenient to talk about stuff that we've already done than talk about the stuff that we're doing so as to seem as we've progressed and are so much better than we used to be.

Most of our culture and technology is not sustainable... The way primitive people were living would allow them to live on the planet until an asteroid came and wiped them out, which could be millions of years. The way we're living will probably see us go extinct in the next 10,000 years.

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

#73

Post by dmix » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #63

dmix wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

" vs even the 1960s with Vietnam war (where Kind of a US-centric view, as there were also some dead Vietnamese as well as civilian casualties as well. So if you take those numbers: WW1, 9.7 million dead soldiers, 10 million dead civilian and compare it to 1.3 million dead soldiers and 3-5 million civilians - then WW1 was actually much more civil, as the ratio of dead civillians vs. soldier was around 1:1 vs 2 or thre…

> But yes, also 60000 us boys died. The only real tragedy here.

I never said that. I never made any moral judgement about any entire war or country. Since you're clearly inventing your own strawman to argue with I won't get in your way. Other than to say I was making a very specific analogy to make a point. An analogy about the evolving tolerances of nation states towards evil... using two related historical examples (keyword: related). No where did I say that was the "only real tragedy" of any war or time period, nor make any grand statements about the Vietnam war in general.

I know 'progressives' think every phrase and paragraph has to be prefaced with a 100x conditionals as to not offend every party and cover all bases. I'm also aware people feel the need in a self-interested way to add in these conditionals - as to not be misconstrued by social media outrage culture - who are more than happy to take your words out of context. But I'd rather not go down that road in life. It's anti-intellectual and anti-rational.

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

#74

Post by dmix » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

Yetanfou wrote: post #69

ZenPsycho wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the aztecs had an empire, a civilization, with pyramids, systems of agriculture, public schools, museums full of massive detailed gold statues, and organised sport. they invented basketball and chocolate. there were many kther advanced civilizations that we will only ever know the tiniest amount of, because they all died of smallpox. the only groups to survive were the nomads, cherokee, lakota, apache, etc. because t…

You forgot the bit which told of how the Aztecs [1] became to be the power they were back in the day: by a combination of military conquest and, to a lesser extent, trade. Before the Aztecs became the power they were there were the Toltecs, another militaristic culture which lost steam and got overrun by Chichimec tribes. It was from those tribes that the Aztecs rose, seemingly out of a group of a few thousand Chichi…

I think he's saying we should have let the Aztecs continue sacrificing humans to their gods and viciously attacking the weaker tribes in the north and south of Tenochtitlan... because they were there first.

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

#75

Post by dragontamer » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

devoply wrote: post #72

TomMckenny wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, somehow "Terra Nullius" only gets applied after the fact. I imagine violently chasing off the owner of a deer lease to convert it to more efficient use would not be smiled upon. Even though deer hunting is exactly what Native Americans were doing with the land originally. And building housing on someone else's golf-course or occupying and building on a long empty city lot you don't own are both unimaginably ill…

Fact is might makes right and then you make up bullshit to justify it. See human rights. It's not like any of this is over, it's just convenient to talk about stuff that we've already done than talk about the stuff that we're doing so as to seem as we've progressed and are so much better than we used to be. Most of our culture and technology is not sustainable... The way primitive people were living would allow them…

The Myth of the noble savage is also propagated by our culture. Its just that, a myth.

If you look at truly historical documents, such as Lewis and Clark's expedition, you'd learn that Native Americans killed Buffalo to an incredible degree.

Read May 29, 1805: https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.jrn.1805-05-29

> [T]oday we passed on the Stard. side the remains of a vast many mangled carcases of Buffalow which had been driven over a precipice of 120 feet by the Indians and perished; the water appeared to have washed away a part of this immence pile of slaughter and still their remained the fragments of at least a hundred carcases they created a most horrid stench

The natives would slaughter the ENTIRE HERD at a time, in this case by scaring them off a 120-foot cliff. The natives wouldn't eat all of them, it was more important to kill all the buffalo so that no survivor could teach their friends how to avoid the kill move.

The journal entry above describes how the natives managed to trick entire herds into jumping over a cliff. It involved dressing up in buffalo skins, and trying to start the stampede in the direction of the cliff.

> The way primitive people were living would allow them to live on the planet until an asteroid came and wiped them out, which could be millions of years.

On the contrary. We at least take the bad parts of bulls / cows and turn it into hamburgers and/or spam. The natives would slaughter many Bison and then leave them to rot in the river.

----------

In any case, the ills of our society are certainly great. But don't assume that the natives were better than us just because they were more primitive. In many ways, their ways were savage and wasteful.

It requires a keen eye and a careful understanding of history to fully make a judgement upon a society, especially a society which has been basically wiped out of the modern era.

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

#76

Post by devoply » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #75

devoply wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fact is might makes right and then you make up bullshit to justify it. See human rights. It's not like any of this is over, it's just convenient to talk about stuff that we've already done than talk about the stuff that we're doing so as to seem as we've progressed and are so much better than we used to be. Most of our culture and technology is not sustainable... The way primitive people were living would allow them…

The Myth of the noble savage is also propagated by our culture. Its just that, a myth. If you look at truly historical documents, such as Lewis and Clark's expedition, you'd learn that Native Americans killed Buffalo to an incredible degree. Read May 29, 1805: https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.jrn.1805-05-29 > [T]oday we passed on the Stard. side the remains of a vast many mangled carcases of Buffalow whi…

> If you look at truly historical documents, such as Lewis and Clark's expedition, you'd learn that Native Americans killed Buffalo to an incredible degree.

And the Europeans built railroads and paid people to shoot them dead from trains specifically to starve natives. They pretty much wiped them out.

> The natives would slaughter the ENTIRE HERD at a time, in this case by scaring them off a 120-foot cliff. The natives wouldn't eat all of them, it was more important to kill all the buffalo so that no survivor could teach their friends how to avoid the kill move.

> The journal entry above describes how the natives managed to trick entire herds into jumping over a cliff. It involved dressing up in buffalo skins, and trying to start the stampede in the direction of the cliff.

And despite all of this there were still tons of buffalo around.

> In any case, the ills of our society are certainly great. But don't assume that the natives were better than us just because they were more primitive. In many ways, their ways were savage and wasteful.

I am not saying they were better than us, I am simply saying their way of doing things was having little impact on the planet whereas in our way of doing things is teraforming the planet. All the top soil is being depleted and we don't actually know how to replace all the stuff we're depleting we just take it as granted. We are sustaining 300 million people while the natives were sustaining maybe a million. Litany of things which are different and not conducive to long term survival.

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

#77

Post by thanksDr » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 7:22 PM UTC

DiabloD3 wrote: post #16

garmaine wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't really know how the pyramids arrived, or a detailed history of England back very far -- who created Stonehenge? We actually know answers to both of those questions fairly well now. Archeology has advanced, and what questions remain are mostly a matter of details.

It doesn't seem likely Khufu had actually built the pyramids, but modified them into his own vision. We still don't know what the pyramids were originally designed for, but it seems unlikely the previous owner had intended it to be a tomb.

We have some clues that weren't destroyed - The pulse pump chamber, the waveguides. With enough advanced study, it may be possible to reconstruct a working model.

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

#78

Post by mirimir » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #66

mirimir wrote: post #53

OK, so indigenous civilizations in the Americas go back at least 20-30 kyr before European invasion. And it seems that they had more or less reached equilibrium with their environment. Sure, they used fire to modify the environment. In the Midwest, for example, they pushed the prairie-forest boundary several hundred miles north. And in the East, they burned to keep down forest undergrowth. And sure, mammoths disappea…

Why do you find the lack of domesticatable animals an unsatisfactory explanation? You don't need an oxcart without an ox.

That is a good point. But people can also pull carts, and often have. And there were wolves, from which Europeans bred dogs. Maybe deer and buffalo aren't amenable to domestication. But I don't recall Diamond's arguments and evidence about that.

And what about iron weapons? I presume that there was meteoric iron lying about, as in Europe. And glass. Why didn't they independently discover glass?

I suspect that there was something generally about indigenous American culture that favored peaceful coexistence. Notwithstanding some ritual warfare, of course. But they just didn't seem as driven as Old World cultures were.

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

#79

Post by ZenPsycho » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 8:47 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #74

Yetanfou wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the bit which told of how the Aztecs [1] became to be the power they were back in the day: by a combination of military conquest and, to a lesser extent, trade. Before the Aztecs became the power they were there were the Toltecs, another militaristic culture which lost steam and got overrun by Chichimec tribes. It was from those tribes that the Aztecs rose, seemingly out of a group of a few thousand Chichi…

I think he's saying we should have let the Aztecs continue sacrificing humans to their gods and viciously attacking the weaker tribes in the north and south of Tenochtitlan... because they were there first.

no, my point was that the justification for conquering them “they were living like neolithic people” is nonsense.

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

#80

Post by saalweachter » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #78

saalweachter wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you find the lack of domesticatable animals an unsatisfactory explanation? You don't need an oxcart without an ox.

That is a good point. But people can also pull carts, and often have. And there were wolves, from which Europeans bred dogs. Maybe deer and buffalo aren't amenable to domestication. But I don't recall Diamond's arguments and evidence about that. And what about iron weapons? I presume that there was meteoric iron lying about, as in Europe. And glass. Why didn't they independently discover glass? I suspect that there w…

You might also be interested in another pop-history book, _Paper_. What I'd call its central thesis is that society changes technology, rather than technology changing society. It explores this thesis through the history of the adoption of paper, trying to substantiate the claim that paper was available for centuries before it was adopted by civilizations, and it was only adopted after those civilizations developed a pressing need for massive amounts of cheap, high-quality writing material -- prior to that, people persisted in using more expensive, difficult to produce parchment despite having the option of cheaper paper.

Another thing to consider is any technology you might mention, like glass and iron, are relatively recent as developed technologies, about 2-3000 years old, with some older precursors. Moreover, they were developed and spread over the course of hundreds or a thousand or more years. Different parts of the Eurasia entered the Iron Age ~3000 years ago, while other parts -- parts connected by trade and separated by a few hundred miles -- didn't enter the Iron Age until ~2000 years ago.

So the other question is, to what extent is it meaningful that the Americas, which did not have the benefit of Eurasian trade, had not independently entered the Iron Age ~500 years ago? Is that a meaningful delay that needs to be explained, or is it just the variation that should be expected to occur by the accumulation of chance factors?

Re: domestication, there were domesticated dogs in the pre-Columbian Americas, but it was not an independent domestication. Deer and buffalo are not regarded as domesticatable; there were llamas and alpacas as large domesticated animals, but their range was limited and mountainous.