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Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

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Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#251

Post by culi »

mkrazzledazzle wrote: post #250

So what? This news reads to the rest of the world as.. Europeans squabbling between each other as to who amongst them first visited a continent they'd previously not known about, already brimming with other populations of humans. End of story. It's 2021 folks, no one cares about eurocentric land grab claims.

It truly is bizarre. The amount of effort and research into this very difficult to answer, and ultimately not all that useful, question is insane. Even the anthropologists arguing about the Polynesian sailors (~1200AD), the Chinese boats(~1421AD), or even the African sailors (~400AD). The overall point is somewhat useful. We know there's clearly been points of contact between all sorts of people from Afroeurasia and the Americas. But this inane squabbling over who was technically first is honestly kinda cringey

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#252

Post by bigyikes »

mkrazzledazzle wrote: post #250

So what? This news reads to the rest of the world as.. Europeans squabbling between each other as to who amongst them first visited a continent they'd previously not known about, already brimming with other populations of humans. End of story. It's 2021 folks, no one cares about eurocentric land grab claims.

Couldn’t you say that about any piece of history you’re not interested in? This comment is needlessly dismissive.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#253

Post by BurningFrog »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #136
BurningFrog wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting! Of course, if the native population died off around them, the Vikings would probably have expanded their settlements and perhaps ruled North America instead.

I don't think it works like that. There seems to be a need for a minimum primary settler population and a decent amount of native assistance- it's fairly easy to build a new town 10 miles from your last but I am not aware of any long distance unsupported settlers. So if the natives around the Mayflower had all died, so would the Founding Fathers. If the Norse diseases had killed off the locals they might not have mad…

This is very far from my expertise, but surely you can also live off the land?

Hunting and fishing shouldn't be very different in Newfoundland compared to Norway/Iceland. Bring a few chickens along, and you have another food source.

I assume/guess the vikings were better at this stuff than the Mayflower crowd.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#254

Post by culi »

jcranmer wrote: post #183
barbacoa wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population decline of the Mayans happened around the same time. This decline was steep enough to be called a collapse. There has been much discussion as to the cause.

Yeah, no. The Classic Maya collapse dates to around 900, which is before Cahokia even gets going.

This. I don't know why people think of the Mayan empire or Cahokia as fundamentally different from the numerous "failed states" of the Mediterranean. I use quotes because there's increasing consensus that it's not so much a matter of failure as a matter of political revolution amongst the enslaved class forced to work in agriculture for the ruling class

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#255

Post by jcranmer »

seph-reed wrote: post #210
VHRanger wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw that's based on "Guns, Germs and Steel" which is not very respected as an academic work

So, I just went down a rabbit hole of criticisms on Guns, Germs, and Steel... it's largely coming from the far left and far right. Very few moderates. The far left says it's a cop out on racism, blaming white evil on natural conditions. The far right says that it's too PC, that plenty of other places had the right conditions and gives no credit to culture or innovation. So both the far left and far right want to take…

You're not looking at any of the criticisms I've seen, then. Here's a brief summary, off the top of my head:

* Jared Diamond posits an explanation of megafauna extinction in North America that's heavily predicated on the Clovis-first hypothesis and the overextinction hypothesis. The former hypothesis is very thoroughly discredited, and the latter is also generally disfavored, especially in the it's-the-primary-cause way that Jared Diamond uses it. (Specifically, it should be noted that the megafauna extinction in North America also coincides pretty closely with the Younger Dryas, whose climatic effects were most pronounced in North America).

* The primary north-south/east-west transmission hypothesis doesn't actually hold that well up to evidence. The two things I'd note are a) local topography has a major effect on climate that's not accounted for, and b) if you look at the transmission of cereal crops, there's very little transmission between the Mediterranean/Mesopotamian basin and China basin but universal spread of maize along the vertical axis of the Americas--the complete opposite of what the theory predicts.

* I don't have a link handy, but I've seen someone more versed in the history of infectious diseases point out that the killer diseases that Diamond identifies don't appear to have actually become epidemic in the manner that Diamond asserts.

* Diamond also places way too heavy on emphasis on the unreliable accounts of the conquistadors in explaining how the Spanish conquests happened.

In short, the main problem with Guns, Germs, and Steel is that... it gets the facts wrong. And people have brought these complaints to Diamond previously, so it's not like he's aware that there are facts which destroy his thesis, and Diamond's response is to double-down on the thesis without trying to explain why the countervailing facts might be incorrect interpretations or whatnot, or providing other nuggets of insight to bolster his thesis, just continually reassert that he's right.

Try reading Charles Mann's 1491. It goes into more well-researched explanations of pre-Columbian cultures that would help you understand why Diamond's thesis is wrong.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#256

Post by seph-reed »

VHRanger wrote: post #244
seph-reed wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I just went down a rabbit hole of criticisms on Guns, Germs, and Steel... it's largely coming from the far left and far right. Very few moderates. The far left says it's a cop out on racism, blaming white evil on natural conditions. The far right says that it's too PC, that plenty of other places had the right conditions and gives no credit to culture or innovation. So both the far left and far right want to take…

Uh, go to a place like r/badhistory where they actually cite sources for their problems with it for a start Actual academics have problems with it

I went down another rabbit hole on r/badhistory.

There's definitely plenty of holes in the theories of GG&S, if that's what you mean by "academics have problems with it" === "it is not a perfect theory."

But overall, it seems most of the points hold more than enough water to be worth merit. None of them perfect, but vastly better than throwing the whole thing out.

-----

Also, holy crap I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here, but the first few threads I went into were... blatantly far left (as Reddit tends to be). Seriously though: spiraling into tangents of communism, your classic woke/sassy "dunk" lingo, clearly had some external bias bone to pick. I'm not sure r/badhistory is a community worth considering the acme of academia, only based off my short interactions with it. But maybe the worst just came up first?

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#257

Post by seph-reed »

jcranmer wrote: post #255
seph-reed wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I just went down a rabbit hole of criticisms on Guns, Germs, and Steel... it's largely coming from the far left and far right. Very few moderates. The far left says it's a cop out on racism, blaming white evil on natural conditions. The far right says that it's too PC, that plenty of other places had the right conditions and gives no credit to culture or innovation. So both the far left and far right want to take…

You're not looking at any of the criticisms I've seen, then. Here's a brief summary, off the top of my head: * Jared Diamond posits an explanation of megafauna extinction in North America that's heavily predicated on the Clovis-first hypothesis and the overextinction hypothesis. The former hypothesis is very thoroughly discredited, and the latter is also generally disfavored, especially in the it's-the-primary-cause…

Most of these points don't seem central to Diamonds thesis as I interpreted it.

They do negate some of the spurious theories, but the central theory (IMO) is that there's a whole lot of luck involved in global domination, and that luck is not evenly spread.

The one about germs being less of a killer is definitely very interesting though. That's totally central, though -- if not germs doing the killing -- it'd just fall back onto guns. If you happen to dig up the link, I'd love to read through it.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#258

Post by jcranmer »

WalterBright wrote: post #236
queuebert wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parallel evolution of two strains of smallpox might have meant still no immunity to the Spanish version several centuries later. And the diseases were only a small factor in the outcome of the colonization. Guns being a much larger factor, for example.

> And the diseases were only a small factor in the outcome of the colonization. Guns being a much larger factor, for example. I'm not so sure about that. Writing gave a huge advantage to the Western forces. By that I mean military men had access to a couple thousand years of military tactics books. Having advanced weapons is one thing, knowing strategy and tactics is quite another. For example, there are battles wher…

> Writing gave a huge advantage to the Western forces. By that I mean military men had access to a couple thousand years of military tactics books. Having advanced weapons is one thing, knowing strategy and tactics is quite another.

If memory serves me correctly, military tactics didn't really become a genre until the late 16th century, after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires. And during the early 16th century, it's quite likely that most of the soldiers (including the commanders!) would have been illiterate and thus not really able to read any extant military tactics books, especially whatever survived of Greek or Roman military texts.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#259

Post by s1artibartfast »

BurningFrog wrote: post #253
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it works like that. There seems to be a need for a minimum primary settler population and a decent amount of native assistance- it's fairly easy to build a new town 10 miles from your last but I am not aware of any long distance unsupported settlers. So if the natives around the Mayflower had all died, so would the Founding Fathers. If the Norse diseases had killed off the locals they might not have mad…

This is very far from my expertise, but surely you can also live off the land? Hunting and fishing shouldn't be very different in Newfoundland compared to Norway/Iceland. Bring a few chickens along, and you have another food source. I assume/guess the vikings were better at this stuff than the Mayflower crowd.

Simply put, living off the land is HARD, even with an established settlement and some trade, mass starvation is a pretty likely outcome.

Reality is more complex and challenging than Farmville or AnimalCrossing.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#260

Post by VHRanger »

seph-reed wrote: post #256
VHRanger wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, go to a place like r/badhistory where they actually cite sources for their problems with it for a start Actual academics have problems with it

I went down another rabbit hole on r/badhistory. There's definitely plenty of holes in the theories of GG&S, if that's what you mean by "academics have problems with it" === "it is not a perfect theory." But overall, it seems most of the points hold more than enough water to be worth merit. None of them perfect, but vastly better than throwing the whole thing out. ----- Also, holy crap I'm giving you the benefit of t…

IDK, I'm generally on r/badeconomics which is the best one of the badX gang, but as far as I saw, badhistory was very informal but generally fine?

Like, sure there's probably a bias to the left but it's not the hellhole of r/badphilosophy for instance there. They won't advocate for nonsense stuff,just use the terminology from social sciences

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