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Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does LIDAR work underwater? FWIU in Grand Traverse Bay, Lake Michigan, there's a 9,000 year old stonehenge-like structure 40 feet underwater; that's 4000 thousand years older than Stonehenge and about 6000 years older than the Osireoin and the Pyramids. /? Michigan underwater stonehenge: https://www.google.com/search?q=michigan+underwater+stonehen... There's not even a name or a wikipedia page for the site? There are…

A lot of the pictures used in articles for this are pictures of something else (possible an old ship). Here's what it actually looks like: https://holleyarchaeology.com/index.php/the-truth-about-the-... Calling it Stonehenge-like is a real stretch.

That's a better source than what I found;

> The site in Grand Traverse Bay is best described as a long line of stones which is over a mile in length.

> [...] may be a prehistoric drive line for herding caribou

Also speculation that the Sage Wall in Montana is simply a geologic formation.

Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#122
post #107
post #87

I always thought large-scale farming like this only happened under big state systems. But it looks like these communities were able to build something pretty big without that kind of centralized power. It’s also kind of amazing that the fields stayed preserved for a thousand years. Makes me wonder if we’re still underestimating how advanced some of these early farming cultures were.

When foreign cultures were discovered by Europeans the default thinking was to assume they were savages without culture, complex society or technology. That has echoed throughout time and still affects our view of history today. The true savages were the Europeans that preferred to subjugate or kill any non-European population they encountered. It is only recently that TV & films from the US stopped portraying the st…

>the true savages were the Europeans...

Look I completely agree with your whole comment, especially the line above, but it has very little to do with the GP.

Their comment is about "big state systems", which are a totally different thing from culture, complex society, technology, or savagery.

Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#123
post #2

Tangentially related: I'm trying to make LiDAR data in Switzerland more accessible, see https://github.com/r-follador/delta-relief There's some interesting examples in the Readme.

Does LIDAR work underwater? FWIU in Grand Traverse Bay, Lake Michigan, there's a 9,000 year old stonehenge-like structure 40 feet underwater; that's 4000 thousand years older than Stonehenge and about 6000 years older than the Osireoin and the Pyramids. /? Michigan underwater stonehenge: https://www.google.com/search?q=michigan+underwater+stonehen... There's not even a name or a wikipedia page for the site? There are…

Bathymetric lidar exists, but it's a lot more common for there to be enough particulates in water to mess it up than for air.

Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#124
post #120

The article seems to assume that the same tribe lived in that place for a thousand years. The pre-Columbian histories I've seen had the tribes moving around, based on comparisons of DNA evidence.

Do you have a link to those histories? Everything I've seen is saying the Menominee were a settled people pre-Columbian. https://www.mpm.edu/index.php/content/wirp/ICW-153

It was a TV documentary. I'm sorry I don't recall the title.

There's also "Empire of the Summer Moon" about the migrations around the southern US.

Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you ask? I'm not familiar with any such theory. Krakatoa erupted in... 1883, which doesn't seem like a good match. And volcanic winters don't seem to last much more than 10 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter#Past_volcanic_... There is a theory that the Little Ice Age was precipitated by the reforestation of land in America as the natives died off from exposure to European diseases. And of cou…

I didn't realize that the original quote (from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44282822 ) was lifted nearly verbatim from Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age More from that same page: > Several causes have been proposed: cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, variations in Earth's orbit and axial tilt (orbital forcing), inherent variabilit…

> I didn't realize that the original quote (from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44282822) was lifted nearly verbatim from Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

I don't know what more I can do than saying "Wikipedia says this: _____ ['Little Ice Age']".

Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#126
post #107
post #87

I always thought large-scale farming like this only happened under big state systems. But it looks like these communities were able to build something pretty big without that kind of centralized power. It’s also kind of amazing that the fields stayed preserved for a thousand years. Makes me wonder if we’re still underestimating how advanced some of these early farming cultures were.

When foreign cultures were discovered by Europeans the default thinking was to assume they were savages without culture, complex society or technology. That has echoed throughout time and still affects our view of history today. The true savages were the Europeans that preferred to subjugate or kill any non-European population they encountered. It is only recently that TV & films from the US stopped portraying the st…

At the time when the fields in this article were being tilled, the Europeans were building castles, cathedrals, river spanning arched stone bridges, multi-masted sailing ships and trebuchets and massive siege engines using tools of iron and steel. People in middle east were already working with colored glass and people in China were already working with porcelain, gunpowder and early printing presses. A thousand years or more before that, the Greeks were already working with complex geared mechanisms and making things like the Antikythera mechanism and proto steam turbines. The people tilling these fields on the other hand were using relatively simple stone, bone and wooden tools, and hadn't even invented the wheel yet.

While I appreciate the point you're trying to make that native Americans weren't some kind of savages as they were all too frequently portrayed in the past, the notion that their level of technological or societal development was anywhere near that of Europe, the Middle East or China at the time does not reflect actual history. Relatively speaking, outside the empires of Meso-America most pre-contact American societies were substantially less complex that European societies, and from a purely technological perspective every single American society ever documented was vastly less technologically complex than European, Middle Eastern and East Asian societies. So from that lens its not unreasonable for the Europeans of the time to have perceived the native Americans as less socially and technologically advanced as they were, as that was simply the reality of world at the time.

Also, any historian with any knowledge of actual pre-contact North American societies can tell you they too were subjugating and killing any other populations they encountered just as much as the Europeans did when they arrived on the continent. The notion that native societies lived some kind of eco-friendly, conflict free lifestyle is just as egregious of whitewashing as any former settler narratives.

Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#127
post #107
post #87

I always thought large-scale farming like this only happened under big state systems. But it looks like these communities were able to build something pretty big without that kind of centralized power. It’s also kind of amazing that the fields stayed preserved for a thousand years. Makes me wonder if we’re still underestimating how advanced some of these early farming cultures were.

When foreign cultures were discovered by Europeans the default thinking was to assume they were savages without culture, complex society or technology. That has echoed throughout time and still affects our view of history today. The true savages were the Europeans that preferred to subjugate or kill any non-European population they encountered. It is only recently that TV & films from the US stopped portraying the st…

The native Americans of the pacific northwest practiced slavery and would murder them during potlatch ceremonies. When Europeans showed up in New Zealand the Maori were busy commenting genocide against the Moriori.

Let be serious here people are shitty.

Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#128
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link to those histories? Everything I've seen is saying the Menominee were a settled people pre-Columbian. https://www.mpm.edu/index.php/content/wirp/ICW-153

It was a TV documentary. I'm sorry I don't recall the title. There's also "Empire of the Summer Moon" about the migrations around the southern US.

Ah, found your issue. You are subscribed to the incorrect mainstream view that all native Americans nations were more or less exactly the same. You'd have as much success do this as you would learning about the Roman's by studying the tribal Germanic people.
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