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There are a lot of first hand accounts from the first Spaniards in the New World. I've read them and they are fascinating. They also provide a direct look at

There are a lot of first hand accounts from the first Spaniards in the New World. I've read them and they are fascinating. They also provide a direct look at the peoples they encountered. Cabeza de Vaca provided a very interesting account. Marooned, he wandered the New World alone for many years. He often found groups of people living in incredible squalor and constant warfare-- barely able to feed themselves. He ended up surviving, in part, because he acted as a middle-man between tribes who needed to trade with each other but were constantly at war. Cortes found fairly advanced civilizations with amazing infrastructure that also suffered from warfare, slavery and ridiculous amounts of human sacrifices. There is also a lot of evidence in the DNA of Native Americans that tell how and when they migrated here. The point I am making is that Native Americans were and are Native Americans. They had good things and bad things going for them. This article (and book) seems pre-occupied with trying to tell you that everything we've learned up to this point is entirely wrong and that the New World was a utopia before the filthy Europeans arrived. It wasn't, and there is a ton of evidence to support that. It just was what it was. To be honest, I feel like this is trying to re-focus history with a politically correct slant-- which is what bothers me.

meatysnapper 11y ago
There is of course the theory that the reason the Spaniards found it so easy to whoop dat Aztec was because of the hostility caused by so much human sacrifice.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > There is of course the theory that the reason the Spaniards found it so easy to whoop dat Aztec was because of the hostility caused by so much human sacrifice. The Aztecs weren't unique in the practice of human sacrifice. It seems a lot more likely that resent of the Aztec Empire by its peripheries in general was the reason than human sacrifice specifically, the former exacerbated by general discontent resulting from the wave of disease the region was facing -- as a result of European contact with the Caribbean islands and trade between the islands and the mainland.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  Sort of. The Spaniards didn't "whoop" the Aztecs. They allied themselves with nearly a fifth of a million Tlaxcallan warriors.
- oh_sigh 11y ago
  It also helps that the aztecs didn't even have any kind of metal weapons, whereas the Spaniards had guns, swords, armor, and horses.
euyyn 11y ago
> This article (and book) seems pre-occupied with trying to tell you that everything we've learned up to this point is entirely wrong and that the New World was a utopia before the filthy Europeans arrived. The article might try, but the first pages of the book actually say exactly the point you want to make. No wilderness utopia, and no chaotic barbarism.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
It's tough to try to put forward a truly balanced narrative because there is still a lot of racist anti-native american sentiment and consequently a lot of counter compensation against that. In truth the indigenous pre-Columbian Americans were much like people anywhere in pre-modern times. Constantly at war, constantly struggling, with a few bright spots here and there. So much of the narrative of western history focuses on the bright spots and treats the atrocities, conflicts, and struggles as exceptions, but they are both part of the whole.
ar-jan 11y ago
> This article (and book) seems pre-occupied with trying to tell you that everything we've learned up to this point is entirely wrong Not at all. It's trying to communicate that everything we've learned has/had been completely ignored in general education. That is, the book is ambitiously trying to summarize much of several decades of scientific research that had not been very accessible, and was mostly unknown to the general public. It does an excellent job at providing an overview of what is known.

meatysnapper 11y ago

There is of course the theory that the reason the Spaniards found it so easy to whoop dat Aztec was because of the hostility caused by so much human sacrifice.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> There is of course the theory that the reason the Spaniards found it so easy to whoop dat Aztec was because of the hostility caused by so much human sacrifice. The Aztecs weren't unique in the practice of human sacrifice. It seems a lot more likely that resent of the Aztec Empire by its peripheries in general was the reason than human sacrifice specifically, the former exacerbated by general discontent resulting from the wave of disease the region was facing -- as a result of European contact with the Caribbean islands and trade between the islands and the mainland.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
InclinedPlane 11y ago
Sort of. The Spaniards didn't "whoop" the Aztecs. They allied themselves with nearly a fifth of a million Tlaxcallan warriors.
oh_sigh 11y ago
It also helps that the aztecs didn't even have any kind of metal weapons, whereas the Spaniards had guns, swords, armor, and horses.

euyyn 11y ago

> This article (and book) seems pre-occupied with trying to tell you that everything we've learned up to this point is entirely wrong and that the New World was a utopia before the filthy Europeans arrived. The article might try, but the first pages of the book actually say exactly the point you want to make. No wilderness utopia, and no chaotic barbarism.

InclinedPlane 11y ago

It's tough to try to put forward a truly balanced narrative because there is still a lot of racist anti-native american sentiment and consequently a lot of counter compensation against that. In truth the indigenous pre-Columbian Americans were much like people anywhere in pre-modern times. Constantly at war, constantly struggling, with a few bright spots here and there. So much of the narrative of western history focuses on the bright spots and treats the atrocities, conflicts, and struggles as exceptions, but they are both part of the whole.

ar-jan 11y ago

> This article (and book) seems pre-occupied with trying to tell you that everything we've learned up to this point is entirely wrong Not at all. It's trying to communicate that everything we've learned has/had been completely ignored in general education. That is, the book is ambitiously trying to summarize much of several decades of scientific research that had not been very accessible, and was mostly unknown to the general public. It does an excellent job at providing an overview of what is known.