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Finding North America’s lost medieval city
- jabbanobodder 10y agoDon't tell the Mormons, they'll try and twist it somehow to prove their history.
- dang 10y agoNo religious flamewars on HN, please.
- themaninthedark 10y agoVi is the best editor
- arxpoetica 10y agoI'm Mormon, but this proves nothing to me. I do find it utterly fascinating, however.
- bettyx1138 10y agoWait, I thought Columbus discovered 'Murica. (Kidding.)
- rbritton 10y agoOn that topic, the book 1492 is a pretty good read for anyone curious about the history of the few hundred years surrounding that.
- jipumarino 10y agoYou mean 1491, by Charles C. Mann? Good starting point for this subject.
- neaden 10y agoIt's amazing both: 1. How much about the Native American history we still don't know/understand. 2. How little of what we do know is taught in schools in the USA. I don't think I any of my HS classes went into any detail about pre-contact North American history.
- Swizec 10y agoI wonder what the largest cause of this is. Two ideas come to mind: 1. We just don't have access to pre-contact North America. We weren't there to write about it, they didn't write about it, and we don't have a lore lineage because we're not part of the culture. 2. Considering what happened, it's more convenient to think that we didn't really destroy anything much and we "brought culture to the savages" and made things better. Afaik much of Africa suffers from the same sort of problem.
- neaden 10y agoI think it is largely the second, after all many of the different nations did have prolonged contact with America or the 13 colonies and have descendants around right now who can tell us stuff. In regards to Africa, let's face it, most of us (and I include myself here) are pretty bad with history. I would have a hard time writing more then a cursory paragraph about the 30 years war for instance even though it is an important part of European history and I can't really tell you anything about the Taiping Rebellion except that the guy on one side thoght he was Jesus' brother even though it happened at the same time as the civil war and killed many many more people. With Native American history though it is the history of where I live. I have spent my whole life living in areas that were previously controlled by the Anishinaabe people but never learned anything about them in class. To me that would be like a German student knowing as little as me about the 30 years war or a Chinese student who can't tell you the basics of the Taiping rebellion.
- aaron-lebo 10y agoThis is a global issue. History is written by winners. There are a lot of cultures within China or Russia or any other country that have been destroyed over time in the goal of national progress. History unfortunately does that to nations and peoples. The average European is as ignorant about the Sami as the average American is about the Tonkawa.
- omegaworks 10y ago>The city's elites may have led the performance to show their political and spiritual power, much the way their European counterparts of the same era were conducting public executions and crusades. I wish the article laid out more empirical evidence for this rather than resorting to "well the Europeans were doing it, so this must have been what they were also doing!" > He and Alt were both very opposed to the idea that Cahokia might have been a trade center and called it a mistake to view the city as an economic entity. Cities are inherently economic entities... Kind of gives the impression that these archaeologists are imposing a bit of their own belief systems. It might be more reflective of the informal writing style than anything else.
- Mendenhall 10y agoIf you are interested in the "mound" people, I strongly suggest books by Charles Whittlesey. He mapped many of the works for the Smithsonian in the 1840s. His books "Descriptions of ancient works in Ohio" and "Ancient mining on the shores of lake superior" are available for free on google play books. He has others as well. There is some fascinating history that most dont know about. You can find mounds on google maps as well if you know what to look for and line up the maps etc.
- funthree 10y agoGeo-Central Patriarchal Parochialism of the Nibiru Sky.