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> What would the Americas -- the world -- look like today if the Europeans never came here? Or at least, came and engaged respectfully One historical scene in

by scroot 9y ago

> What would the Americas -- the world -- look like today if the Europeans never came here? Or at least, came and engaged respectfully One historical scene in particular plays out this idea. It occurred as Cortes marched across today's Mexico towards the city and ruler he had heard so much about. At one point — not yet at the city — Moctezuma sent some emissaries to greet him. They brought two others with them, who were sacrificed in front of the Spaniards. You can find accounts of this story from both sides: from the chronicles of Cortes and his conquistadors (Bernal Diaz, for example) and from native accounts (as told in The Broken Spears, as another example). And the differing reactions to this event tell you everything. The Spaniards were appalled, some even cried. But the emissaries were totally baffled by their reaction to the gift. What you see is two cultures separated by an almost unimaginable amount of time, distance, and history. The clash that occurred would have been hard to prevent whenever it happened. As others have pointed out, even basic biology (immunity) was different enough to make an enormous difference without people consciously having to do anything. Peter Watson's "The Great Divide: History and Human Nature in the Old World and the New" is a pretty fascinating examination of the overall contrasts between Eurasian and New World cultures. It's a story that's hard to tell, and there is a lot of speculation and ambiguity. What is clear, above all else, is that the whole ordeal ended tragically, insomuch as it ever ended at all.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago
> The clash that occurred would have been hard to prevent whenever it happened. As others have pointed out, even basic biology (immunity) was different enough to make an enormous difference without people consciously having to do anything. In the 16th to 19th centuries, I suppose it would have been an insurmountable medical problem. But what if they were separated until today? Perhaps in an alternate universe, instead of a wooden sailing ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean, toxic gas bubbled up from the mid-Atlantic ridge (and a similar barrier in the Pacific), requiring pressurized aircraft to fly over. Or the two groups were on separate planets, requiring space travel to meet. Would we be able to deal with the medical problems today? Or, in a less unlikely scenario, there were plagues in the Americas that decimated European settlers more than the reverse, allowing the Native Americans to co-opt European shipbuilding and colonize Africa and Eurasia. Interesting to think about!
- dragandj 9y ago
  There is a Bande Desinee with a plot just like that: https://www.bdgest.com/preview-1673-BD-nous-les-morts-les-enfants-de-la-peste.html https://www.bdgest.com/preview-1673-BD-nous-les-morts-les-en...
benbreen 9y ago
I just wanted to add to this that it's not as if the Spaniards were appalled by violence itself, just by the cultural difference in how it was applied. As Montaigne pointed out, early modern Europeans were at least as cruel toward enemies and captives, they just expressed it in different ways: i.e. via public executions of witches and heretics, or the tortures of the Inquisition and secular courts. Admittedly Montaigne is writing here about Tupis from Brazil rather than Aztecs, but his point applies in both cases I think: "After having treated their prisoners well for a long time, giving them all the provisions that they could one, he who is the chief calls a great assembly of his acquaintances. He ties a rope to one of the arms of the prisoner and on the other end, several feet away, out of harm's way, and gives to his best friend the arm to hold; and the two of them, in the presence of the assembled group, slash him to death with their swords. That done, they roast him and eat him together, sending portions to their absent friends. They do this, not as is supposed, for nourishment as did the ancient Scythians; it represents instead an extreme form of vengeance. The proof of this is that when they saw that the Portuguese, who had allied themselves with their adversaries, executed their captives differently, burying them up to the waist and firing numerous arrows into the remainder of the body, hanging them afterward, [the Tupi] viewed these people from another world, who had spread the knowledge of many vices among their neighbors, and who were much more masterly than they in every sort of evil, must have chosen this sort of revenge for a reason. Thinking that it must be more bitter than their own, they abandoned their ancient way to imitate this one. I am not so concerned that we should remark on the barbaric horror of such a deed, but that, while we quite rightly judge their faults, we are blind to our own." http://www2.fiu.edu/~harveyb/oncannibal.htm http://www2.fiu.edu/~harveyb/oncannibal.htm
- abusoufiyan 9y ago
  >As Montaigne pointed out, early modern Europeans were at least as cruel toward enemies and captives, they just expressed it in different ways: i.e. via public executions of witches and heretics, or the tortures of the Inquisition and secular courts. Yes, this was my instant thought. What a naive Eurocentric way to think of history to insinuate that everyone except the Europeans were just barbaric savages who killed and devalued life. As if the Europeans weren't fresh off their own multi-year killing sprees for this and that reason that equally would have baffled Native Americans.
Nomentatus 9y ago
Cortez did treat the first nation he encountered respectfully, agreeing to help them in their war with a far more powerful nation. (Similar dynamic in North America, before King Philip's War, which happened because the mutual respect didn't last.) If the Europeans had decided to treat everyone with respect - "Just looking!", they would have been the only group there with any interest in doing that.
- majos 9y ago
  I have heard this reframed as "Cortez was actually a better politician than he was a general, unifying enough Aztec-hating factions to take down the Aztecs and then maneuver politically to the top once those factions succeeded".
- wil421 9y ago
  Are there any examples in history where a people were “Just Looking” and left another group alone. Makes you think aliens have probably never visited our solar system.
  - JoeDaDude 9y ago
    There are some isolated incidents. One of my favorites is the English expedition to New England in 1602 led by Bartholomew Gosnold. Upon reaching the vicinity, the English were surprised to find Native Americans hailing them in a Basque fishing vessel wearing European clothes. The Indians boarded the English ship and the two groups made themselves understood through the language barrier. It turns out, the Native Americans had been trading and fishing with Europeans for years. The whole affair ended amicably with the parties going their separate ways. Primary sources exist, but here is a quick summary [1] [1] http://www.woodsholemuseum.org/oldpages/sprtsl/v16n2-Gosnold.pdf http://www.woodsholemuseum.org/oldpages/sprtsl/v16n2-Gosnold... (page 11)
  - toomanybeersies 9y ago
    Arguably Abel Tasman discovering New Zeaaland fits this criteria. He sailed to NZ, and tried to go ashore to collect water, but the local Maori attacked and killed 4 of his men before they even got ashore, so he left. It was another 100 years before Captain Cook and his crew became the first Europeans to set foot on New Zealand.
agumonkey 9y ago
it's true that culture shock was at play, that said was it hard to just back off and accept that people whoever they are should keep their land ? methinks that it gave one big and convenient argument to the takeover for material and spices. they're inhuman, we shall have no shame in wiping them. I read recently about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Ginés_de_Sepúlveda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Ginés_de_Sepúlveda and his nemesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas (who lived in South America and could see through the cultural barrier) Their was a movie about the meeting with the pope also.
- jdminhbg 9y ago
  You're right that a lot of these stories are retold as propaganda to justify conquest but: > was it hard to just back off and accept that people whoever they are should keep their land ? It was only "theirs" by the same process of brutal conquest that the Spaniards later turned on them.
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    unless they came on virgin land which is probable
- shard972 9y ago
  > that said was it hard to just back off and accept that people whoever they are should keep their land ? Yes? Consider Australia's situation where the natives had 0 concept of land ownership and sovereignty. Were the british colonists looking for more land just to assume that the aboriginals own the whole entire continent? Even though they used barely any of it at one time?
  - draw_down 9y ago
    Yes?
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    Mah that's ridiculous; even if they use only 10% most colonies ended up abusing and keeping natives at lower than they needed to enjoy their lives as they always did. Plus it's easy to come and negotiate friendly, especially in Australia where it's not like it's crowded .
sampo 9y ago
> Moctezuma sent some emissaries to greet him. They brought two others with them, who were sacrificed in front of the Spaniards. The Aztecs were not the only people living in the 1500s Mesoamerica. I don't know much, but Wikipedia mentions peoples like Purepechas, Talaxcaltecs, Matlazincas, Tecos, Mazahuas, Otomies and Chontales. And not even all Nahuas were Aztecs. Was ritualistic human sacrifice a common practice among all these peoples, or was it something that mostly only Aztecs did?
- jcranmer 9y ago
  Sacrifice, up to and including human sacrifice, is a common practice of most world traditional religions. Mesoamericans had a large dose of various forms of self-sacrifice and ritualized human sacrifice. That said, the Aztecs did ramp it up to 11 as a form of political propaganda ("look at how powerful we are, by how many people who captured"). This makes it difficult to estimate how much sacrifice they actually did, since most of the accounts are probably exaggerated to an unknown degree.
- scroot 9y ago
  Ritual human sacrifice, across history, is universal. However, in the Old World it became less common (and animal sacrifice more common — a possible explanation for animal domestication). Watson and others argue that Shamanism was different in the New World, as it relied on naturally occurring high powered hallucinogens (most of which are endemic to the new world) which produced horrifying visions, thereby affecting the broader culture. I find this a compelling thesis.

by scroot 9y ago

LeifCarrotson 9y ago

> The clash that occurred would have been hard to prevent whenever it happened. As others have pointed out, even basic biology (immunity) was different enough to make an enormous difference without people consciously having to do anything. In the 16th to 19th centuries, I suppose it would have been an insurmountable medical problem. But what if they were separated until today? Perhaps in an alternate universe, instead of a wooden sailing ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean, toxic gas bubbled up from the mid-Atlantic ridge (and a similar barrier in the Pacific), requiring pressurized aircraft to fly over. Or the two groups were on separate planets, requiring space travel to meet. Would we be able to deal with the medical problems today? Or, in a less unlikely scenario, there were plagues in the Americas that decimated European settlers more than the reverse, allowing the Native Americans to co-opt European shipbuilding and colonize Africa and Eurasia. Interesting to think about!

dragandj 9y ago
There is a Bande Desinee with a plot just like that: https://www.bdgest.com/preview-1673-BD-nous-les-morts-les-enfants-de-la-peste.html https://www.bdgest.com/preview-1673-BD-nous-les-morts-les-en...

benbreen 9y ago

I just wanted to add to this that it's not as if the Spaniards were appalled by violence itself, just by the cultural difference in how it was applied. As Montaigne pointed out, early modern Europeans were at least as cruel toward enemies and captives, they just expressed it in different ways: i.e. via public executions of witches and heretics, or the tortures of the Inquisition and secular courts. Admittedly Montaigne is writing here about Tupis from Brazil rather than Aztecs, but his point applies in both cases I think: "After having treated their prisoners well for a long time, giving them all the provisions that they could one, he who is the chief calls a great assembly of his acquaintances. He ties a rope to one of the arms of the prisoner and on the other end, several feet away, out of harm's way, and gives to his best friend the arm to hold; and the two of them, in the presence of the assembled group, slash him to death with their swords. That done, they roast him and eat him together, sending portions to their absent friends. They do this, not as is supposed, for nourishment as did the ancient Scythians; it represents instead an extreme form of vengeance. The proof of this is that when they saw that the Portuguese, who had allied themselves with their adversaries, executed their captives differently, burying them up to the waist and firing numerous arrows into the remainder of the body, hanging them afterward, [the Tupi] viewed these people from another world, who had spread the knowledge of many vices among their neighbors, and who were much more masterly than they in every sort of evil, must have chosen this sort of revenge for a reason. Thinking that it must be more bitter than their own, they abandoned their ancient way to imitate this one. I am not so concerned that we should remark on the barbaric horror of such a deed, but that, while we quite rightly judge their faults, we are blind to our own." http://www2.fiu.edu/~harveyb/oncannibal.htm http://www2.fiu.edu/~harveyb/oncannibal.htm

abusoufiyan 9y ago
>As Montaigne pointed out, early modern Europeans were at least as cruel toward enemies and captives, they just expressed it in different ways: i.e. via public executions of witches and heretics, or the tortures of the Inquisition and secular courts. Yes, this was my instant thought. What a naive Eurocentric way to think of history to insinuate that everyone except the Europeans were just barbaric savages who killed and devalued life. As if the Europeans weren't fresh off their own multi-year killing sprees for this and that reason that equally would have baffled Native Americans.

Nomentatus 9y ago

Cortez did treat the first nation he encountered respectfully, agreeing to help them in their war with a far more powerful nation. (Similar dynamic in North America, before King Philip's War, which happened because the mutual respect didn't last.) If the Europeans had decided to treat everyone with respect - "Just looking!", they would have been the only group there with any interest in doing that.

majos 9y ago
I have heard this reframed as "Cortez was actually a better politician than he was a general, unifying enough Aztec-hating factions to take down the Aztecs and then maneuver politically to the top once those factions succeeded".
wil421 9y ago
Are there any examples in history where a people were “Just Looking” and left another group alone. Makes you think aliens have probably never visited our solar system.
- JoeDaDude 9y ago
  There are some isolated incidents. One of my favorites is the English expedition to New England in 1602 led by Bartholomew Gosnold. Upon reaching the vicinity, the English were surprised to find Native Americans hailing them in a Basque fishing vessel wearing European clothes. The Indians boarded the English ship and the two groups made themselves understood through the language barrier. It turns out, the Native Americans had been trading and fishing with Europeans for years. The whole affair ended amicably with the parties going their separate ways. Primary sources exist, but here is a quick summary [1] [1] http://www.woodsholemuseum.org/oldpages/sprtsl/v16n2-Gosnold.pdf http://www.woodsholemuseum.org/oldpages/sprtsl/v16n2-Gosnold... (page 11)
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  Arguably Abel Tasman discovering New Zeaaland fits this criteria. He sailed to NZ, and tried to go ashore to collect water, but the local Maori attacked and killed 4 of his men before they even got ashore, so he left. It was another 100 years before Captain Cook and his crew became the first Europeans to set foot on New Zealand.

agumonkey 9y ago

it's true that culture shock was at play, that said was it hard to just back off and accept that people whoever they are should keep their land ? methinks that it gave one big and convenient argument to the takeover for material and spices. they're inhuman, we shall have no shame in wiping them. I read recently about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Ginés_de_Sepúlveda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Ginés_de_Sepúlveda and his nemesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas (who lived in South America and could see through the cultural barrier) Their was a movie about the meeting with the pope also.

jdminhbg 9y ago
You're right that a lot of these stories are retold as propaganda to justify conquest but: > was it hard to just back off and accept that people whoever they are should keep their land ? It was only "theirs" by the same process of brutal conquest that the Spaniards later turned on them.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  unless they came on virgin land which is probable
shard972 9y ago
> that said was it hard to just back off and accept that people whoever they are should keep their land ? Yes? Consider Australia's situation where the natives had 0 concept of land ownership and sovereignty. Were the british colonists looking for more land just to assume that the aboriginals own the whole entire continent? Even though they used barely any of it at one time?
- draw_down 9y ago
  Yes?
- agumonkey 9y ago
  Mah that's ridiculous; even if they use only 10% most colonies ended up abusing and keeping natives at lower than they needed to enjoy their lives as they always did. Plus it's easy to come and negotiate friendly, especially in Australia where it's not like it's crowded .

sampo 9y ago

> Moctezuma sent some emissaries to greet him. They brought two others with them, who were sacrificed in front of the Spaniards. The Aztecs were not the only people living in the 1500s Mesoamerica. I don't know much, but Wikipedia mentions peoples like Purepechas, Talaxcaltecs, Matlazincas, Tecos, Mazahuas, Otomies and Chontales. And not even all Nahuas were Aztecs. Was ritualistic human sacrifice a common practice among all these peoples, or was it something that mostly only Aztecs did?

jcranmer 9y ago
Sacrifice, up to and including human sacrifice, is a common practice of most world traditional religions. Mesoamericans had a large dose of various forms of self-sacrifice and ritualized human sacrifice. That said, the Aztecs did ramp it up to 11 as a form of political propaganda ("look at how powerful we are, by how many people who captured"). This makes it difficult to estimate how much sacrifice they actually did, since most of the accounts are probably exaggerated to an unknown degree.
scroot 9y ago
Ritual human sacrifice, across history, is universal. However, in the Old World it became less common (and animal sacrifice more common — a possible explanation for animal domestication). Watson and others argue that Shamanism was different in the New World, as it relied on naturally occurring high powered hallucinogens (most of which are endemic to the new world) which produced horrifying visions, thereby affecting the broader culture. I find this a compelling thesis.