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Another spin on this: I grew up in Texas. As we all know, Texans are really proud of Texas. Part of this is because the schools spend 3x as much time teaching

Another spin on this: I grew up in Texas. As we all know, Texans are really proud of Texas. Part of this is because the schools spend 3x as much time teaching “Texas history” as they do teaching US history or world history (lol). Almost all of what is called “Texas history” is simply propaganda from the early to mid 1800s. Truth is, Texas was essentially American Mexico (nearly 100% Spanish-speaking) until we found oil there in the late 1800s. It was only ever it’s own independent country because the US was not militarily strong at the time and couldn’t afford a war with Mexico — which would have been the result of the annexation of Texas. But as a result of this state-mandated focus on “local history”, kids who come out of Texas schools are often woefully uneducated as to even Western European history. You just learn this concentrated version of American Exceptionalism that’s mandated by the board of education and has only a tenuous relationship to the truth. As a side note, it’s really weird to learn history in the context of a place that’s only had meaningful levels of population for the last 50 years.

scarecrowbob 8y ago
I grew up in the panhandle and what you're saying is true in general. Parts of my family have been in Texas since the early 1800s. "As a side note, it’s really weird to learn history in the context of a place that’s only had meaningful levels of population for the last 50 years." That's an interesting side note. I've seen clovis points that folks have dug up here that are 5K ro 10K years old... the anglos in Texas tend to think that there was literally no one here when this area has had folks living in it for millennia. One of the thoughts I keep returning to is how little we know about the history of the peoples who were living more than 400 or so years ago. I think about how transient even our own technology is. Considering what traces of our own culture would be available to people 10,000 years from now, I occasionally wonder if we'd be able to detect our own culture at that time scale if we didn't know what we were looking at.
- Balero 8y ago
  "One of the thoughts I keep returning to is how little we know about the history of the peoples who were living more than 400 or so years ago." I'm assuming you're talking about in America pre European colonisation. In the rest of the world (especially China, Europe, India and the Middle East) we know about as much as we do about the history of people currently alive. We can read their diaries, what happened in their governments, poetry, stories etc (at least for the literate classes, but this is again true in the modern world). "Considering what traces of our own culture would be available to people 10,000 years from now, I occasionally wonder if we'd be able to detect our own culture at that time scale if we didn't know what we were looking at." We would be able to detect really quite a bit, though less than we would like. Anything electronic would be gone, but the fact that we had electronics would be obvious. As would the vast majority of print. Some writing (especially carving) would remain, as would some pictures in lucky circumstances. Most tellingly our cities and buildings would still be around, and you can tell a lot about a culture by the way they order their buildings, and by what stuff they had. This is all assuming we some how up and leave for 10,000 years like in Göbekli Tepe[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
  - scarecrowbob 8y ago
    "I'm assuming you're talking about in America pre European colonisation." Yes, and specifically the area where I am living. That "400 years" has more to do with the specific people I live around and their view that basically anyone before them lacked What-a-Burger restaurants and Shiner beer and are have more in common with deer and possums than humans. Thanks for the thoughts and the links. "Most tellingly our cities and buildings would still be around" I'm sure that my fantasies about how little we actually leave behind and the reality of how obvious it would be are probably different. Like, I feel like humans have been around for quite a while longer than we have any sort of history about, but I am probably just motivated by fantasies that there were large-scale civilizations on earth that predate our own by millennia but which are wholly lost because we don't have the material archeological record or the linguistic tools to trace the existence of specific cultures (or whatever kinds of tooling that would be necessary to demonstrate such a history). While I don't think there is evidence for that fantasy, I also think humans are creative, interesting folks and I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that folks have been just chilling with oral histories for 20K+ years until they suddenly got motivated 600 years ago or so (or 2000 or wherever we might place those histories). So thanks for tempering that fantasy with a specific counter factual example.
    - skinnymuch 8y ago
      I’m sure there are many lost human historical cities, outposts, et al. But based on all the excavation and discovery, it doesn’t seem likely that we are missing out on some huge timeline gap of advanced human societies. We still aren’t even sure if some written language of some of the first civilizations like the Indus Valley were languages or not since we haven’t been able to decipher them. We also have a few areas around the world where we can look for things like evidence of stable civilization and writing that were probably isolated from the rest of the world - America’s, China, and Europe, as examples. Yet all three locations so far only show writing as recent discoveries 2-4K years ago. To me, humans not having advanced quicker doesn’t seem so far fetched. Humanoids were on two feet and making basic tools over a million years ago. Fire was controlled hundreds of thousands of years ago at the latest. Yet even with all that, we don’t have any evidence of humanoids being advanced like setting up in one location or writing text (not just drawings) down more than a couple thousand years. The modern human species I think is only a few hundred thousand years too. Of course we could just somehow be missing tons of data. But that also wouldn’t line up with how we do see a progression of advancement from the earliest civilizations and then empires.
- DubiousPusher 8y ago
  May I recommend https://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/1400032059 https://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Colu...
  - scarecrowbob 8y ago
    I will add that to my list of stuff to read (I've heard of it, but your post specifically has caused me to add it). I'm interested in the folks who were living here before the largish empires that we know about (aztecs and myans and olmecs). But my history is super shoddy... I will have to rethink about how by my understandings are in that area.

scarecrowbob 8y ago

I grew up in the panhandle and what you're saying is true in general. Parts of my family have been in Texas since the early 1800s. "As a side note, it’s really weird to learn history in the context of a place that’s only had meaningful levels of population for the last 50 years." That's an interesting side note. I've seen clovis points that folks have dug up here that are 5K ro 10K years old... the anglos in Texas tend to think that there was literally no one here when this area has had folks living in it for millennia. One of the thoughts I keep returning to is how little we know about the history of the peoples who were living more than 400 or so years ago. I think about how transient even our own technology is. Considering what traces of our own culture would be available to people 10,000 years from now, I occasionally wonder if we'd be able to detect our own culture at that time scale if we didn't know what we were looking at.

Balero 8y ago
"One of the thoughts I keep returning to is how little we know about the history of the peoples who were living more than 400 or so years ago." I'm assuming you're talking about in America pre European colonisation. In the rest of the world (especially China, Europe, India and the Middle East) we know about as much as we do about the history of people currently alive. We can read their diaries, what happened in their governments, poetry, stories etc (at least for the literate classes, but this is again true in the modern world). "Considering what traces of our own culture would be available to people 10,000 years from now, I occasionally wonder if we'd be able to detect our own culture at that time scale if we didn't know what we were looking at." We would be able to detect really quite a bit, though less than we would like. Anything electronic would be gone, but the fact that we had electronics would be obvious. As would the vast majority of print. Some writing (especially carving) would remain, as would some pictures in lucky circumstances. Most tellingly our cities and buildings would still be around, and you can tell a lot about a culture by the way they order their buildings, and by what stuff they had. This is all assuming we some how up and leave for 10,000 years like in Göbekli Tepe[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
- scarecrowbob 8y ago
  "I'm assuming you're talking about in America pre European colonisation." Yes, and specifically the area where I am living. That "400 years" has more to do with the specific people I live around and their view that basically anyone before them lacked What-a-Burger restaurants and Shiner beer and are have more in common with deer and possums than humans. Thanks for the thoughts and the links. "Most tellingly our cities and buildings would still be around" I'm sure that my fantasies about how little we actually leave behind and the reality of how obvious it would be are probably different. Like, I feel like humans have been around for quite a while longer than we have any sort of history about, but I am probably just motivated by fantasies that there were large-scale civilizations on earth that predate our own by millennia but which are wholly lost because we don't have the material archeological record or the linguistic tools to trace the existence of specific cultures (or whatever kinds of tooling that would be necessary to demonstrate such a history). While I don't think there is evidence for that fantasy, I also think humans are creative, interesting folks and I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that folks have been just chilling with oral histories for 20K+ years until they suddenly got motivated 600 years ago or so (or 2000 or wherever we might place those histories). So thanks for tempering that fantasy with a specific counter factual example.
  - skinnymuch 8y ago
    I’m sure there are many lost human historical cities, outposts, et al. But based on all the excavation and discovery, it doesn’t seem likely that we are missing out on some huge timeline gap of advanced human societies. We still aren’t even sure if some written language of some of the first civilizations like the Indus Valley were languages or not since we haven’t been able to decipher them. We also have a few areas around the world where we can look for things like evidence of stable civilization and writing that were probably isolated from the rest of the world - America’s, China, and Europe, as examples. Yet all three locations so far only show writing as recent discoveries 2-4K years ago. To me, humans not having advanced quicker doesn’t seem so far fetched. Humanoids were on two feet and making basic tools over a million years ago. Fire was controlled hundreds of thousands of years ago at the latest. Yet even with all that, we don’t have any evidence of humanoids being advanced like setting up in one location or writing text (not just drawings) down more than a couple thousand years. The modern human species I think is only a few hundred thousand years too. Of course we could just somehow be missing tons of data. But that also wouldn’t line up with how we do see a progression of advancement from the earliest civilizations and then empires.
DubiousPusher 8y ago
May I recommend https://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/1400032059 https://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Colu...
- scarecrowbob 8y ago
  I will add that to my list of stuff to read (I've heard of it, but your post specifically has caused me to add it). I'm interested in the folks who were living here before the largish empires that we know about (aztecs and myans and olmecs). But my history is super shoddy... I will have to rethink about how by my understandings are in that area.