3 ms·

The point is, not just the culture, but 'India' as a name for that region and for the subcontinent, is very modern. When these peoples were around, that region

The point is, not just the culture, but 'India' as a name for that region and for the subcontinent, is very modern. When these peoples were around, that region was not 'India' any more than the people were 'Indian'. The name 'India' has soo many connotations what only makes sense in the modern context that calling this civilization 'Indian' is, like I said, convenient but misleading.

empath75 8y ago
India is a location as well as a nation. "Native Americans" were around before "America" existed.
- sillyquiet 8y ago
  Davies would probably have an objection to that term as well. After all, the people who we now call Native Americans, besides not being unified in culture or origin or time of migration very much at all such that a singular term like that is not accurate anyway, started migrating to the western hemisphere about 7 - 15000 years before Amerigo Vespucci was born. Remember, these arguments are from a historian's / archaeologist's viewpoint. I am sure they dramatically prefer the academic designations for various cultures. They certainly didn't call themselves 'native americans'. That's a label we slap on them post-facto.
  - poulsbohemian 8y ago
    >They certainly didn't call themselves 'native americans'. Which is why I like the way in Canada they are referred to as “First Nations.” It describes a reality in terms that feel less politically loaded or geographicalally misguided than others.
    - codyb 8y ago
      While simultaneously removing any clues about origin for the uninformed no? So then you need to affix either Canadian to the front or of North America or of Canada to the back and then you're right back to where you started, so in the end I suppose I can only muster up a "what's the point?". We still call the Cherokee nation the Cherokee nation, that's their own name, and when we have them we use them, but what's the point of removing all contextual information from the casual observer's view? So they can go to Wikipedia and search and go "ahh, they use to live in what's now Canada?" Lol.
  - ummonk 8y ago
    So what are we supposed to call them? "The I wish I knew what they called themselves 10,000 years ago people" doesn't really disambiguate between prehistoric people from different regions.

empath75 8y ago

India is a location as well as a nation. "Native Americans" were around before "America" existed.

sillyquiet 8y ago
Davies would probably have an objection to that term as well. After all, the people who we now call Native Americans, besides not being unified in culture or origin or time of migration very much at all such that a singular term like that is not accurate anyway, started migrating to the western hemisphere about 7 - 15000 years before Amerigo Vespucci was born. Remember, these arguments are from a historian's / archaeologist's viewpoint. I am sure they dramatically prefer the academic designations for various cultures. They certainly didn't call themselves 'native americans'. That's a label we slap on them post-facto.
- poulsbohemian 8y ago
  >They certainly didn't call themselves 'native americans'. Which is why I like the way in Canada they are referred to as “First Nations.” It describes a reality in terms that feel less politically loaded or geographicalally misguided than others.
  - codyb 8y ago
    While simultaneously removing any clues about origin for the uninformed no? So then you need to affix either Canadian to the front or of North America or of Canada to the back and then you're right back to where you started, so in the end I suppose I can only muster up a "what's the point?". We still call the Cherokee nation the Cherokee nation, that's their own name, and when we have them we use them, but what's the point of removing all contextual information from the casual observer's view? So they can go to Wikipedia and search and go "ahh, they use to live in what's now Canada?" Lol.
- ummonk 8y ago
  So what are we supposed to call them? "The I wish I knew what they called themselves 10,000 years ago people" doesn't really disambiguate between prehistoric people from different regions.