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What amazes me about this is that the body-painting was considered by Europeans to be evidence of the 'primitive nature of lesser cultures', yet it turns out it
by mmjaa 8y ago
What amazes me about this is that the body-painting was considered by Europeans to be evidence of the 'primitive nature of lesser cultures', yet it turns out it was actually kind of advanced technology.
I hope to witness more instances where the old imperial, intolerant ways of looking at the cultures we've degraded over the last few centuries get turned upside down. There are so many things we could have learned about the world from the 60,000+ year old culture of the original inhabitants of Australia, which might've pushed us further.
I put this 'stripes as insect repellant' in the same list as 'they had a Hippocratic oath before us', and 'they understood antibiotics and antiseptics while we were still arguing over miasma theory and bloodletting'.
Turns out, their technology was more advanced than our hubris allowed us to admit.
- skybrian 8y agoI hadn't heard that about antibiotics. Got a link?
- Wowfunhappy 8y agoNot 100% sure if this is what GP is referring to, but: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/best-medicine https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/best-medicine (podcast episode)
- ecocentrik 8y agoThere was this story in Science last year about a 90% success rate in cranial surgery by Pre-Columbian Inca physicians. Their sample sizes are low but an observed scaling up of success rates over a 400 year period speaks to institutional mastery beyond what western medicine was able to accomplish until after the discovery of antibiotics. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/south-america-s-inca-civilization-was-better-skull-surgery-civil-war-doctors http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/south-america-s-inca-...
- mmjaa 8y agoLook up the use of emu bush by the Northern Territory tribes, for example ...
- gumby 8y ago> I hope to witness more instances where the old imperial, intolerant ways of looking at the cultures we've degraded over the last few centuries get turned upside down. Another example is the "utter idiocy" of Berbers wearing black clothing in the desert heat. (https://www.nature.com/articles/283373a0 https://www.nature.com/articles/283373a0). Actually it's neutral (a far as temperature goes) but has other advantages including making you harder to see and, of course, social/decorative/signalling value. This was actually the first scientific paper I deliberately went to find and read after reading about it in some other journal. I was 16. Luckily it was something approachable and so encouraged me to spend more time doing it.