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That blanket statement holds no water. Apart from -great- cultural differences - e.g. respect for nature - indigenous Americans had -a lot- of knowledge about t

That blanket statement holds no water. Apart from -great- cultural differences - e.g. respect for nature - indigenous Americans had -a lot- of knowledge about their world, and how to care for it. May we have time to catch up with that knowledge.

pdonis 6y ago
> Apart from -great- cultural differences - e.g. respect for nature You can respect nature and still make use of natural resources. Even if native Americans did the former (see below--some did but many did not), they fell far short on the latter. There were many natural resources in the US that native Americans never made any use of, and European settlers did. This is an example of the more general fact that the native Americans did not build very much wealth, while European settlers built much, much more. The native American cultures would never have built the medium through which we are having this discussion, for example. Or modern medicine, or modern sanitation, or all of the other things that have led to a huge increase in both average length and average quality of life. > indigenous Americans had -a lot- of knowledge about their world, and how to care for it. Perhaps some did. Many did not. Travel around the US Southwest and see how many sites there are where native American tribes lived and either died out or had to move on because they had mismanaged the local resources to the point where those resources could no longer support the tribe.
0xBDB 6y ago
Unfortunately this isn't the case. The Pleistocene North American mass extinction, which wiped out the saber-toothed tiger and North American mastodon, was a result of hunting pressure about 10,000 years ago. The positive stereotypes you are selling aren't real. They're largely the product of Hollywood (e.g. the "Crying Indian" ads), just like the negative stereotypes of the same peoples. Native Americans are people; given the opportunity they wreck nature, and once given guns and horses they stepped up their hunting of buffalo, for example, to levels that would have been unsustainable even if white people hadn't been killing the Buffalo off at far greater rates at the same time.

pdonis 6y ago

> Apart from -great- cultural differences - e.g. respect for nature You can respect nature and still make use of natural resources. Even if native Americans did the former (see below--some did but many did not), they fell far short on the latter. There were many natural resources in the US that native Americans never made any use of, and European settlers did. This is an example of the more general fact that the native Americans did not build very much wealth, while European settlers built much, much more. The native American cultures would never have built the medium through which we are having this discussion, for example. Or modern medicine, or modern sanitation, or all of the other things that have led to a huge increase in both average length and average quality of life. > indigenous Americans had -a lot- of knowledge about their world, and how to care for it. Perhaps some did. Many did not. Travel around the US Southwest and see how many sites there are where native American tribes lived and either died out or had to move on because they had mismanaged the local resources to the point where those resources could no longer support the tribe.

0xBDB 6y ago

Unfortunately this isn't the case. The Pleistocene North American mass extinction, which wiped out the saber-toothed tiger and North American mastodon, was a result of hunting pressure about 10,000 years ago. The positive stereotypes you are selling aren't real. They're largely the product of Hollywood (e.g. the "Crying Indian" ads), just like the negative stereotypes of the same peoples. Native Americans are people; given the opportunity they wreck nature, and once given guns and horses they stepped up their hunting of buffalo, for example, to levels that would have been unsustainable even if white people hadn't been killing the Buffalo off at far greater rates at the same time.