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> In some case scholars have gone as far as claiming an “out-of-asia” theory as opposed to the broadly accepted African origin of humanity My favorite over-the

> In some case scholars have gone as far as claiming an “out-of-asia” theory as opposed to the broadly accepted African origin of humanity My favorite over-the-top example of this: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/mandarin-chinese-english-shakespeare-world-civilization-research-association-a9097926.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/mandarin-chine... tl;dr: some Chinese "scholars" claim English is a Mandarin dialect and Europe had no history before the 15th century (and Greece, Rome, etc. were fabricated in imitation of Chinese history).

jeromegv 5y ago
We had our fair share of scholars in the west thinking there was no civilization in North America before Columbus.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  We do? I've never even heard of this idea. Just debates about exactly how many thousands of years ago people got here. ...unless you mean "civilization" in terms of "not savages" which is totally unrelated kind of dumbness.
  - cperciva 5y ago
    Civilization has at its root the concept of cities, so by that standard it's fair to say that large parts of North America had no civilizations. Whether this is particularly important is open to debate; I prefer to think that it is relevant (cities allow for specialization) but should not be considered a sign of sophistication.
    - AlotOfReading 5y ago
      Most archaeologists and anthropologists don't like the term 'civilization' as a whole because it's overloaded with these outdated connotations that reflect the biases of the speaker rather than anything meaningful about the society under discussion. You can repeat the first sentence to any Americanist you like and see if they agree with the spirit of what it says.
      - adventured 5y ago
        Claiming outdated connotations would just be another way for some archaeologists and anthropologists to attempt to desperately run away from the fact that there were very few cities in North America. When people have a non-science-based agenda and a fact of history doesn't fit that agenda, they start attempting to label inconvenient facts away, for example by pretending they're "outdated." And they'll always use threatening mob tactics, like argument from intimidation, by claiming that some N number supports their position, so thus it is that a fact no longer matters, because the mob said so. It's a very old collectivist premise, they're always so wildly irrational they believe that if you just get large enough numbers in your mob you can subjectively alter the facts of reality, and will your preferred subjectivism to be true instead. And if you go against that mob, they'll isolate you from the field, get you cancelled, and make sure you can never challenge them again with your nasty facts.
        PhasmaFelis 5y ago
        > some archaeologists and anthropologists to attempt to desperately run away from the fact that there were very few cities in North America. What on Earth are you talking about?
        AlotOfReading 5y ago
        I'm not going to bother with the conspiratorial bits beyond to say that Machines as the Measure of Men is a book you might find interesting to engage with. The precolumbian Americas are a fundamentally alien continent that evolved separately from Eurasia. Europeans, explorers and scholars alike, had fundamental misunderstandings of how differently societies can evolve and judged them by how similar they were to European societies. Not surprisingly, entirely alien societies evolved a bit differently and get misjudged harshly on that mistaken basis. However, to engage with your position in good faith, it's worth going through the sorts of things Indigenous American societies were incredibly advanced at. Let's talk list some fun facts about American urbanism: * Teotihuacan during its heyday was one of the largest cities on earth. * Some modern cities like Tucson have continuous urban habitation stretching back to before the founding of Rome. * Tenochtitlan was equal to or larger in size than any city of Western Europe at the time of contact. Other cities like Cusco were merely "extremely large" by European standards. * The Valley of Mexico at contact was one of the most densely populated and urbanized regions on earth, far exceeding anything in Europe at the time. * One of the largest residential structures at approximately the size of the modern Kremlin is Pueblo Bonito in modern New Mexico. By room numbers (though not sheer area), later Rio Grande pueblos would rival Versailles. * Parts of modern Chandler and Mesa, AZ, as well as most of Southwestern Colorado have approximately the same population density today as in precolumbian times. As an archaeologist I don't think any of these are particularly meaningful metrics (or that comparative work is all that useful), they're just fun. I could probably go longer with other areas and facts, but it gets boring quickly. More meaningful would be discussions of agricultural intensity or resource efficiency or systemic resilience. American societies were phenomenally competitive on these sorts of metrics. They constructed the largest irrigation networks in the world, achieved per-acre calorie densities that wouldn't be seen again until fertilizer and intensive automation were invented in the 1950s, and practiced agriculture in some of the most arid locations on the planet, where Eurasians never succeeded.
    - eximius 5y ago
      There were a 100M Native Americans just a few years before Europeans arrived. They mostly died to a plague, but there were cities with millions.
      - cperciva 5y ago
        Note that I specified North America. Most of the cities were in Central or South America.
        AlotOfReading 5y ago
        Mexico is in North America, buddy.
        cperciva 5y ago
        Not according to the UN: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme_for_the_Americas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme_for...
        AlotOfReading 5y ago
        The UN scheme deliberately uses the term "Northern America" to differentiate it from the continent of a similar name. The second sentence on the wiki page says as much: > Note that the continent of North America comprises the intermediate regions of the Caribbean, Central America, and Northern America. The UN uses that scheme because Mexico is part of the Latin America region and makes more sense grouped with them for statistical purposes than with the US and Canada.
        jhgb 5y ago
        Sounds like you understood him perfectly well, then. Not sure why all this writing was necessary in that case.
        5y ago
  - NelsonMinar 5y ago
    the dumbness is not unrelated.
- PhasmaFelis 5y ago
  How many of them in the last (conservatively) 100 years? This "the entire history of western civilization is China fanfic" deal is from 2019.
hungryhobo 5y ago
ehh no one in china takes these claims seriously
- w-ll 5y ago
  if i've learned anything in the last year... there might actually be a sizeable amount of people (who you might not interact with on daily basis) that actually deeply believe it
  - justicezyx 5y ago
    If you are taking about relative importance, then these people's voice will be negaliable compared to main stream views. If you are talking about absolute number, then of course it could be substantial, but that's true for any situation, I.e., there are just more people there.
    - void_mint 5y ago
      Haven't we learned anything when looking at America over the past 5 years? "Nobody important actually thinks that" becomes legitimate nationalistic pride.
      - justicezyx 5y ago
        Well, that's one thing I now point out often to American people (I was born and raised in China), American nationalism is not same as Chinese one. To some degree, Chinese nationalism went beyond the narrow view point already in the Mao era. Chinese people nowadays are very sensitive to nationalism topics, but they are also rational. I never saw Chinese people disapprove facts for national pride. It's that Chinese people have a conviction that they can do whatever other people can do, and probably can do some better. That's one benefit of tight propaganda control, as the CCP knows very well how powerful and uncontrollable the nationalism can be. So they are relatively adept in managing the sentiment.
        5y ago
petre 5y ago
We have our share of crackpots like those in our country as well. No one takes them seriously. Most of them do not even have a history on anthropology degree. They're the laughing stock of younger history majors.
- xabotage 5y ago
  The thing about crackpots with wildly unsubstantiated self-aggrandizing anthropological theories is that they often wield disproportionate power and influence. Take the Mormon church for example: they believe Native Americans were white Jews who were cursed with dark skin and it was god's will they be wiped out by European settlers. It's horrifically racist and there's zero evidence to support the origin story. And yet, the church holds over $100 billion in their investment portfolio alone and nearly had one of their own elected as US president. It's hard to laugh at.
  - petre 5y ago
    The US is just crazy. This is especially after I've seen the people who've stormed the Capitol with Qanon t-shirts. We're practicaly neighbours with the Mormon mission here but they seem all right. Friendly, very clean, tall. It's true that they're all white.
    - jonathankoren 5y ago
      Religion fundamentalists the world over very angrily push their myths as literal facts, and often politicians have to at least somewhat indulge them. While multiple US examples are probably well known here, I’d like to suggest one from India from circa 2008, the controversy over the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal. India wanted to dig a “canal” (more like dredge a shipping channel) in the waters between India and Sri Lanka. Religious fundamentalists opposed this because it would involve cutting a natural rock formation. What so special about these rocks? Well they were placed there by Lord Ram and his army of monkeys as chronicled in the Ramayana. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sethusamudram_Shipping_Canal_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sethusamudram_Shipping_Canal_P...

jeromegv 5y ago

We had our fair share of scholars in the west thinking there was no civilization in North America before Columbus.

Dylan16807 5y ago
We do? I've never even heard of this idea. Just debates about exactly how many thousands of years ago people got here. ...unless you mean "civilization" in terms of "not savages" which is totally unrelated kind of dumbness.
- cperciva 5y ago
  Civilization has at its root the concept of cities, so by that standard it's fair to say that large parts of North America had no civilizations. Whether this is particularly important is open to debate; I prefer to think that it is relevant (cities allow for specialization) but should not be considered a sign of sophistication.
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    Most archaeologists and anthropologists don't like the term 'civilization' as a whole because it's overloaded with these outdated connotations that reflect the biases of the speaker rather than anything meaningful about the society under discussion. You can repeat the first sentence to any Americanist you like and see if they agree with the spirit of what it says.
    - adventured 5y ago
      Claiming outdated connotations would just be another way for some archaeologists and anthropologists to attempt to desperately run away from the fact that there were very few cities in North America. When people have a non-science-based agenda and a fact of history doesn't fit that agenda, they start attempting to label inconvenient facts away, for example by pretending they're "outdated." And they'll always use threatening mob tactics, like argument from intimidation, by claiming that some N number supports their position, so thus it is that a fact no longer matters, because the mob said so. It's a very old collectivist premise, they're always so wildly irrational they believe that if you just get large enough numbers in your mob you can subjectively alter the facts of reality, and will your preferred subjectivism to be true instead. And if you go against that mob, they'll isolate you from the field, get you cancelled, and make sure you can never challenge them again with your nasty facts.
      - PhasmaFelis 5y ago
        > some archaeologists and anthropologists to attempt to desperately run away from the fact that there were very few cities in North America. What on Earth are you talking about?
      - AlotOfReading 5y ago
        I'm not going to bother with the conspiratorial bits beyond to say that Machines as the Measure of Men is a book you might find interesting to engage with. The precolumbian Americas are a fundamentally alien continent that evolved separately from Eurasia. Europeans, explorers and scholars alike, had fundamental misunderstandings of how differently societies can evolve and judged them by how similar they were to European societies. Not surprisingly, entirely alien societies evolved a bit differently and get misjudged harshly on that mistaken basis. However, to engage with your position in good faith, it's worth going through the sorts of things Indigenous American societies were incredibly advanced at. Let's talk list some fun facts about American urbanism: * Teotihuacan during its heyday was one of the largest cities on earth. * Some modern cities like Tucson have continuous urban habitation stretching back to before the founding of Rome. * Tenochtitlan was equal to or larger in size than any city of Western Europe at the time of contact. Other cities like Cusco were merely "extremely large" by European standards. * The Valley of Mexico at contact was one of the most densely populated and urbanized regions on earth, far exceeding anything in Europe at the time. * One of the largest residential structures at approximately the size of the modern Kremlin is Pueblo Bonito in modern New Mexico. By room numbers (though not sheer area), later Rio Grande pueblos would rival Versailles. * Parts of modern Chandler and Mesa, AZ, as well as most of Southwestern Colorado have approximately the same population density today as in precolumbian times. As an archaeologist I don't think any of these are particularly meaningful metrics (or that comparative work is all that useful), they're just fun. I could probably go longer with other areas and facts, but it gets boring quickly. More meaningful would be discussions of agricultural intensity or resource efficiency or systemic resilience. American societies were phenomenally competitive on these sorts of metrics. They constructed the largest irrigation networks in the world, achieved per-acre calorie densities that wouldn't be seen again until fertilizer and intensive automation were invented in the 1950s, and practiced agriculture in some of the most arid locations on the planet, where Eurasians never succeeded.
  - eximius 5y ago
    There were a 100M Native Americans just a few years before Europeans arrived. They mostly died to a plague, but there were cities with millions.
    - cperciva 5y ago
      Note that I specified North America. Most of the cities were in Central or South America.
      - AlotOfReading 5y ago
        Mexico is in North America, buddy.
        cperciva 5y ago
        Not according to the UN: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme_for_the_Americas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme_for...
        AlotOfReading 5y ago
        The UN scheme deliberately uses the term "Northern America" to differentiate it from the continent of a similar name. The second sentence on the wiki page says as much: > Note that the continent of North America comprises the intermediate regions of the Caribbean, Central America, and Northern America. The UN uses that scheme because Mexico is part of the Latin America region and makes more sense grouped with them for statistical purposes than with the US and Canada.
        jhgb 5y ago
        Sounds like you understood him perfectly well, then. Not sure why all this writing was necessary in that case.
        5y ago
- NelsonMinar 5y ago
  the dumbness is not unrelated.
PhasmaFelis 5y ago
How many of them in the last (conservatively) 100 years? This "the entire history of western civilization is China fanfic" deal is from 2019.

hungryhobo 5y ago

ehh no one in china takes these claims seriously

w-ll 5y ago
if i've learned anything in the last year... there might actually be a sizeable amount of people (who you might not interact with on daily basis) that actually deeply believe it
- justicezyx 5y ago
  If you are taking about relative importance, then these people's voice will be negaliable compared to main stream views. If you are talking about absolute number, then of course it could be substantial, but that's true for any situation, I.e., there are just more people there.
  - void_mint 5y ago
    Haven't we learned anything when looking at America over the past 5 years? "Nobody important actually thinks that" becomes legitimate nationalistic pride.
    - justicezyx 5y ago
      Well, that's one thing I now point out often to American people (I was born and raised in China), American nationalism is not same as Chinese one. To some degree, Chinese nationalism went beyond the narrow view point already in the Mao era. Chinese people nowadays are very sensitive to nationalism topics, but they are also rational. I never saw Chinese people disapprove facts for national pride. It's that Chinese people have a conviction that they can do whatever other people can do, and probably can do some better. That's one benefit of tight propaganda control, as the CCP knows very well how powerful and uncontrollable the nationalism can be. So they are relatively adept in managing the sentiment.
      - 5y ago

petre 5y ago

We have our share of crackpots like those in our country as well. No one takes them seriously. Most of them do not even have a history on anthropology degree. They're the laughing stock of younger history majors.

xabotage 5y ago
The thing about crackpots with wildly unsubstantiated self-aggrandizing anthropological theories is that they often wield disproportionate power and influence. Take the Mormon church for example: they believe Native Americans were white Jews who were cursed with dark skin and it was god's will they be wiped out by European settlers. It's horrifically racist and there's zero evidence to support the origin story. And yet, the church holds over $100 billion in their investment portfolio alone and nearly had one of their own elected as US president. It's hard to laugh at.
- petre 5y ago
  The US is just crazy. This is especially after I've seen the people who've stormed the Capitol with Qanon t-shirts. We're practicaly neighbours with the Mormon mission here but they seem all right. Friendly, very clean, tall. It's true that they're all white.
  - jonathankoren 5y ago
    Religion fundamentalists the world over very angrily push their myths as literal facts, and often politicians have to at least somewhat indulge them. While multiple US examples are probably well known here, I’d like to suggest one from India from circa 2008, the controversy over the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal. India wanted to dig a “canal” (more like dredge a shipping channel) in the waters between India and Sri Lanka. Religious fundamentalists opposed this because it would involve cutting a natural rock formation. What so special about these rocks? Well they were placed there by Lord Ram and his army of monkeys as chronicled in the Ramayana. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sethusamudram_Shipping_Canal_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sethusamudram_Shipping_Canal_P...