6 ms·

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archaeologists and anthropologists don't like the term 'civilization' as a whole because it's overloaded with these outdated connotations that reflect the biases of the speaker rather than anything meaningful about the society under discussion.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      Claiming outdated connotations would just be another way for some archaeologists and anthropologists to attempt to desperately run away from the fact that there were very few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doesn't fit that agenda, they start attempting to label inconvenient facts away, for example by pretending they're "outdated."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.

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.