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The more I read about pre-Columbian societies, the more I bemoan their quick and near-total destruction (by the Spanish and disease). So much culture created by
by mysecretaccount 5y ago
The more I read about pre-Columbian societies, the more I bemoan their quick and near-total destruction (by the Spanish and disease). So much culture created by our species about which we will never know.
- wahnfrieden 5y agoGraeber’s new work, Dawn of Everything, is the latest fascinating read on this. It thoroughly discredits trendy tellings of human history like you’ll find in Sapiens, Jared Diamond, Fukuyama, which simply don’t reflect recent research (and old research reevaluated)
- Forgeties79 5y agoGG&S came out like 20+ years ago though right? I’d hope we’ve updated our knowledge a bit since diamond’s work released! I’ll have to check out Graeber’s work. Thanks for the recc!
- wahnfrieden 5y agoIt’s not about an update, it’s turning that whole lineage of understanding on its head. Pairs well with Mark Fisher’s capitalist realism concept regardless of your politics
- rajin444 5y agoGG&S is basically a religious book given the narrative it’s trying to enforce. It’s extreme blank-slatism. It was pretty awful 20 years ago and looks even worse now.
- wahnfrieden 5y agoGraeber casts a far wider net around the colonialist/capitalist interpretation of native history that produced works like GG&S
- vba616 5y agoA book I liked that intersects with drugs, history, and South America was "Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography" by Dominic Streatfeild.
- mysecretaccount 5y agoJust purchased it. Capitalist Realism is great as well.
- wahnfrieden 5y agoevery Fisher writing is gold
- Fnoord 5y agoThe other day I learned Graeber passed away in September 2020 [1]: > Graeber was married to artist Nika Dubrovsky. He died unexpectedly in September 2020, while on vacation in Venice. His last book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, co-written with archaeologist David Wengrow, was published posthumously in 2021. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber
- ncmncm 5y agoMight be worthy of note that the society in question disappeared centuries before Pizarro showed up. By all accounts, the Inka (there was only one) was an absolute dictator, and all crimes had the death penalty. That is not to say there were not also admirable societies, or others that had admirable qualities among their less-so. Humanity is messy everywhere. And, it is tragic that present and future generations will need to re-learn what many of them discovered long ago, what of it is ever rediscovered. The inhabitants of the Amazon region perfected mixed tropical tree agriculture compatible with annual flooding, starting more than 10,000 years ago. Their society may have taken a huge hit from diseases brought by Africans early in the 14th century; archaeology reports a major bump of re-forestation about then. But it must have been diseases the Spaniards brought that permanently wiped out the whole Amazon civilization. The entheogenic drug protocols invented there, plus chocolate, manioc, and sweet potato are about all we have left of that civilization.
- wombatmobile 5y ago> it must have been diseases the Spaniards brought that permanently wiped out the whole Amazon civilization. The Spaniards didn't go deep into the Amazon. It was possible to hide from them in the jungle, which is thousands of miles deep. The whole Amazon civilisation was not wiped out. It took a giant hit in the early 20th century when the automobile industry required rubber for tires, which it got by enslaving and brutally murdering indigenous Amazonians. Then later in the 20th century vast tracts of the Amazon were converted into coffee farms. The habitat loss decimated indigenous Amazonians, but it hasn't wiped them out.
- namarie 5y ago> The Spaniards didn't go deep into the Amazon. It was possible to hide from them in the jungle, which is thousands of miles deep. Diseases spread quickly among populations. By the time the spanish showed up, the incas were already in a crisis in part due to european diseases, which were brought there by trade. There absolutely weren't big amazonian civilizations by the early 20th century, and there hadn't been any for a long time by that point.