5 ms·

People generally dont know it, but the facts/debate around the sophistication of populations thousands of years ago, and how those vary across geographies, is e

People generally dont know it, but the facts/debate around the sophistication of populations thousands of years ago, and how those vary across geographies, is extremely political. There is generally an unseen hand that dictates the narrative around the distant human past. You can pull the facts together, but the full picture is almost never presented cohesively to the non academic population.

subw00f 3y ago
How so?
- irrational 3y ago
  Like horses in the Americas. There is a narrative that horses were in the Americas, then died off, then were reintroduced by Spanish conquistadors. But, there is sporadic evidence that horses did exist in the Americas the entire time.
  - skylurk 3y ago
    Mind sharing a link to that evidence?
    - flybrand 3y ago
      Yes, or a book?
    - margalabargala 3y ago
      A representative example of the sporadic evidence mentioned is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38017332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38017332
      - jtbayly 3y ago
        That, sir, was good fun!
    - chemeng 3y ago
      I was also skeptical, seems there’s a lot more to this story. Not that they didn’t disappear and reappear, but the spread of them isn’t as straightforward as we thought. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/native-americans-spread-horses-through-the-west-earlier-than-thought-180981912/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/native-americans-s...
      - belinder 3y ago
        That article doesn't say they were there the whole time, but that they were (re)introduced a hundred years earlier via mexico
      - margalabargala 3y ago
        That's basically the same claim. This is saying "the europeans brought them, and they spread around faster than we thought". Which is interesting and fine, but that's a far cry from the above claim of "actually, that ten thousand year period where they appeared to be extinct never happened and they were around the whole time".
  - phowat 3y ago
    Honest question as I have no horse on this race (pun intended) and you picqued my curiosity. How the hell can the pre existence of horses be politicized?
    - zo1 3y ago
      I guess it adds weight to the whole "natives own this land and colonizers didn't bring anything to this land", notably as push back against the other side which is "natives are backwards and this land wasn't all that useful until we brought technology (horses)." Both caricatures ofc. But then again, they have to be because in the political arena details and facts don't matter at the end of the day as it's all about marketing.
    - irrational 3y ago
      We had a Mayan guide when we were in the Yucatan on vacation. He spent quite a bit of time pointing out proofs (as the native Mayans see them) of horses being around the entire time. He claimed to have a college degree in archaeology, but went on a rant about non-Mayan archealogists and their bias against native Mayans. Basically, he saw the disbelief against horses being around the whole time as racially motivated. Those dumb mayans don't know what they are talking about. I'm trying now to remember the proofs he was showing, but at the time I remember being pretty surprised since it seemed cut and dry.
      - biorach 3y ago
        > I'm trying now to remember the proofs he was showing I don't want to sound mean, but without any links to anything, any mentions of books, papers, even mentions of archaeological finds in local newspapers... what you're saying is just a story about someone you met who made some outlandish claims.
        ithkuil 3y ago
        Yes. My takeaway from that account wasn't that there is necessary a hidden truth, but that some people do believe there is one and such belief correlates with their identity politics. The fact that the argument appears to be cut and dry is also testament to the fact that it has been rehearsed many times and shared within that identity community
  - rozab 3y ago
    If this were true, surely it would be impossible to miss the genetic markers in modern American horses.
    - farnsworth 3y ago
      They might not have interbred- dogs existed in the Americas but left very little genetic mark. The chihuahua is a European breed that was bred to look like a dog that existed in Mexico.
  - helsinkiandrew 3y ago
    > There is a narrative that horses were in the Americas, then died off They died off (along with mammoths and lots of other large mammals) around the same time as humans arrived in the Americas and hunted them to extinction. https://news.ucsb.edu/2001/011478/humans-hunted-mammals-extinction-north-america https://news.ucsb.edu/2001/011478/humans-hunted-mammals-exti...
asimpletune 3y ago
I don’t think it’s political, but rather a matter of record. There is much more writing from Greece than the Amazon. Having the Iliad amounts to a cheat code in archaeology.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  There are certainly political threads. American westward expansion had to be justified, for example, by claiming cultural superiority over the people who were being displaced.
  - nradov 3y ago
    Most of the Americans who did the actual westward expansion didn't bother with justification. They saw the land was lightly populated and took it.
    - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
      Westward expansion was much more than individuals taking land. There were military outposts, laws passed, articles written, battles fought, court cases argued, protests, disagreements among Americans, etc. See this summary linked here and copied in full below: https://homework.study.com/explanation/how-did-americans-justify-westward-expansion.html https://homework.study.com/explanation/how-did-americans-jus... "How did Americans justify westward expansion?" "Americans justified westward expansion through the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was a term coined in the mid-1840s. It claimed that the United States was providentially designed to spread across the continent. Believing their "civilization" to be superior to Native and Mexican peoples, it supposed their lands should rightfully be part of the United States. This led to the brutal subjugation of Native tribes as millions of Americans flooded west in the decades after the Civil War."
      - 3seashells 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
opportune 3y ago
[flagged]
- RC_ITR 3y ago
  Yeah, let's keep this chain of rude and non-informative comments going! /s
marcosdumay 3y ago
Wherever the popular narrative goes, there is also a huge amount of real uncertainty about the sophistication of the people that lived at the prehistoric Amazon. The forest hides and destroys stuff extremely well.

subw00f 3y ago

How so?

irrational 3y ago
Like horses in the Americas. There is a narrative that horses were in the Americas, then died off, then were reintroduced by Spanish conquistadors. But, there is sporadic evidence that horses did exist in the Americas the entire time.
- skylurk 3y ago
  Mind sharing a link to that evidence?
  - flybrand 3y ago
    Yes, or a book?
  - margalabargala 3y ago
    A representative example of the sporadic evidence mentioned is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38017332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38017332
    - jtbayly 3y ago
      That, sir, was good fun!
  - chemeng 3y ago
    I was also skeptical, seems there’s a lot more to this story. Not that they didn’t disappear and reappear, but the spread of them isn’t as straightforward as we thought. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/native-americans-spread-horses-through-the-west-earlier-than-thought-180981912/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/native-americans-s...
    - belinder 3y ago
      That article doesn't say they were there the whole time, but that they were (re)introduced a hundred years earlier via mexico
    - margalabargala 3y ago
      That's basically the same claim. This is saying "the europeans brought them, and they spread around faster than we thought". Which is interesting and fine, but that's a far cry from the above claim of "actually, that ten thousand year period where they appeared to be extinct never happened and they were around the whole time".
- phowat 3y ago
  Honest question as I have no horse on this race (pun intended) and you picqued my curiosity. How the hell can the pre existence of horses be politicized?
  - zo1 3y ago
    I guess it adds weight to the whole "natives own this land and colonizers didn't bring anything to this land", notably as push back against the other side which is "natives are backwards and this land wasn't all that useful until we brought technology (horses)." Both caricatures ofc. But then again, they have to be because in the political arena details and facts don't matter at the end of the day as it's all about marketing.
  - irrational 3y ago
    We had a Mayan guide when we were in the Yucatan on vacation. He spent quite a bit of time pointing out proofs (as the native Mayans see them) of horses being around the entire time. He claimed to have a college degree in archaeology, but went on a rant about non-Mayan archealogists and their bias against native Mayans. Basically, he saw the disbelief against horses being around the whole time as racially motivated. Those dumb mayans don't know what they are talking about. I'm trying now to remember the proofs he was showing, but at the time I remember being pretty surprised since it seemed cut and dry.
    - biorach 3y ago
      > I'm trying now to remember the proofs he was showing I don't want to sound mean, but without any links to anything, any mentions of books, papers, even mentions of archaeological finds in local newspapers... what you're saying is just a story about someone you met who made some outlandish claims.
      - ithkuil 3y ago
        Yes. My takeaway from that account wasn't that there is necessary a hidden truth, but that some people do believe there is one and such belief correlates with their identity politics. The fact that the argument appears to be cut and dry is also testament to the fact that it has been rehearsed many times and shared within that identity community
- rozab 3y ago
  If this were true, surely it would be impossible to miss the genetic markers in modern American horses.
  - farnsworth 3y ago
    They might not have interbred- dogs existed in the Americas but left very little genetic mark. The chihuahua is a European breed that was bred to look like a dog that existed in Mexico.
- helsinkiandrew 3y ago
  > There is a narrative that horses were in the Americas, then died off They died off (along with mammoths and lots of other large mammals) around the same time as humans arrived in the Americas and hunted them to extinction. https://news.ucsb.edu/2001/011478/humans-hunted-mammals-extinction-north-america https://news.ucsb.edu/2001/011478/humans-hunted-mammals-exti...

asimpletune 3y ago

I don’t think it’s political, but rather a matter of record. There is much more writing from Greece than the Amazon. Having the Iliad amounts to a cheat code in archaeology.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
There are certainly political threads. American westward expansion had to be justified, for example, by claiming cultural superiority over the people who were being displaced.
- nradov 3y ago
  Most of the Americans who did the actual westward expansion didn't bother with justification. They saw the land was lightly populated and took it.
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    Westward expansion was much more than individuals taking land. There were military outposts, laws passed, articles written, battles fought, court cases argued, protests, disagreements among Americans, etc. See this summary linked here and copied in full below: https://homework.study.com/explanation/how-did-americans-justify-westward-expansion.html https://homework.study.com/explanation/how-did-americans-jus... "How did Americans justify westward expansion?" "Americans justified westward expansion through the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was a term coined in the mid-1840s. It claimed that the United States was providentially designed to spread across the continent. Believing their "civilization" to be superior to Native and Mexican peoples, it supposed their lands should rightfully be part of the United States. This led to the brutal subjugation of Native tribes as millions of Americans flooded west in the decades after the Civil War."
    - 3seashells 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

opportune 3y ago

[flagged]

RC_ITR 3y ago
Yeah, let's keep this chain of rude and non-informative comments going! /s

marcosdumay 3y ago

Wherever the popular narrative goes, there is also a huge amount of real uncertainty about the sophistication of the people that lived at the prehistoric Amazon. The forest hides and destroys stuff extremely well.