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Kind of wild to think that all these uncontacted tribes could actually be more like post-apocalyptic survivors rather than a glimpse at our distant neolithic pa
by Bjorkbat 3y ago
Kind of wild to think that all these uncontacted tribes could actually be more like post-apocalyptic survivors rather than a glimpse at our distant neolithic past.
Definitely more fun to speculate about.
- hamburga 3y agoThe same holds for most surviving hunter-gatherer groups across the world. Survivorship bias in the extreme. The only survivors are ones in fringe habitats away from the best productive land. We have no view into the larger, richer, more complex cultures that were the norm back then.
- carlosjobim 3y ago> The only survivors They're not survivors any more than anybody else alive today. And their relatives are still on the best productive land, but assimilated into a different culture.
- dividedbyzero 3y agoTheir cultures are (more or less) survivors from a time when their mode of subsistence was the norm even on (most of) the best productive land. We know majority hunter-gatherer lifestyles have been incredibly diverse, but almost all detailed records deal with people on very marginal land that have all been influenced by industrial societies in more or less direct ways, because those were the only ones still available when people started recording them at least semi-properly. Our window into that past is more like a single discolored piece out of a huge intricate stained-glass window. Judging by the impact that indigenous societies and indigenous philosophy from the Americas had on contemporary European thought in the 18th century, it's not a stretch to assume that we've lost a ton of hard-won and almost irreplaceable data on what makes humans function as they do when part of a society and what alternatives to our modern societies work as well or possibly even better.
- stubish 3y agoThe histories often talk about empty or sparsely populated lands. Which in some cases is dramatically different to what archaeology tells us. Either the historians were lying, or the diseases spread faster than the explorers. The jungle will quickly claim abandoned settlements, in merely years.
- hamburga 3y agoFor the best kind of informed speculation, see “The Dawn of Everything” by Graeber and Wengrow.
- kridsdale1 3y agoThis applies to most of the American lore about “Indians” as well. The people that nearly all European descent settlers encountered were many generations on from an utter cataclysm of continental plagues that nearly eradicated them, and certainly destroyed what advanced civilization they had pre-Columbus. The white people didn’t know they were devastating the native Americans, but they were super off-base to judge them as savages when it’s far more accurate to say that the natives who did contact and conflict with the young USA and Canada were more like post-nuclear-holocaust survivors.
- dendrite9 3y agoI've been reading Indigenous Continent by Pekka Hämäläinen recently, I picked it up now that it is available as a paperback. The history is fascinating and I highly recommend it with the note that I'm ~1/3 of the way through. Early on in the book he describes the rise of Cahokia and other Mississippian societies in America as tied to the climate in the medieval warm period. And how during the Little Ice age the priestly class could not create good conditions for agriculture, which undermined their power at a time when crops were failing and hunting became a dominant food source.
- kridsdale1 3y agoFascinating.
- NSMutableSet 3y agoCheck out https://www.sidis.net/TSContents.htm https://www.sidis.net/TSContents.htm I initially came across this book due to a Reddit post about the author being a failed child prodigy. My first thought on seeing the table of contents was "damn, this book sounds racist". But it's actually a series of historical accounts in support of Native Americans and their history.
- atombender 3y agoThis looks... dubious. The starting point postulating that America was populated by people from the lost continent of Atlantis does not inspire confidence in this account's historical accuracy: > An origin as a race in some specific place is more probable―most likely, in some region now under the Atlantic Ocean. ... A red-race civilization certainly developed around the north central Atlantic region on both sides of the ocean, and the geographical center of this was in what is now the Sargasso sea, in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, but where tradition on both sides of the ocean places the lost continent of Atlantis.
- zwilliamson 3y agoGraham Hitchcock writes some amazing books that offer insightful possibilities to our past. He typically bucks main stream archeology theories
- tazjin 3y agoI think you mean Graham Hancock. He has a couple of very interesting recent podcast appearances also, and was gonna do a debate with a mainstream archeologist (who unfortunately backed out for now due to health issues, but I hope it'll still take place at some point!)
- Hikikomori 3y agoThere is much better fiction to read though.
- falseprofit 3y agoWhen the entire field of archaeology experts calls someone out as a crank, you should really ask yourself if you have a good reason to know better than them.
- darkhorse13 3y agoWow definitely breaking new ground with that critique of Hancock!
- wholinator2 3y agoBreaking new ground here with the sarcasm as well. If you have a substantive comment to make please do. I don't hate the guy but we have the amazing opportunity to have an actual conversation about facts through the internet, empty remarks aren't necessary here
- mista2nith 3y ago[dead]
- rfwhyte 3y ago
- huppeldepup 3y agoThis reminds me of something I heard archeologists discuss in the "Time Team" series I used to binge. I the UK, when the Roman Empire fell/collapsed, the populace didn't pick up and continue the Roman's tech (bath houses, currency, ...) but simply reverted to pre-roman tech of mud/wood/stone. They left the city to pick up farming again.
- atombender 3y agoFrom what I've read, this is because the Romans didn't try to integrate the British people into Roman society, in contrast with many other societies they conquered. They kept the populace at an arm's length and lived in enclaves away from the hoi polloi, which meant that most people didn't really benefit that much from the "tech" until the Romans finally left; the monuments, buildings, and fortifications (including, famously, Hadrian's wall and the forum basilica) were used as quarries to extract building materials for what came after.
- dsq 3y agoA bit like the cover of that old Kansas album that showed tribal members in the shadow of a ruined freeway (great art, I don't know about the music).