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Native American names extend earthquake history of northeastern North America
- micromacrofoot 2y agoColonization disregarded a lot of native data like this for hundreds of years — it's amazing that it survived through language at all. I always wonder how much we've actually lost... but we'll never really know. A similar sort of "rediscovery" happened with crop rotation and soil renewal, natives had been using various methods for centuries but they were disregarded by european settlers.
- AStonesThrow 2y agoYes, like “slash and burn” land management. And the “buffalo jump” method of chasing them off a steep cliff, falling to their death. And internecine tribal warfare, with constant usurpation of good land for farming and grazing. Good stuff: bring it all back, with the human sacrifices we’ve already renewed?
- micromacrofoot 2y agoGreat example of how people throw out the good with the bad and are seemingly incapable of navigating nuance.
- NoTeslaThrow 2y agoBack? This country was built on taking and retaining land with violence. We just call it "property" now and act like everyone thinks this is fine. we now refer to human sacrifices as "essential workers" and "terrorists". Same fundamental dynamic tho—we just replaced the gods with the economy; but either way, people gotta die to keep it running.
- AStonesThrow 2y agoWhich country? I think you'll find that the Americas and the "New World" consist of dozens of nations, and the confluence of several empires and other overseas powers which sent people here, in the capacity of explorers, evangelists, colonists, traders, you name it. And let us not discount the possibility that land in the Americas was the site of violence before 1492. Perhaps underpopulation kept that violent contention to a minimum, but surely, Indigeneous peoples learned warfare from practicing it on one another, whether in the Polynesian islands, AUS/NZ, China, or the Americas. And, White people have used more varied means other than violence in order to get around. Indeed, there has been intermarriage, and economic trade, and all sorts of peaceful, in fact quite agreeable means, of intermingling our culture with the indigeneous ones. It was the same with the Norsemen, the Vikings, the Slavs, and Celts, just to name a few: sure, there was conquest. There was violence and raping and pillaging. But there was also intermarriage and trade routes and merchants who picked up quite willing spouses. It went in both directions. Let's not attribute to violence what has also been achieved by diplomacy and peaceful means.
- NoTeslaThrow 2y agoWell, sure. But it sure as hell aint't diplomacy and peace that built this society we live in now. Or at least, not a good sort of peace. That's especially true for the US and Canada. What went on before europeans made an appearance doesn't change this observation. I'll leave defending that to the people whose world we destroyed.
- AStonesThrow 2y agoAnd yet, our borders have been peaceful for the most part, as really no foreign army has invaded the United States in a long, long time. There have been two World Wars in Europe, yet our interior has remained sacrosanct for longer than that. And the United States has established embassies and consulates all over the world. We're founding members of the U.N.; we're on the Security Council. We send humanitarian missions all over the place. Surely you cannot argue, with a straight face, that "peace and diplomacy" have not built the society we enjoy today? Peace and diplomacy are not in a vacuum for us, certainly -- there have been wars; there has been espionage; there have been terrorist attacks. But peace and diplomacy are the primary way, and a more excellent way, and they are avenues that will always be explored and exhausted before violence takes over.
- bpodgursky 2y agoNobody really knows what North American civic life was like before contact. The cities all depopulated before intensive contact due to disease. What settlers found were post-apocalyptic remnant groups.
- EdwardDiego 2y agoHuman sacrifice? ¿Que?
- engineer_22 2y ago[flagged]
- roughly 2y agoYes, lucky for all of us that the culture that showed up right before they started mysteriously dying by the millions had writing; truly fortunate that culture arrived on their shores, a thing nobody could possibly disagree with.
- WalterBright 2y agoThe accounts of how the Commanche lived nearly all come from accounts written by white people who lived among them (often taken as slaves by the Commanche). See "Empire of the Summer Moon", by Gwynne. A truly fantastic epic. I'm amazed nobody has made this into a miniseries yet. https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful/dp/1416591060/ https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful...
- neaden 2y agoCrop rotation was the standard method of planting throughout Europe in the middle ages, it certainly wasn't lost by the settlers.
- paleotrope 2y agoMost of the first colonists weren't farmers. And I believe some tricks were actually picked up in Europe and end up coming back with former enslave natives.
- micromacrofoot 2y agomost of the early european settlers were awful farmers, if they didn't lose it they were too stupid to use it - this carried on for decades
- s1artibartfast 2y agoWhy the vitriol? You don't need to rotate crops for decades with virgin soil.
- micromacrofoot 2y agowhat vitriol? they were not smart (especially the english), many of them died because they didn't prepare for winter properly... they had winter where they came from this is well documented, lots of settlements failed due to very simple mistakes and infighting at one point an english settlement lead by john smith actually raided natives out of desperation and many starved when they were cut off in response
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI guess it seems like an oversimplification and underestimation of the challenges involved.
- micromacrofoot 2y ago
- NoTeslaThrow 2y agoWell we have plenty of records of people who did pay attention. (American?) Society as a whole isn't very good at focusing on what will care about in the future. Anyway, it's not easy to turn oral history into speculation about the literal past. There's a reason such work focuses so much on geology! It's likely oral traditions encode a lot more literal history than we realize, but the ability to verify or interpret this as "history" in the western sense of "historiography" may be fundamentally impossible for large swathes of it.
- wahern 2y agoWestern disbelief in the veracity of oral traditions isn't confined to cultures outside the West. It's as strongly antagonistic, if not more so, to Western traditions. If it's not written down, it didn't happen; and if it contradicts even one scrap of written literature, it absolutely couldn't have happened, no matter how overwhelming the non-written corpus of evidence. Heck, Europe birthed an entire religion, Protestantism, predicted on "sola scriptura". OTOH, this insistence on verifiable data that can be easily shared and critiqued undergirds much technological progress. If the price to be paid in its excesses is the loss of historical knowledge, perhaps it's been worth it.
- jandrewrogers 2y agoThe history of earthquakes in New England is valuable because the long-term risks are more poorly understood than other parts of the US. We know there are a lot 5.x earthquakes, which do a lot of damage to the old European-style masonry construction which is still common there, but there is some evidence that suggests rare earthquakes are up into the 7.x range. If a 7.x earthquake occurred in New England, it would be devastating given the construction style of older buildings. Much of the US builds to very high seismic standards by global standards due to lessons paid in blood but there are still unknowns in regions like New England and a lot of construction that is not particularly seismic resistant.
- bpodgursky 2y agoNot only does brick collapse, it tends to flatten people when it collapses. Wood frame houses, even flimsy ones, are less deadly in an earthquake even if they do collapse.
- jessekv 2y agoWhat are bricks good at? Are they purely aesthetic? Structurally speaking, concrete and wood clearly have their place, bricks just seem like a worse concrete to me.
- selectodude 2y agoThey're a lot less ugly than concrete and they don't burn.
- ssl-3 2y agoIn the absence of other influences, people tend to build with whatever is both cheaper [to buy and to use] and most-available. If clay bricks are plentiful and cheaper in an area, then clay bricks tend to be used. If dimensional lumber is plentiful and cheaper, then dimensional lumber tends to be used. Same with concrete, or steel, or whatever. It varies regionally because the availability and cost of resources also vary regionally.
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- _whiteCaps_ 2y agoThis reminds me of the Inuit oral history of the location of the HMS Erebus and Terror. https://parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/nu/epaveswrecks/culture/inuit/qaujimajatuqangit https://parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/nu/epaveswrecks/culture/inui...
- bitwize 2y agoOver at the Mohegan Sun casino, there's an exhibit about Moshup, a giant from Mohegan folklore. Moshup was said to be a friendly giant to the Mohegans, the Wampanoags, and other tribes in the area, protecting them from harm from his home on Martha's Vineyard island. But he could be roused to anger; and his stomping footsteps around the New England countryside were thought to be the cause of Moodus's seismic activity. Certain geological features in Connecticut were of great importance to Mohegans, said to be Moshup's footprints (but called "the devil's footprints" by English colonists because you know, colonialism). Growing up in Connecticut, you think you're relatively safe from earthquakes... until you read about the folklore around Moodus and other seismic hot sites, from Natives and from colonists, and then you get a little bit scared...
- WalterBright 2y ago> called "the devil's footprints" by English colonists because you know, colonialism Different tribes would call same features by different names, such as the many names for Mt Rainier and Mt Denali. It's not a colonialism thing, it's a people thing.
- lizknope 2y agoCrater Lake in Oregon is a beautiful national park. Mount Mazama erupted 7,700 years ago. Native Americans lived in the area at the time and have stories about the eruption passed down through time. https://www.klamathtribesnews.org/2024/04/01/crater-lake-and-its-origins/ https://www.klamathtribesnews.org/2024/04/01/crater-lake-and... https://oe.oregonexplorer.info/craterlake/history.html https://oe.oregonexplorer.info/craterlake/history.html
- Amezarak 2y agoThere doesn't appear to be any evidence the story was passed down from the time it occurred. It's more likely the they, like other peoples throughout the world, were able to see that clearly some time in the past a major geological event had occurred and made up a story to explain it. I wouldn't totally rule it out, but the basis for this claim is very, very thin.
- ab5tract 2y agoThere is no evidence whatsoever for your baseless disregard of oral transmission of historical events.
- Amezarak 2y agoOral transmission of historical events is obviously real. That doesn't mean oral transmission of this particular event for 7700 years is real. Do you also think that two men stopped the eruption by leaping into the volcano? Or that it was actually a fight between gods? There are several other problems with the story that should make you suspicious: - There are several "tells" that if this is even a real story it has been heavily edited. Neither of the links provides a reliable narrative from an indigenous source. Also note that the "klamathtribenews" link says there are many stories about how it was formed but only tells us the one that we want to hear. - One of the articles claims the same people has occupied the area for 13k years. This is extremely unlikely, has little evidence backing it, and suggests the story is being used as part of the political justification for territorial claims. Meanwhile, we know peoples from other areas were perfectly capable of coming to a new area, then making inferences and drawing conclusions about what they saw geographically - we have lots of examples of the Greeks doing this, for example. The ideas behind geology didn't spring out of a vacuum in the 1800s. Anyone who understands the idea behind "volcano" would have also understood why a crater lake existed, even if they had never seen that eruption.