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Ray, Thanks for the summary of Keoke and
Porterfield. I'll try to get hold of it. What strikes me is that we
can't begin to imagine the enormity of the loss of accumulated knowledge, wisdom
and civilization that occurred with the collapse of various North and South
American cultures after the turn of the 16th Century. With
regard to how that collapse took place in Central America and the Andes, one
source says the following:
In the Americas smallpox
generally entered a region within a generation after European conquest. The
disease announced its American arrival first in Hispaniola in 1518, coming
from Spain at a time before slaves reached the Spanish Indies directly from
Africa. It became epidemic in the towns in which the Spaniards were
concentrating the Arawaks of the island and massively attacked the entire
population in December 1518 ( Henige, 1986). The contagion reached the
mainland at Veracruz, probably in 1520, allegedly introduced by Francisco de
Eguía, the African slave of Pánfilo de Narváez. The epidemic then quickly spread from that mainland
beachhead to the central Mexican highlands, where it killed an estimated 3.5
million Aztecs during Cortes's classic conquest. A year or so later it raged
throughout Central America, and by the mid 1520s it had jumped south to the
Inca Empire Peru, where its widespread destruction facilitated the Pizarrist
conquest …. (The African Exchange: Toward a Biological History of Black
People. Contributors: Kenneth F. Kiple - editor. Publisher: Duke University
Press. Durham, NC. 1987)
And with regard to the impact the collapse had on
the lives of people and their communities, another source, referring to the
Mexican Basin, the area in the general area of Mexico
City, says:
While the Basin's zenith population was comparable to that of
selected European national populations, the sixteenth-century population
collapse in Mexico was incomparable to any experienced in Europe. In each of
four periods (each less than 25 years in length), the Basin's Amerindian
population declined more than 30 percent from the previous level
... . By way of comparison, estimates for the
fourteenth-century European population holocaust resulting from the Black
Death range from a loss of one-third from A.D. 1300-1400 to a 40-50 percent loss for the same period. Thus, the sixteenth-century Mexican population catastrophe
virtually equals four Black Death equivalents in the span of a single
lifetime. As dramatic as these depopulation figures are, however, it is
only through an examination of the population decline by on a more personal
level that its impact as a human event can be truly gauged.
Imagine a young adult (say 20 years of age on the eve of the conquest)
living in a village with a population of 100. If she survived to her
thirty-fifth birthday (1535), she would have witnessed her village reduced to
only 70 persons. By the time she reached middle age in 1547, a further 30
percent of the now diminished total would have perished, leaving only 49. Had
she lived to full maturity at age 69, yet another 30 percent would have been
winnowed from the "middle age" total, leaving only 34. And if she attained
great age (80), a fourth 30 percent would have been lost, leaving only
24. (Thomas M. Whitmore,
Disease and Death in Early Colonial Mexico: Simulating Amerindian
Depopulation, Westview Press, 1992)
The loss was enormous,
it was global, and despite what people have tried to do to recover some of what
was lost, it is forever irrecoverable.
Ed Weick
> You say potaytoe and I say potahtoe. You say tomaytoe and
I say Tomahtoe.
> Lets call the whole thing off.
>
> Sorry I
don't have time to do this more than cursorily but there is a good
> book
that I've been reading that begins to take over the intellectual
>
territory that has been claimed unjustly. Its called "American
Indian
> Contributions to the World, 15,000 years of Inventions and
Innovations."
> Its by a couple of wild Lakota scholars who have scoured
the literature by
> the name of Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie
Porterfield. Checkmark books.
> Amongst other things it
has several pages of comparisons between the
> Iroquois "Great Law"
and the American Constitution and descriptions of
> native roots of 19th
century European political theories borrowed from us.
> Perhaps this
cultural ill fit may have something to do with why they don't
> work
there, if your observations are correct. I can't tolerate
wheat
> glutin or lactose either and the doctors tell me the roots are in
my blood.
> Could be that cultural institutions don't travel as easily as
ideas.
>
> Keoke and Porterfield have an Encyclopedic discussion of
such things as
> Trade, Asphalt, Asepsis, and all of the games
that we now do including
> football, basketball, women's football
(remarkably like soccer which all of
> the old worlds banned women from
playing until recently). Indians
> invented the hollow
rubber balls and brought rubber to the world. They
> had
universal gender equality and much of current psycho-analytic work has
>
its roots in Native American dream techniques and free association.
The
> Gestalt psychologists studied with native practitioners in the 1950s
and
> incorporated much of the group techniques into T groups and therapy
groups
> that have found there way into modern business management as
well. And
> then there was the syringe used for such things as
enemas and it almost
> seems like we must have invented bathing
since there was so little of it
> done in Europe until quite
recently. (joke) While the Europeans didn't
> bother to boil
the water to bathe wounds until the last couple of centuries
>
pre-Columbians were bathing wounds with sterile water and using Balsam as
an
> antiseptic I realize Guy de Chauliac proposed such aseptic
practices in
> 1300 but the Europeans couldn't see the sense of it until
Joseph Lister
> "proved" it by writing it down. (not a joke)
>
> There were co-inventions of various other devices used by the
Sumerians
> about the same time such as the use for certain petroleum
products. Its an
> amazing book.
Trade? We had it from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic but
> no
draft animals so there was no reason to tear up the ground with wheels.
>
And the lists of foods that we traded? 75% of the staple food
stuffs, all
> listed, freeze dried and moved over great distances as well
as the most
> productive food plant in the world, the sweet
potato.
>
> Freedom? its built into the religion from the base up
as a part of empathy
> for the various ceremonials of
reconciliation. Trade followed.
>
> What
did those European folks trade over the silk road? We traded
long
> fiber cotton and all kinds of exotic paints, rubber products,
flint tools,
> medicines, cocoa and other foods like corn, beans squash,
peanuts etc. Our
> medicines are a cornucopia including
primitive surgeries that worked like
> "drains" for sutured wounds,
etc.
>
> The problem has always been the kind of "ignorance of the
other cultures"
> that America has shown in Iraq.
American Europeans seem to assume if they
> don't know about it then it
doesn't exist, or if a European can take a
> vacation there and spend a
few weeks then, like the anthropologists, they
> become
authorities. Well, I've spent many years doing European art
and
> culture and I know ours as well. You can't do it in a
week, a month or a
> year. Like Bel Canto voice
writings, if you "know" then books can be
> useful but if you don't know
then they are not enough to "know" what the
> other side is
doing. Like trying to learn how to sing from a book.
Not
> possible. You need holistic images to
imitate. Culture and the roots of
> conflicts are the
same. You have to experience it if you are to know.
> There
are problems, (as I have said endlessly), with writing and with book
>
learned history.
>
> Today we are beginning to fill in the holes on
our own as we get the money
> to resist the power play from the dominant
society. All of this as a
> result of having casino
wealth. Wealth is not freedom in that sense but
> power and
that gives us the power to resist the educational and economic
> slavery
of those who would keep us enslaved. The Pequot's have built
a
> world class museum next to their casino for the education of the
children.
>
> The internet is amazing and native scholars are
beginning once more to
> claim our heritage that was taken and claimed as
"inventions" for
> Imperialists. Sort of like making European
names the only official names
> for the mountains of the
world. We're taking that back too. Maybe that
>
tendency to claim common knowledge as official only when some scientist
has
> written about it and stuck his name on it could have been a part of
the root
> cause of such non-European anger amongst folks like
Islam? Who was Al
> Jabar?
>
> I guess I couldn't
"call the whole thing off." Well this is the last I
>
will write on this thread. If you want you can read the book, its
links
> and references including the roots of what we call "liberal
democratic
> theory." It seems that they document
what I have been saying about the
> roots which go back thousands of years
in this place. And what they say
> is short because it
is one volume but it opens up old roots and puts down
> new ones and
flowers mightily.
>
> REH
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