Yes, we were born in blood...

[Mithrae]

Possibly, the whole Hitler and Nazi thing could have been avoided altogether. That is a better outcome. Would Europe then resemble the Europe of our reality? That may or may not be. Hard to tell.

The greatest crimes against humanity? Human history is a story of people taking over the land of other people. The settling of North America is nothing unique at all. Anyway, it's difficult to see how that area would be anything but a hellhole of poverty and disease had the natives been simply left alone. The European diseases would still have ravaged the population. Besides, it's unlikely in the extreme that there would have been anything resembling the unified and prosperous nations that exist today.

The conquest of the Americas isn't a unique type of event, but the scale - two whole continents overrun over a few centuries, with something like an 80% decline in previous native populations numbering 50-100 million - certainly puts it high on the list of worst genocides in human history. Much of that decline was due to disease, and you're right that that would have been a problem regardless; but the impact would have been much lower if there was only limited exposure from a handful of European coastal/trading settlements. Beyond that, we have no idea what would or would not have happened. Why assume that native tribes wouldn't eventually draw together in the face of shared potential danger from overseas? Or maybe those which traded with Europeans and gained access to their firearms and horses would have begun their own wars of conquest.

Had the Jews been left alone in Europe, had the holocaust never taken place, then Europe would still be peaceful and prosperous. There is no evidence that the attempt to remove the Jews hand any sort of a positive outcome at all. That's just not a very good analogy at all.

It was one of the biggest and most confronting events leading people around the world to recognise how ugly racism generally and white supremicism specifically are. Perhaps more importantly, it's provided countless internet debaters with the appropriate figure for comparison to anyone who disagrees with their viewpoint.

Pretty much nothing in history is black and white, either 100% good or 100% bad. Undoubtedly there have been some good consequences, real or potential, from the European conquest of the Americas. But your "Don't cry for the societies that have fallen by the wayside" comment (ie, been overrun and largely exterminated) and celebration for the perpetrators, based merely on guesses about those good consequences is very much a back to front approach. Possible incidental benefits centuries after the fact do not make the conquest any less horrific, and it would be nice to think that if we could go back in time, most of us on this forum including yourself would not condone or participate in it.

 

[Northern Light]

We all grew up through a post-colonial lens, so all the "what ifs" about the past and speculation aren't really going to add up to anything. It's like trying to reverse engineer the butterfly effect -- aint gonna happen.

What we do know is that North American natives, going all the way down to South America, had the most advanced agricultural systems the world has ever known. Their systems were entirely earth based, sustainable, and provided food for millions of people year round, especially in the sub-tropics and tropics. All that knowledge has since been lost. Their knowledge of earth cycles, hunter-gathering, and observations of human interactions with nature spanning thousands of years of cultural evolution have also been lost. We dismissed them as savages and that attitude prevails even in this thread with suggestions of primitivism being projected onto peoples that we can only scarcely understand now. Looking back at native society and referring to them as tribes with sticks and stones is completely overlooking the advancements that they had.

Is our world really that much more advanced, given that we can't seem to co-exist with the Earth's ecosystems without causing extinctions on massive levels? Destroying the environment? Leaving gradually diminishing chances for future generations to eke out a stable existence? I question our notion of who is more "advanced".

The rest of the discussion that tries to equivocate about how America could've been worse, and that we were more benevolent somehow, is just... presumptuous. Are there any native people in this thread, or on DP? Because it seems like the people making these statements are the ones who are participants in the privileged culture that displaced these people. I'd much rather hear from the ones who were on the rotten end of that deal.

 

[ajn678]

We all grew up through a post-colonial lens, so all the "what ifs" about the past and speculation aren't really going to add up to anything. It's like trying to reverse engineer the butterfly effect -- aint gonna happen.

What we do know is that North American natives, going all the way down to South America, had the most advanced agricultural systems the world has ever known. Their systems were entirely earth based, sustainable, and provided food for millions of people year round, especially in the sub-tropics and tropics. All that knowledge has since been lost. Their knowledge of earth cycles, hunter-gathering, and observations of human interactions with nature spanning thousands of years of cultural evolution have also been lost. We dismissed them as savages and that attitude prevails even in this thread with suggestions of primitivism being projected onto peoples that we can only scarcely understand now. Looking back at native society and referring to them as tribes with sticks and stones is completely overlooking the advancements that they had.

Is our world really that much more advanced, given that we can't seem to co-exist with the Earth's ecosystems without causing extinctions on massive levels? Destroying the environment? Leaving gradually diminishing chances for future generations to eke out a stable existence? I question our notion of who is more "advanced".

The rest of the discussion that tries to equivocate about how America could've been worse, and that we were more benevolent somehow, is just... presumptuous. Are there any native people in this thread, or on DP? Because it seems like the people making these statements are the ones who are participants in the privileged culture that displaced these people. I'd much rather hear from the ones who were on the rotten end of that deal.

You seem to be forgetting about the massive amounts of war, human sacrifice, and superstition many of these people also took part in. Or was that somehow part of their incredible civilization as well?

 

[Dittohead not!]

Like I said, there are still cultures that use even less technology than the Natives, and they're doing perfectly well. Technology is not the only barometer of the advancement of a society. There's also ethics, skill sets, art, longevity, social cohesion (we seem to always forget how important that is for humanity)...

You know, I've watched some documentaries about supposedly "simpler" societies, and it always occur to me how useless I would be if I were to be dropped into one of them tomorrow. Not because their lives seem so "hard," but because they have vast swaths of knowledge that I simply don't, as a Westerner. These people have hundreds of plant names in their head, all with associated uses and dangers. They know how to make surprisingly devastating weapons by hand. Build their own houses in less than 2 hours. Climb 60 feet in the air in under 2 minutes. I can't do any of those things. They're so good at what they do that, in fact, they work fewer hours in a day than most Westerners do.

Our societies use totally different skill sets. My skill set isn't useful to them, nor is theirs useful to me.

Just because they don't care about fancy underwear and firearms doesn't mean they're not "evolved." And in terms of evolution, which let's keep in mind is a long-term game, they're more likely to survive than we are. They understand that the environment has a finite ability to support them and they need to stay within that boundary -- something we tend to forget a lot. Lots of societies have perished for having the mindset we do.

That's what I'm saying; no one knows how things would have gone if America simply didn't exist. So for you to claim America's non-existence would lead to worldwide fascism is ridiculous.

But what I'm saying is that there was no inherent reason things between European settlers and Natives even had to come to a head in the first place. There was plenty of space, and some of our favorite places to be are places the Natives didn't even want. It was senseless, and born of a total lack of humanity on the part of the settlers.

There are a few stone age cultures with maybe a few dozen members in Brazil, and, I think, Borneo and elsewhere. To say they are doing "perfectly well" is to ignore the fact that their numbers are few and dwindling rapidly. The idea that the entire of North America could have modern society existing side by side with stone age hunter gatherers in any significant numbers simply can't be supported.

It would be equally difficult to support the idea that, were North America populated by a few thousand different tribes of such hunter gatherers the world would be anything like as prosperous is it is now. Would Europe be living under fascism? That I don't know, but I can be pretty sure that, without the intervention of the USA during WWII the odds of that would be much greater. Even if Stalin and his USSR had prevailed against the Nazis and Imperial Japan, the odds of any sort of democracy emerging from such a conflict are pretty long.

 

[Dittohead not!]

We all grew up through a post-colonial lens, so all the "what ifs" about the past and speculation aren't really going to add up to anything. It's like trying to reverse engineer the butterfly effect -- aint gonna happen.

What we do know is that North American natives, going all the way down to South America, had the most advanced agricultural systems the world has ever known. Their systems were entirely earth based, sustainable, and provided food for millions of people year round, especially in the sub-tropics and tropics. All that knowledge has since been lost. Their knowledge of earth cycles, hunter-gathering, and observations of human interactions with nature spanning thousands of years of cultural evolution have also been lost. We dismissed them as savages and that attitude prevails even in this thread with suggestions of primitivism being projected onto peoples that we can only scarcely understand now. Looking back at native society and referring to them as tribes with sticks and stones is completely overlooking the advancements that they had.

Is our world really that much more advanced, given that we can't seem to co-exist with the Earth's ecosystems without causing extinctions on massive levels? Destroying the environment? Leaving gradually diminishing chances for future generations to eke out a stable existence? I question our notion of who is more "advanced".

The rest of the discussion that tries to equivocate about how America could've been worse, and that we were more benevolent somehow, is just... presumptuous. Are there any native people in this thread, or on DP? Because it seems like the people making these statements are the ones who are participants in the privileged culture that displaced these people. I'd much rather hear from the ones who were on the rotten end of that deal.

There may be some people whose ancestors were native Americans, I don't know. There is no one from those hunter gatherer societies posting here, as they had no computers nor even a written language.

You really should examine the idea of the noble savage. It's been pretty definitively debunked.

 

[SmokeAndMirrors]

There are a few stone age cultures with maybe a few dozen members in Brazil, and, I think, Borneo and elsewhere. To say they are doing "perfectly well" is to ignore the fact that their numbers are few and dwindling rapidly. The idea that the entire of North America could have modern society existing side by side with stone age hunter gatherers in any significant numbers simply can't be supported.

It would be equally difficult to support the idea that, were North America populated by a few thousand different tribes of such hunter gatherers the world would be anything like as prosperous is it is now. Would Europe be living under fascism? That I don't know, but I can be pretty sure that, without the intervention of the USA during WWII the odds of that would be much greater. Even if Stalin and his USSR had prevailed against the Nazis and Imperial Japan, the odds of any sort of democracy emerging from such a conflict are pretty long.

Actually there's dozens of them all over the world. But you're missing the point: the entire REASON they do so well is because they keep their numbers low. Humans are very high-resource critters.

Low numbers does not equal unsuccessful. For many types of critters, low numbers are ideal. For example, practically all mid-to-large sized predators. They need to keep their numbers relatively low in order to survive, because if they don't, they'll starve to death because they consume a lot due to the low energy levels of their food. That does not make them unsuccessful; quite the opposite. They're doing what they need to in order to ensure the continuity of their species.

In evolutionary terms, we have yet to prove we're better. They've lasted much longer, and with much greater stability than we've ever had. Remember, evolution is a long game, and a question of balance, not conquest. Conquest almost always results in collapse eventually. If one species takes over everything, it inevitably winds up dying itself, because none of us are lone pillars. We need the rest of the ecosystem to survive. And us ignoring that fact has killed off high-tech societies before, as I said.

Why not? Even now, America is relatively sparsely populated compared to almost anywhere in the West except for Canada. Some of the places Natives like living STILL don't have any significant number of Westerners living there. We killed them just for the sake of it. We're not even using that land.

Depends how you define prosperous. Sheer technological wealth is not the only barometer. There are some definite upsides to much lower rates of war and much cleaner environments, which lower technology societies tend to have.

Well, that's a stupid assumption, because you're basing it on assuming that everything in European history up to WWII would have been exactly the same even if Europe had completely ignored the New World hundreds of years earlier. That's preposterous, and you have nothing to support that.

Your mentality is how this happened to begin with. Their disinterest in fancy underwear made settlers see them as "unevolved," so somehow that meant it was ok to just kill them off. It's disgusting that some people still haven't learned from this in 2016.

 

[Northern Light]

You seem to be forgetting about the massive amounts of war, human sacrifice, and superstition many of these people also took part in. Or was that somehow part of their incredible civilization as well?

I really hate this rebuttal. It's one of the first things that comes up in these discussions.

Yes they were at war with each other periodically, like we go to war now. Does that mean their achievements deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth, their people genocided with disease?

Bringing up their violent tendencies is part of the savagery commentary in order to divide the issue.

 

[Fishking]

With very little European contact, I think the indigenous people of north America's cultures would've evolved and progressed. It wouldn't have paralleled European society or culture, though they would've progressed in some fashion.

Errr...no. There is pretty much no example of tribal people advancing very well into the modern era. They basically assimilate the dregs of what they can get from the more developed parts of the world.

 

[joG]

Much as I hate to agree, even in the slightest, with the hate-America-first crowd, I have to admit much of our history is drenched in blood and our nation built on selfish and callous acts.


Every square foot of land was taken from the Native population, typically by force. We didn't quite commit genocide... but we tried. In a fit of conscience we let the survivors live on bits and pieces of land we didn't really want. Pretty damn harsh.

It is also true this story is repeated in history endlessly... almost every nation that exists does so because it took the land by force from someone else who was there before them. Google the Celts, Angles, Saxons and Jutes... throw in Normans and stir with a sword.

That doesn't make it RIGHT... but it does make it common practice. The only reason fingers get pointed at us over it is that it was relatively recent history, and because we let some Natives live and retain their tribal identity... in many cases the conquerors were less tolerant. There is no Reservation for Celts and Jutes in Britain... there remain a few Ainu in northern Japan, but they keep that very quiet.


Yes, we kept slaves. So has virtually every other nation on Earth, at some point. We get smacked about it because we were among the last to give it up. Well, if you don't count places where literal or de-facto slavery is STILL practiced, like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, certain Eastern Euro countries...


Yes, it took a long time for the freed slaves to be integrated into society at large and become full fledged citizens with full rights. We were also kind of harsh on immigrant Chinese and Irish for a time. Yes, this was a Bad Thing.

Again, though, a rather common theme in history: treating those whose appearance and culture differ from the norm as less than full citizens, or less than equal. We're hardly alone in that... try being a Christian in Saudi Arabia, or a Jew in Iran, or a Korean in Japan, and see if you're treated differently. Try being an Uighur in Han-dominated China...



Then there are all those foreign wars of the past 50 years... Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Afganistan, Iraq II, and our bombing wars or support of civil war in Libya, Syria, and so forth... yes, we were looking out for our economic and political interests. Yes, we shed blood over oil. Yes, we were looking after our Big Money concerns and ambitions of dominating world politics.


So has every other nation that became a World Power in history, from the Persians and Romans to the Chinese and Japanese Empires; from the colonial powers of Spain, France and Britain, to the Soviets and finally to America.

Yeah, it isn't nice to have some outsider bomb the **** out of your country and tell you that you can't invade your neighbors and build a regional hegemony, if you're on the receiving end.



But frankly we're a lot more gentle about it than most historical empires. The Romans crucified rebels by the thousands and enslaved conquered nations by the millions. More recently, look up Nanking/Nanjing Massacre, the Bataan Death March, and the Holocaust.

The Brits were a relatively civilized and benign Empire, but even they had their share of atrocities: The Amritsar Massacre in India, the "Chinese Resettlement", the Boer Concentration Camps, and more.

The Soviets and Red China were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions in the 20th century.

For today... well, look at what ISIS is doing in territory it has conquered.


What does Imperial America do? Well, we kick your Army's ass... we TRY not to kill too many civilians... we overthrow your dictator, rebuild your country, and give you a shot at democracy... THEN we GO AWAY saying "Now behave yourself, mmkay?"


Germany and Japan seem to be doing fairly well for themselves...



IN short, yeah we've been bad... but really no worse than everyone else and in many ways better.



So maybe you hate-America-firsters could be a little more forgiving to your own nation... and possibly even recognize that America is not the great evil in the world, that the world would not exactly join hands and sing Kum-ba-ya if big evil America disappeared from the scene...

I always like to contemplate long gone curiosities and look for patterns and things history might tell us about the species. But you might as well forget trying to appease America haters. They have other agendas of peeve that they use to their own purposes among their peers. So, better just keep an eye on them and the old club oiled and ready for the swing.

 

[chromium]

i have to laugh at the profound arrogance of "germany and japan seem to be doing ok"

the soviets by far had the bigger impact on liberating europe, and it sure wasn't to "give you a shot at democracy", nor was that the american intention. They only entered the conflict after being attacked themselves

your point about the bloody history behind every current government is mostly correct though

 

[ajn678]

I really hate this rebuttal. It's one of the first things that comes up in these discussions.

Yes they were at war with each other periodically, like we go to war now. Does that mean their achievements deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth, their people genocided with disease?

Bringing up their violent tendencies is part of the savagery commentary in order to divide the issue.

No its not. You pain them as some peace loving group of advanced brilliance. When in fact, they slaughtered tons of their own and others in war and child/human sacrifices. Bringing up their violence tendencies is part of being truthful about the past, which is often fabricated by people like yourself.

 

[Northern Light]

No its not. You pain them as some peace loving group of advanced brilliance. When in fact, they slaughtered tons of their own and others in war and child/human sacrifices. Bringing up their violence tendencies is part of being truthful about the past, which is often fabricated by people like yourself.

Um who are you talking about? In Canada alone there are 52 First Nations. In the past some were routinely violent and some weren't. Some had slaves while others didn't.

Mentioning the agricultural brilliance of some is hardly painting them as a peace loving group. They were flawed humans just like we were. But they were advanced in ways that we are not, and that is worth pointing out anytime people try to paint them as primitives that we "civilized". North America wasn't a new world, it was a very old world with ancient cultures already here.

You need to check your reading comprehension and stop being so defensive. And while you're at it, don't put words in my mouth that I never said.

 

[ajn678]

Um who are you talking about? In Canada alone there are 52 First Nations. In the past some were routinely violent and some weren't. Some had slaves while others didn't.

Mentioning the agricultural brilliance of some is hardly painting them as a peace loving group. They were flawed humans just like we were. But they were advanced in ways that we are not, and that is worth pointing out anytime people try to paint them as primitives that we "civilized". North America wasn't a new world, it was a very old world with ancient cultures already here.

You need to check your reading comprehension and stop being so defensive. And while you're at it, don't put words in my mouth that I never said.

Please give examples of ways that they were more advanced than we are currently.

 

[Gaugingcatenate]

The conquest of the Americas isn't a unique type of event, but the scale - two whole continents overrun over a few centuries, with something like an 80% decline in previous native populations numbering 50-100 million - certainly puts it high on the list of worst genocides in human history. Much of that decline was due to disease, and you're right that that would have been a problem regardless; but the impact would have been much lower if there was only limited exposure from a handful of European coastal/trading settlements. Beyond that, we have no idea what would or would not have happened. Why assume that native tribes wouldn't eventually draw together in the face of shared potential danger from overseas? Or maybe those which traded with Europeans and gained access to their firearms and horses would have begun their own wars of conquest.

Really, you are going to blame those Europeans arriving on continent with the purposeful killing of most of the native population by a disease? Genocide? Can we be just a tad bit more objective in the approach?

While you accept that disease did most of the damage, why would you therefore place so much blame on Europeans? Does anyone blame China, accuse it of genocide bringing the Black Plague to Europe wiping out a third to a half the population? The germ theory of disease didn't come about until the mid 1500s by which time the populations of North and South America had already been touched, the diseases already introduced upon which they most certainly would spread like wildfire... much less if you consider that idea of germ theory was by no means agreed upon nor universal at the time, besides being already too late. Nor would there have been a plan, especially a shared comprehensive plan used by all colonizing nations, in place to limit exposure to those vulnerable natives here at the time.

Its just a slight bit ludicrous to assert.

Many believe that there had already been what you called for, limited exposure with a handful of coastal/trading settlements. Vikings, the Basques, the Irish and Scots probably already having arrived prior to Columbus, Cristobal Colon as he is known down here.

Another question is the 50-100 million native population figure. Be interesting to figure out if that many mostly hunter gatherers could be supported by the natural environment of that time... and would we not have seen more evidence of destruction of natural resources if so?

 

[Dittohead not!]

Actually there's dozens of them all over the world. But you're missing the point: the entire REASON they do so well is because they keep their numbers low. Humans are very high-resource critters.

Low numbers does not equal unsuccessful. For many types of critters, low numbers are ideal. For example, practically all mid-to-large sized predators. They need to keep their numbers relatively low in order to survive, because if they don't, they'll starve to death because they consume a lot due to the low energy levels of their food. That does not make them unsuccessful; quite the opposite. They're doing what they need to in order to ensure the continuity of their species.

In evolutionary terms, we have yet to prove we're better. They've lasted much longer, and with much greater stability than we've ever had. Remember, evolution is a long game, and a question of balance, not conquest. Conquest almost always results in collapse eventually. If one species takes over everything, it inevitably winds up dying itself, because none of us are lone pillars. We need the rest of the ecosystem to survive. And us ignoring that fact has killed off high-tech societies before, as I said.

Why not? Even now, America is relatively sparsely populated compared to almost anywhere in the West except for Canada. Some of the places Natives like living STILL don't have any significant number of Westerners living there. We killed them just for the sake of it. We're not even using that land.

Depends how you define prosperous. Sheer technological wealth is not the only barometer. There are some definite upsides to much lower rates of war and much cleaner environments, which lower technology societies tend to have.

Well, that's a stupid assumption, because you're basing it on assuming that everything in European history up to WWII would have been exactly the same even if Europe had completely ignored the New World hundreds of years earlier. That's preposterous, and you have nothing to support that.

Your mentality is how this happened to begin with. Their disinterest in fancy underwear made settlers see them as "unevolved," so somehow that meant it was ok to just kill them off. It's disgusting that some people still haven't learned from this in 2016.

It actually had nothing to do with their lack of interest in "fancy underwear." It had to do with the superiority of civilization vs. hunter gatherer societies that started in Mesopotamia about ten thousand or so years ago and began to spread.

I'm not sure just where you think such societies could exist in modern day North America, particularly not in anything like the numbers that existed prior to Columbus' voyages.

And animals don't limit their numbers. The biological imperative for animals is to reproduce. What keeps the herbivores in check is the presence of carnivores. What limits the number of carnivores is the availability of food, i.e., herbivores. Humans were, still are, apex predators. Their numbers are limited by the availability of food. Once their prey is hunted to extinction, they move on or die out just like any other predator.

Once agriculture and animal husbandry began to replace hunting and gathering, the carrying capacity of the Earth improved dramatically. That's really why more modern cultures have been replacing the old hunter gatherers.

 

[SmokeAndMirrors]

It actually had nothing to do with their lack of interest in "fancy underwear." It had to do with the superiority of civilization vs. hunter gatherer societies that started in Mesopotamia about ten thousand or so years ago and began to spread.

I'm not sure just where you think such societies could exist in modern day North America, particularly not in anything like the numbers that existed prior to Columbus' voyages.

And animals don't limit their numbers. The biological imperative for animals is to reproduce. What keeps the herbivores in check is the presence of carnivores. What limits the number of carnivores is the availability of food, i.e., herbivores. Humans were, still are, apex predators. Their numbers are limited by the availability of food. Once their prey is hunted to extinction, they move on or die out just like any other predator.

Once agriculture and animal husbandry began to replace hunting and gathering, the carrying capacity of the Earth improved dramatically. That's really why more modern cultures have been replacing the old hunter gatherers.

So basically you're just going to ignore everything I said, and indeed evolutionary theory itself, in order to feel superior to a bunch of people America genocided.

Ok then. Whatever.

 

[Northern Light]

Please give examples of ways that they were more advanced than we are currently.

Here's a decent documentary that talks about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FItlStGMY4

They had sustainable food systems, unlike our current ones.

 

[blaxshep]

Here's a decent documentary that talks about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FItlStGMY4

They had sustainable food systems, unlike our current ones.

They also had sustainable numbers.

 

[Winchester]

Perhaps, but it is debatable. The natives tribes had not advanced a great deal in the previous 300 years...

No reason to evolve when resources are abundant.

 

[HenryChinaski]

The Mississippians left thousands of temple mountains and geometric earthworks along the lands of the Mississippi river valleys in settlement patterns so dense that when the Arkansas archaeological Society put all 21,700 sights on a computerized map it showed thoroughly settled state by the 1300s. I've been to Cahokia. It's vast and amazing. These people weren't as primitive as many people believe.

 

[Mithrae]

Really, you are going to blame those Europeans arriving on continent with the purposeful killing of most of the native population by a disease? Genocide? Can we be just a tad bit more objective in the approach?

While you accept that disease did most of the damage, why would you therefore place so much blame on Europeans? Does anyone blame China, accuse it of genocide bringing the Black Plague to Europe wiping out a third to a half the population?

If China had travelled over land and sea, conquered its way across the continent directly killing tens if not hundreds of thousands, and dispossessed and displaced millions of others, then yes. I think any even remotely objective person would also hold them accountable for all the 'accidental' consequences of such intensive forced exposure and social disruption.

Many believe that there had already been what you called for, limited exposure with a handful of coastal/trading settlements. Vikings, the Basques, the Irish and Scots probably already having arrived prior to Columbus, Cristobal Colon as he is known down here.

And that limited contact between Europeans and native Americans did not result in a mass depopulation of the entire continent, did it? Limited exposure means limited infection rates; had the Europeans from Columbus onwards honoured the territorial integrity of the local nations and restricted themselves to a handful of coastal trading settlements, far fewer Americans would have died. Perhaps a tenth or even a fifth of the deaths were utterly inavoidable, and therefore not blameworthy; but the remaining tens of millions of deaths from warfare, massacres, dispossession and displacement, and forced exposure (and in at least some documented cases through deliberate infection) still constitute one of the greatest genocides in human history, by any reasonable measure.

Another question is the 50-100 million native population figure. Be interesting to figure out if that many mostly hunter gatherers could be supported by the natural environment of that time... and would we not have seen more evidence of destruction of natural resources if so?

1500 years ealier the Roman Empire had over 50 million inhabitants, in an area perhaps a quarter the size of the American continents. Many (if not most) native American nations practiced agriculture. Wikipedia lists three or four recent scholars' estimates upwards of 50 million, and I see no reason to doubt that number.

 

[ajn678]

Here's a decent documentary that talks about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FItlStGMY4

They had sustainable food systems, unlike our current ones.

Couldn't get more than a few minutes into this without having to stop from the amount of factual errors in the "documentary".

 

[Goshin]

It actually had nothing to do with their lack of interest in "fancy underwear." It had to do with the superiority of civilization vs. hunter gatherer societies that started in Mesopotamia about ten thousand or so years ago and began to spread.

I'm not sure just where you think such societies could exist in modern day North America, particularly not in anything like the numbers that existed prior to Columbus' voyages.

And animals don't limit their numbers. The biological imperative for animals is to reproduce. What keeps the herbivores in check is the presence of carnivores. What limits the number of carnivores is the availability of food, i.e., herbivores. Humans were, still are, apex predators. Their numbers are limited by the availability of food. Once their prey is hunted to extinction, they move on or die out just like any other predator.

Once agriculture and animal husbandry began to replace hunting and gathering, the carrying capacity of the Earth improved dramatically. That's really why more modern cultures have been replacing the old hunter gatherers.

Correct.


The single biggest reason the conquest by the colonists was inevitable isn't guns, it is agriculture.


I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but the amount of wilderness required to support one hunter-gatherer family could, using colonial era agriculture, feed hundreds of colonial families.


We were able to immigrate and breed numbers they couldn't match as long as they stuck with hunter-gatherer, slash-and-burn subsistence strategies. That's the main reason we took over.


Some Natives, some of my ancestors among them, recognized this early and adopted Colonial style farming and living, intermarried with the colonists and largely avoided being shipped off to the Reservations.


The guns and cannon didn't hurt, either, but the Natives obtained and used those as fast as they could also, and it didn't make the difference. We had long-term numbers, and large-scale organization, made possible by relatively advanced agriculture.

 

[Gaugingcatenate]

If China had travelled over land and sea, conquered its way across the continent directly killing tens if not hundreds of thousands, and dispossessed and displaced millions of others, then yes. I think any even remotely objective person would also hold them accountable for all the 'accidental' consequences of such intensive forced exposure and social disruption.

Yes, of course, why didn't I recognize you get to set the rules, ah ah hahaha. How do you think China became China? Oh yeah, my bad, I forgot, they all joined hands and sang the Chinese version of Kumbaya. It was known as Imperial China. They killed plenty of folks along the way and did, in fact, bring the plague by sea.

Oh, and when the Spanish arrived the Incas themselves were in a war of Conquest southwards, so don't make like they are anything near being angels.

And that limited contact between Europeans and native Americans did not result in a mass depopulation of the entire continent, did it? Limited exposure means limited infection rates; had the Europeans from Columbus onwards honoured the territorial integrity of the local nations and restricted themselves to a handful of coastal trading settlements, far fewer Americans would have died. Perhaps a tenth or even a fifth of the deaths were utterly inavoidable, and therefore not blameworthy; but the remaining tens of millions of deaths from warfare, massacres, dispossession and displacement, and forced exposure (and in at least some documented cases through deliberate infection) still constitute one of the greatest genocides in human history, by any reasonable measure.

You talk like they knew, like there was some kind of game board and rules which all played by... and they were cheating somehow. Malarkey. That is just too idealistic and it is just European bashing. Expansion and Imperialism were how it was done.

Read the very well thought out and written OP again. Its not like the rest of the world had a very different and very pacifistic history.

By the way, the myth of the noble savage was just that, there was warfare within tribes, with other tribes, hell Europeans and Americans used them to fight other Europeans as well as other Indians. They were a warrior culture. They did a lot of massacring, kidnapping scalping and torture right back to us. Again, they were no angels.

Oh, and the cases of deliberate infection are a bit exaggerated, biased, definitely questionable.

1500 years ealier the Roman Empire had over 50 million inhabitants, in an area perhaps a quarter the size of the American continents. Many (if not most) native American nations practiced agriculture. Wikipedia lists three or four recent scholars' estimates upwards of 50 million, and I see no reason to doubt that number.

Yes, and you know, there are still a lot of indications of just where the Romans were, their impact is still very apparent. Not so much with the native populations which were mainly nomadic and hunter gatherers still. No use arguing it as nobody knows for sure and the estimates vary widely.

 

[Mithrae]

Yes, of course, why didn't I recognize you get to set the rules, ah ah hahaha. How do you think China became China? Oh yeah, my bad, I forgot, they all joined hands and sang the Chinese version of Kumbaya. It was known as Imperial China. They killed plenty of folks along the way and did, in fact, bring the plague by sea.

Oh, and when the Spanish arrived the Incas themselves were in a war of Conquest southwards, so don't make like they are anything near being angels.



You talk like they knew, like there was some kind of game board and rules which all played by... and they were cheating somehow. Malarkey. That is just too idealistic and it is just European bashing. Expansion and Imperialism were how it was done.

Read the very well thought out and written OP again. Its not like the rest of the world had a very different and very pacifistic history.

I never even remotely implied that native Americans were angels - where did you pull that out of? Actually, never mind. But I'm curious what exactly your argument has now become by trying to use that strawman: That native Americans were as bad as all other humans throughout all of history have been, and therefore they somehow deserved to be exterminated en masse?

I don't disagree with anything in the OP. What I replied to was the comment in post #2: "Don't cry for the societies that have [been conquered, dispossessed and largely exterminated], but celebrate the ones that [did all that]." I'm fairly sure that if Dittohead were to go back in time he actually would not condone or participate in or celebrate the conquest and genocide, so I would assume that he simply didn't think that one all the way through.

Denying the brutality of our history (as many have and still do) or sugar-coating it (like the attempts to portray indigenous people as hopeless savages and the genocide as a good thing compared with some imaginary alternative) are not very laudable approaches. Recognising the reality and trying to justify or dismiss it as being just 'what everyone was like' is an improvement on that, though it still sets a very low bar. The good and great things that have come from the US (or Australia in my case) should certainly be celebrated with national holidays and suchlike; but there should be just as much recognition and reflection on all the suffering and greed in our histories also - such as a national Invasion Day, for starters.