Joe: “superstitious”does that mean “racist?”

Main Entry: su·per·sti·tion
Pronunciation: \ˌsü-pər-ˈsti-shən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English supersticion, from Anglo-French, from Latin superstition-, superstitio, from superstit-, superstes standing over (as witness or survivor), from super- + stare to stand — more at stand
Date: 13th century

1 a : a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation b : an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition
2 : a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary

That’s the first, and probably the last, time I will hear Indian elephants described as “unusually docile.”

Ricardo, your comments seem to be quibbles that do not go anywhere near challenging what I think is inescapable: that American Indian culture, aside from being enmeshed in endemic warfare, was several millennia behind the other major world civilizations at the time of the discovery by Columbus. I do not say this to condone or approve what happened to these people; nobody consulted me. But it does help explain what happened.

The Maya alone in the western hemisphere had a fully written language. The others, in 1492 — some 5,000 after the Egyptians — did not.

Lack of suitable raw material doesn’t fully explain the lack of domesticated draft animals in the western hemisphere. If the Finns and Lapps and Siberians could domesticate the reindeer, why couldn’t American Indian culture do the same (contrary to what one poster suggested, North American reindeer — – caribou — and European reindeer are the same species). Llamas were used in Peru, but not dispersed by trade to other regions of the Americas where they would be useful, as were horses, oxen, buffalo, etc., in Europe and Asia. And what of the American Bison? If the Indians and Burmese could make use of the Indian Elephant, why were Bison never harnessed for use in North America?

And the wheel? And what about that basic building block of civilization, metal working? Tne Indians of North America were still searching for stones to fashion into arrowheads many centuries after their counterparts in Europe and Asia had experienced a Bronze Age, and an Iron Age.

These are all side issues to what is obvious: apart from the architectural achievements of the Incas and Aztecs, which seem, like the Egyptians’, to have been centered on tombs (and places for human sacrifice), American Indian cultures have no achievements in a host of fields — art, music, literature, drama, politics, philosophy, astronomy, science, engineering, metallurgy, medicine, road or bridge building, shipping, exploration, trade, commerce, business, education, economics, war-making, or any other aspect of what we used, unblushingly, to call civilization — that stand comparison with those of the Babylonian, Hebrew, Persian, Greek, Hellenistic or Roman civilizations of the Mediterranean and Near East, or with the Indian, Chinese or Japanese cultures, or with the western or Byzantrine Europeans in the centuries before the discovery.

So reluctant are some to make any relative judgments about cultures in our multicultural age that this conclusion, plain as a wardrobe though it is, has other posters trotting out their “facist” and “racist” innuendo.

I believe in the metaphysical equality of individual persons, but that cannot blind one to the immense disparity in civilizations.

does that mean “racist?”

The Spaniards (Colon included) were very superstitious, and they truly believed that that the Indian had no soul and couldn’t therefore be baptised. De las Casas argued otherwise, and his best witness was none other than Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, who had wandered among the natives for all those years. But that was 25 years after Colon, so he would have treated the Indians as if they were sub-human.

Second, there is good evidence that the disease that killed so many in Mexico via two or three great plagues was not a European import, but rather an indigenous hanta virus. “Cocoliztli” – a rodent born hemorrhagic fevers brought about by drought and the deplorable conditions the Europeans forced the native population to live under.

Other European sailors took similar risks, including chartering unknown territory. And, he didn’t even think he was taking as much of risk, given his calculations were wrong. Plus, even compared to others at the time, he was something of a dubious character.

When he did discover Hispaniola, Europeans had the wherewithal to defeat the locals and colonize. That’s the big deal. And, on that front, others did a better job than Columbus.

So, it seems irregular to celebrate him alone in this context.

David McCourt: elephants! — were widely domesticated by Europeans and Asians thousands of years before 1492.

From the authority on everything: “However, elephants have never been truly domesticated: the male elephant in his periodic condition of musth is dangerous and difficult to control. Therefore elephants used by humans have typically been female, war elephants being an exception, however: as female elephants in battle will run from a male, only males could be used in war. It is generally more economical to capture wild young elephants and tame them than breeding them in captivity.”

Oddly, the Wikipedia article describes elephants as “domesticated” in other parts of the article but this seems a semantic quibble. My understanding has always been that domestication implies selective breeding. You certainly don’t get to claim one civilization is superior to another simply because its native land is naturally blessed with unusually docile animals who haven’t (yet) been killed off.

David McCourt: And the discovery of the wheel was important, and the domestication of draft animals, and the creation of a written language.

Of course, none of those things had been achieved by the rich civilization that Columbus encountered.

The Maya had written language. And as someone else already pointed out, just about all the animals that would have been candidates as good draft animals died out at the end of the last Ice Age — probably they were killed off by the humans who had just arrived from Siberia. Without draft animals, wheels aren’t nearly as useful.

Native Americans did domesticate what has become one of the staple foods of the world, corn. This was much more complicated and difficult to achieve than the domestication of wheat because the wild variety of corn is so different from the variety the Spaniards would have encountered when they first made contact.

Charles C. Mann is the author of the forthcoming “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.”

The author replies to criticism cited of one aspect of the book here. An op-ed by Mann on the subject also can be accessed there.

Rakove (sic) has this somewhat distasteful sounding comment:

“Mann is a journalist, so we can expect the work to be something of a synthesis that won’t tell historians much that they do not already know.”

Surely a “journalist” could not tell historians anything they would not already know! Given various “historians” have a mixed record on this front, this is debatable.

I am not familiar with the book, so do not know what this particular journalist brought. But, journalists have every ability to do serious research in this area that might actually teach historians something.

David McCourt: The plain fact is that any primitive stone age cultures, even ones as obsessed with warfare as most of the American Indian cultures, were going to lose in any encounter with a dramatically more advanced civilization, whether it was Indian, Chinese, Arab or European. That encounter with one of the above was only a matter of time.I for one am glad that it was the Europeans who came to these shores and made the contributions they did to the nations that inhabit this hemisphere.

The plain fact is that pubescent girls will be targeted by sexual predators. I for one am glad when a rapist at least has some talent to compensate for his depravity.

So what do you say we replace Valentine’s Day with Polanski Day?

Wait. You mean we can appreciate Chinatown without celebrating the miscreant who made it?

The Western Hemisphere had at the least bison, reindeer, and llamas. Animals similar (or in the case of Scandanavian reindeer, identical) to these, water buffalo, yaks, oxen, camels — elephants! — were widely domesticated by Europeans and Asians thousands of years before 1492. And while the terrain in North America is perfect for the use of such animals, there also are tens of millions of suitable acres in the South American pampas.

Bison and reindeer were available in South America? Central America? Mexico? Who knew!

Llamas were found in Mexico and North America?

Llamas, of course, were domesticated by the Incas.

I guess I don’t see the point of the argument in any event. The societies we’re discussing were widely separate and distinct. There’s no more point in comparing them than there is in comparing the French in 1492 to the Kalmyks.

Lastly, the existence of similar species is irrelevant in the absence of evidence that they can be domesticated. Even closely related species — say, dogs and wolves — can differ substantially in this regard.

loki13: I’m just going to throw this out there to all the people who have said things along the lines of, well, look at mnost of David McCourt’s writings. Please read 1491. It’s a very good book. I read it when it came out and it has a lotof analysis of recent archaelogical finds about what pre-European civilization was really like in the Americas. It wasn’t a land without domestication or any writing, as David McCourt so blithely puts it. Anyway, it’s a great read, and shows you how little we knew of that time, and how much (and how quickly) we are learning about it. Again, I am all for days off. The more the better. I’m not sure I understand the reflexive positions people go into. Perhaps instead of Columbus day, we could have America Day, where we celebrate everything about America, except with less beer and fireworks than the 4th of July. The contributions that everyone brought in- from the Native Americans, to the Europeans, to the successive waves of immigrants… the things that have made America great.Is that too much?

I read and liked 1491. I can get behind a common holiday, maybe Immigration Day, to celebrate all of the contributions of all of the immigrants from the ‘original’ Native Americans to current day. I think it would be less offensive to just create a new holiday rather than replace an existing one.

(by the way, I’m one of the dagos who would stay happy ;-)

Please read 1491. It’s a very good book. I read it when it came out and it has a lotof analysis of recent archaelogical finds about what pre-European civilization was really like in the Americas. It wasn’t a land without domestication or any writing, as David McCourt so blithely puts it. Anyway, it’s a great read, and shows you how little we knew of that time, and how much (and how quickly) we are learning about it.

Again, I am all for days off. The more the better. I’m not sure I understand the reflexive positions people go into. Perhaps instead of Columbus day, we could have America Day, where we celebrate everything about America, except with less beer and fireworks than the 4th of July. The contributions that everyone brought in- from the Native Americans, to the Europeans, to the successive waves of immigrants… the things that have made America great.

Is that too much?

And because Columbus Day is about the founding of what became the United States, it is important for some people to find a great crime at the heart of that founding. Would these criticisms be any different if it were Mayflower Day we were celebrating, and Columbus and the peaceable Taino made no appearance in the story, being replaced by the far from peaceable tribes of the northeast? I very much doubt it.

David McCourt: I’m “justfying” nothing. I’m not sitting in some confessional, with History kneeling there, on the other side of the screen, seeking absolution. I’m just saying that a celebration of the European historical roots of our country

Nothing like changing the subject. We are talking about Columbus Day, not “European historical roots of the United States” day.

Indeed, I find it telling that changing the subject has been the principal strategy of the Columbus apologists here. They talk about the supposed other beliefs of his critics, about the evils of peoples Columbus never came anywhere near, and about the development of freedom in a continent Columbus never set foot on. Anything to avoid the fact that Columbus was a looter of the first order.

“Little mustache”? That kind of reflexive comment displays a failure of imagination almost as bad as the failure to conceive of a wheel.

The plain fact is that any primitive stone age cultures, even ones as obsessed with warfare as most of the American Indian cultures, were going to lose in any encounter with a dramatically more advanced civilization, whether it was Indian, Chinese, Arab or European. That encounter with one of the above was only a matter of time.

You say “were going to lose” as though warfare were the only alternative. Ever heard of people engaging in peaceful relationships where they engage in trade for mutual gain? If only there were a name for such a system …

Regardless of how “obsessed with warfare” other cultures were or weren’t, the Taino certainly were not. There is no dispute about who initiated hostilities in that case: it was Columbus.

Under your theory, the initiation of force against some individuals is justified by the evils of other individuals thousands of miles away, solely because they’re all “Indians.” There is a word for that view as well.

I’m afraid this is a myth. As historian Jack Rackove, good liberal that he is, says: “The voluminous records we have for the constitutional debates of the late 1780s contain no significant references to the Iroquois. . . . All the key political concepts that were the stuff of American political discourse before the Revolution and after, had obvious European antecedents and referents: bicameralism, separation of powers, confederations, and the like.”

P>I for one am glad that it was the Europeans who came to these shores and made the contributions they did to the nations that inhabit this hemisphere.

The contributions were two-way. The Americas provided crops and crop techniques that helped end massive starvation in Europe. The Iroquois Nation system of government influenced that of the United States and eventually the (free) world. I’d like a day celebrating these and other important contributions.

The plain fact is that any primitive stone age cultures, even ones as obsessed with warfare as most of the American Indian cultures, were going to lose in any encounter with a dramatically more advanced civilization, whether it was Indian, Chinese, Arab or European. That encounter with one of the above was only a matter of time.

I for one am glad that it was the Europeans who came to these shores and made the contributions they did to the nations that inhabit this hemisphere.

Not sure why you quoted Hamilton. Certainly, that he or anyone else used the term ‘womanish’ to insult his opponents does not make me happier with Splunge’s use of it to insult someone.

I chose ‘manish’ precisely to show how stupid, offensive, and irrelevant use of such terms is.

America was made from European Civilization of that times, it wasn’t Indians,Mayans or any other.

You do realize that Columbus ‘discovered’ the Americas – not the United States? Not even Northern America?

And, by the way, in The Americas, a great many people have some indian or Mayan ancestry.

If we want to have a holiday to celebrate our national origins, why not Jamestown Day or, as the first Jamestown did not work out all that well, Plymouth Rock Day? Too dull? ‘Mayflower Day’ would be nice.

I don’t care about having Columbus Day one way or the other, beyond a certain inconvenience. My only question is why is it a national holiday (beyond the appeal to Italian Americans). It really has very little to do with our nation.

All that was missing was a human culture that could conceive of and carry out such a project.

Columbus did something unique. Not from an altruistic sense of love for his fellow man but for the chance of glory and wealth – both of which were necessary in order to raise himself and his family from the grip of poverty and fealty to others. And he did so at a time when a common man could not easily raise himself up in the social classes of the day. In other words, he did so in a society completely unknown to us in our age.

Whether his accomplishment rises to the level of being worthy of an American holiday, I cannot say. There are probably more important causes to celebrate than Columbus – let the country decide as a whole. But I do know I do not want to judge a man based upon the moral standards of today for one simple reason – I do not want to be judged in the years to come based upon the moral standards of a society unknown to me, today.

Leo Marvin: That explains why I had nothing good to say about Obama winning the Nobel until I read the comments here.

Thank god I wasn’t drinking anything this time. Snort.

Well, I learned about it in grade school. Not “in depth,” of course, because nobody learns much of anything in depth, but I did learn about it. Not that the cannibalism and cutting out of hearts put me off of fantasizing about my then-new classmate Aida Rodriguez, recently arrived from Mexico.

David McCourt: And the discovery of the wheel was important, and the domestication of draft animals, and the creation of a written language.Of course, none of those things had been achieved by the rich civilization that Columbus encountered.

David McCourt: And the discovery of the wheel was important, and the domestication of draft animals, and the creation of a written language.Of course, none of those things had been achieved by the rich civilization that Columbus encountered.

Indeed they had not. So what?

David McCourt: And the discovery of the wheel was important, and the domestication of draft animals, and the creation of a written language.Of course, none of those things had been achieved by the rich civilization that Columbus encountered.

To be fair, the Americans didn’t have a plethora of draft animals to work with. Also, in the case of South and Central America, the terrain was not suitable for wheeled vehicles.

The 15th Century was a brutal time — in Europe and the Americas. But don’t sugar coat the Indians either. They weren’t paragons of morality either — the Aztecs and Incas built their empires on conquest and stealing wealth from neighboring peoples. The Indians were cannibals and/or practiced human sacrifice. They were also — technologically — still living in the Stone Age. European civilization was simply more advanced and won out. If the roles had been reversed, I doubt that the Aztecs would have had any scruples about conquering and plundering the Spanish.

So what? Columbus didn’t conquer the Aztecs or the Incas. He conquered the Taino, who practiced neither cannibalism nor human sacrifice. Upon encountering them, he immediately attempted to steal their gold and use them as slave labor. Human sacrifice might be relevant if we had a holiday for Cortés, but we don’t.