Posted on 10/23/2012 6:57:26 AM PDT by Renfield
I see you really aren’t familiar with the historiography wars. Consequently, you won’t understand why the new “high count” Pre-Columbian revisionism is intellectually on fit for programs like Coast to Coast.
Do you know what bronze is (quick, look it up on the net)? To save you the trouble, it’s an alloy. It isn’t the first stage of metal working. Moreover, most historians doubt that there ever was an invasion by the Hyksos, despite Josephus’ account.
Whether the Hyksos invaded or migrated, Egypt was well removed from the stone age at the relevant time.
The point is, however, if you actually knew what a stone age culture really is, you wouldn’t fall for the “high count” revisionism that obviously beguiles you. North of the Rio Grande to the Arctic Circle there were very few Indians, and there was no culture remotely approximating Egypt’s or even the relatively more advanced, but still primitive Meso-American cultures.
You may not watch TV, but you sound like you listen to Coast to Coast.
You need to go examine a large collection of stone age tools.
Wrong. The Egyptian didn’t produce bronze swords until they were introduced to bronze weapons by the Hyksos. No bronze weapons = not bronze age. Sorry if that goes against your revisionists agenda.
I have no idea what “Coast to Coast” is. And what possible difference could a 500+ year old population estimate have on anything relevant to today?
I think anyone who fights culture wars based on what happened 500 years ago really needs to get a grip. History is fascinating, and we know a fraction of what we think we know. Each piece of information should be reviewed, and logical conclusions drawn from the evidence, not per-conceived notions.
At the end of the day, there are lots of things (mounds, walls) that suggest their were some odd things going on here 500-1000 years ago, and there were probably a lot of people required to construct them. Why is that conclusion bad? How does it threaten you if the population was much higher than originally thought?
One very interesting book is “Guns Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond.
He suggests that the old world is oriented east-west, permitting agricultural technologies to migrate easily, while the new world is oriented north-south, so agricutural technologies would have to cross hostile climate bands.
Because of that the old world had superior domestic animals, and superior diseases in their domestic animals to which the native Americans had no resistance. Smallpox (from cattle) gets the press, but probably measles (from Rinderpest in cattle), typhus(perhaps American in origin), plague (from rats) and influenza (from swine) all played a part.
Cleopatra was of Greek ancestry, a heritage of Alexander’s conquest. She was, however, thought to be the first of her dynasty to learn the Eqyptian language.
note this article claims the die-off happened years before the Mayflower/pilgrims came.
The native Americans were, perhaps a stone age culture, but they had some very interesting horiculture.
Corn, Potato, Tomato, Squash varieties provided nutritional opportunities not available in Europe at that time.
Africa also had some very interesting domesticated plants, to include some 70 variants of the banana.
Yes, the spanish had been in the Americas since 1492, and the Pilgrims landed in 1620. That gives 128 years for the Old World diseases to sweep through. San Salvador probably didn’t have any locals left in very few years, and Cuba was cleared soon after. Cortez documented that he was aided by epidemics in his 1518 expedition, and Pizarro’s expedition benefited from an epidemic of bartonellosis in 1524.
The Pilgrims didn’t cause the epidemic, but the benefited from it.
Well put.
Another lie was that there were no European races here before the Siberian hunter groups arrived...until I discovered that the hunters of the huge local Mammoth (?) elephants, which WERE here in North America, were hunted by ancient men. The skulls of those men were OVAL, not round. Europeans have oval skulls; Asians have round skulls.
Those minor facts often don't find their way into P.C. history books.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.