Ping
‘Bout time they start talking about the pre-pilgrim plague.
Interesting read.
The profanity is annoying.
A little vague on the line between fact and theory on a couple of minor points but overall a very good read. I’m sending it off to my niece who could use a little non PC history that’s actually an enjoyable read.
The vulgarity isn’t the problem. It’s the recycling of the left’s “reimagined history”. The blog post is an absurd compilation of Howard Zinn style material. Anyone who thinks that a stone-age culture would support 20-100 million Indians in North America hasn’t a clue.
Jack O’Brien and Elford Alley are both writers for Cracked.com and this looks very much like one of their lists.
In general, I find Cracked to be pretty funny and very, very unreliable.
Fun read!
Ping.
Post-modern revisionist claptrap that deprecates the accomplishments of the early European settlers in the New World. Nothing here we haven’t heard for the last 50 years: indians good, white men bad. Columbus was a greedy usurper who enslaved the Noble Red Man. Native civilization put European culture to shame. Blah blah blah.
A yawner written by some guy who thinks swearing and sophomoric margin doodles are witty.
*ping*
Haven’t read the whole article yet, but reminded me of your lecture.
The author concludes, in error, that the Great Plague that depopulated the Americas started on the East Coast and then swept Westward.
Actually, due to recurring drought cycles in the Americas, the hanta virus, which thrives among its primary vector ~ fleas ~ which thrive on ground squirrels, which themselves thrive on pine nuts (and other nuts) ~ populations of hanta spreading fleas on ground squirrels boom and crash in time with the great droughts.
There's a drought cycle in North America that parallels the drought cycle in East Asia ~ and it is in tune with the solar cycles. Half a full sunspot cycle is about 11 years. A full sunspot cycle is about 21 to 22 years ~ sometimes longer, e.g. the 24 year cycle we just experienced ~ and four such cycles will occur over an 80 to 85 year period ~ and at least once in that 80 to 85 year period there will be a serious drought in the North, South, East or West in North America, and/or China.
Occasionally there will be a GREAT DROUGHT which will occur in the four quadrants simultaneously. Same in China. In fact, if you are in China you will know all you need to know about the North American dought cycle then occurring in roughly the same way.
These are overlaid with wet/dry cycles climate cycles, Pacific and Atlantic cycles, and to a degree with jet stream cycles that may or may not be directly related to any of this.
The Spanish arrived in the Americas at the end of a drought cycle ~ much of North America was burned over and in the East Coast people who lived above the Fall Line had fresh water. South America had also been experiencing drought.
Alas, the people in the South began to experience RAIN as the drought ended, and that brought back grass, and the nut bearing trees bloomed and bore nuts. The ground squirrels ate the nuts. The fleas thrived in an expanded population of ground squirrels. Hanta virus spread and the agricultural communities throughout South America in the Great Amazonian and Andean civilizations suffered a serious population crash.
Mexico was a bit different, but the droughts had been equally severe ~ giving the Aztecs an incredible advantage over their enemies since they literally lived in the midst of a very large fresh water lake at the foot of a gigantic volcano that was sufficiently high enough to pull moisture out of the winds blowing in from the Pacific.
In the end the plague came several times to Mexico and the people died.
The plague continued to move North and swept through what is now the US East Coast in the 1640s.
So, plague sweeps from South to North, not East to West ~ that's what the Spanish records show. But that's after the recovery after one of America's Great Droughts ~ when the rains return, the nut trees bloom, the ground squirrels prosper, the fleas swarm, and the hanta virus gets spread!
It delayed the settlement of North America by Europeans for about 160 years ~ which is just about two of those 80 to 85 year cycles ~ a clue!
We may still be in the midst of one of The Great Droughts right now ~ so pray for rain ~ pray for a good wheat crop ~ pray for the preservation of the corn.
bump for later
I hate headlines that pretend to tell me what I think or believe.
Assuming that you already had something of the frontiersman in you -- that you were good at hunting, gathering, fishing, herding, farming.
The religious sectarians who settled Plymouth Colony and would-be gentlemen who landed at Jamestown had real problems at first because they didn't have the skills or ability to make a go of it.
Later colonists had better skills and lower expectations, knew what to expect, and adapted more easily to the new environment.
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.