A few years ago it occurred to me that my ancestor and everyone else in the colony had voluntarily enlisted in a venture that brought them to New England without food or shelter six weeks before winter. Half the 102 people on the Mayflower made it through to spring, which to me was amazing. How, I wondered, did they survive? In his history of Plymouth Colony, Bradford provided the answer: by robbing Indian houses and graves. The Mayflower first hove to at Cape Cod. An armed company staggered out. Eventually it found a recently deserted Indian settlement. The newcomers—hungry, cold, sick—dug up graves and ransacked houses, looking for underground stashes of corn. "And sure it was God's good providence that we found this corn," Bradford wrote, "for else we know not how we should have done." (He felt uneasy about the thievery, though.) When the colonists came to Plymouth, a month later, they set up shop in another deserted Indian village. All through the coastal forest the Indians had "died on heapes, as they lay in their houses," the English trader Thomas Morton noted. "And the bones and skulls upon the severall places of their habitations made such a spectacle" that to Morton the Massachusetts woods seemed to be "a new found Golgotha"—the hill of executions in Roman Jerusalem.
The first scholarly estimate of the indigenous population was made in 1910 by James Mooney, a distinguished ethnographer at the Smithsonian Institution. Combing through old documents, he concluded that in 1491 North America had 1.15 million inhabitants. Mooney's glittering reputation ensured that most subsequent researchers accepted his figure uncritically. [...] The Indians in Peru, Dobyns concluded, had faced plagues from the day the conquistadors showed up—in fact, before then: smallpox arrived around 1525, seven years ahead of the Spanish. [...] Smallpox was only the first epidemic. Typhus (probably) in 1546, influenza and smallpox together in 1558, smallpox again in 1589, diphtheria in 1614, measles in 1618—all ravaged the remains of Incan culture. Dobyns was the first social scientist to piece together this awful picture, and he naturally rushed his findings into print. Hardly anyone paid attention. But Dobyns was already working on a second, related question: If all those people died, how many had been living there to begin with? Before Columbus, Dobyns calculated, the Western Hemisphere held ninety to 112 million people. Another way of saying this is that in 1491 more people lived in the Americas than in Europe.
Soto crossed the Mississippi a few miles downstream from the present site of Memphis. It was a nervous passage: the Spaniards were watched by several thousand Indian warriors. Utterly without fear, Soto brushed past the Indian force into what is now eastern Arkansas, through thickly settled land—"very well peopled with large towns," one of his men later recalled, "two or three of which were to be seen from one town." Eventually the Spaniards approached a cluster of small cities, each protected by earthen walls, sizeable moats, and deadeye archers. In his usual fashion, Soto brazenly marched in, stole food, and marched out.
After Soto left, no Europeans visited this part of the Mississippi Valley for more than a century. Early in 1682 whites appeared again, this time Frenchmen in canoes. One of them was Réné-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. The French passed through the area where Soto had found cities cheek by jowl. It was deserted—La Salle didn't see an Indian village for 200 miles. About fifty settlements existed in this strip of the Mississippi when Soto showed up, according to Anne Ramenofsky, an anthropologist at the University of New Mexico. By La Salle's time the number had shrunk to perhaps ten, some probably inhabited by recent immigrants. Soto "had a privileged glimpse" of an Indian world, Hudson says.
The Caddo had had a taste for monumental architecture: public plazas, ceremonial platforms, mausoleums. After Soto's army left, notes Timothy K. Perttula, an archaeological consultant in Austin, Texas, the Caddo stopped building community centers and began digging community cemeteries. Between Soto's and La Salle's visits, Perttula believes, the Caddoan population fell from about 200,000 to about 8,500—a drop of nearly 96 percent. In the eighteenth century the tally shrank further, to 1,400. An equivalent loss today in the population of New York City would reduce it to 56,000—not enough to fill Yankee Stadium.
To some "high counters," as David Henige calls them, the low counters' refusal to relinquish the vision of an empty continent is irrational or worse. "Non-Indian 'experts' always want to minimize the size of aboriginal populations," says Lenore Stiffarm, a Native American-education specialist at the University of Saskatchewan. The smaller the numbers of Indians, she believes, the easier it is to regard the continent as having been up for grabs. "It's perfectly acceptable to move into unoccupied land," Stiffarm says. "And land with only a few 'savages' is the next best thing." "Most of the arguments for the very large numbers have been theoretical," Ubelaker says in defense of low counters. "When you try to marry the theoretical arguments to the data that are available on individual groups in different regions, it's hard to find support for those numbers." Archaeologists, he says, keep searching for the settlements in which those millions of people supposedly lived, with little success. "As more and more excavation is done, one would expect to see more evidence for dense populations than has thus far emerged." Dean Snow, the Pennsylvania State anthropologist, examined Colonial-era Mohawk Iroquois sites and found "no support for the notion that ubiquitous pandemics swept the region."
The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán dazzled Hernán Cortés in 1519; it was bigger than Paris, Europe's greatest metropolis. The Spaniards gawped like hayseeds at the wide streets, ornately carved buildings, and markets bright with goods from hundreds of miles away. They had never before seen a city with botanical gardens, for the excellent reason that none existed in Europe. The same novelty attended the force of a thousand men that kept the crowded streets immaculate. (Streets that weren't ankle-deep in sewage! The conquistadors had never heard of such a thing.) Central America was not the only locus of prosperity. Thousands of miles north, John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, visited Massachusetts in 1614, before it was emptied by disease, and declared that the land was "so planted with Gardens and Corne fields, and so well inhabited with a goodly, strong and well proportioned people ... [that] I would rather live here than any where."
A principal tool was fire, used to keep down underbrush and create the open, grassy conditions favorable for game. Rather than domesticating animals for meat, Indians retooled whole ecosystems to grow bumper crops of elk, deer, and bison. The first white settlers in Ohio found forests as open as English parks—they could drive carriages through the woods. Along the Hudson River the annual fall burning lit up the banks for miles on end; so flashy was the show that the Dutch in New Amsterdam boated upriver to goggle at the blaze like children at fireworks. In North America, Indian torches had their biggest impact on the Midwestern prairie, much or most of which was created and maintained by fire. Millennia of exuberant burning shaped the plains into vast buffalo farms. When Indian societies disintegrated, forest invaded savannah in Wisconsin, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Texas Hill Country.
Imagine, a densely-populated Neolithic world in perfect control of its environment on a continental scale. My mind often boggles trying to imagine the world our initial ancestors lived in.
I always wondered what the native (north) Americans way of life was like before horses.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
A few years ago it occurred to me that my ancestor and everyone else in the colony had voluntarily enlisted in a venture that brought them to New England without food or shelter six weeks before winter. Half the 102 people on the Mayflower made it through to spring, which to me was amazing. How, I wondered, did they survive? In his history of Plymouth Colony, Bradford provided the answer: by robbing Indian houses and graves. The Mayflower first hove to at Cape Cod. An armed company staggered out. Eventually it found a recently deserted Indian settlement. The newcomers—hungry, cold, sick—dug up graves and ransacked houses, looking for underground stashes of corn. "And sure it was God's good providence that we found this corn," Bradford wrote, "for else we know not how we should have done." (He felt uneasy about the thievery, though.) When the colonists came to Plymouth, a month later, they set up shop in another deserted Indian village. All through the coastal forest the Indians had "died on heapes, as they lay in their houses," the English trader Thomas Morton noted. "And the bones and skulls upon the severall places of their habitations made such a spectacle" that to Morton the Massachusetts woods seemed to be "a new found Golgotha"—the hill of executions in Roman Jerusalem.
The first scholarly estimate of the indigenous population was made in 1910 by James Mooney, a distinguished ethnographer at the Smithsonian Institution. Combing through old documents, he concluded that in 1491 North America had 1.15 million inhabitants. Mooney's glittering reputation ensured that most subsequent researchers accepted his figure uncritically. [...] The Indians in Peru, Dobyns concluded, had faced plagues from the day the conquistadors showed up—in fact, before then: smallpox arrived around 1525, seven years ahead of the Spanish. [...] Smallpox was only the first epidemic. Typhus (probably) in 1546, influenza and smallpox together in 1558, smallpox again in 1589, diphtheria in 1614, measles in 1618—all ravaged the remains of Incan culture. Dobyns was the first social scientist to piece together this awful picture, and he naturally rushed his findings into print. Hardly anyone paid attention. But Dobyns was already working on a second, related question: If all those people died, how many had been living there to begin with? Before Columbus, Dobyns calculated, the Western Hemisphere held ninety to 112 million people. Another way of saying this is that in 1491 more people lived in the Americas than in Europe.
Soto crossed the Mississippi a few miles downstream from the present site of Memphis. It was a nervous passage: the Spaniards were watched by several thousand Indian warriors. Utterly without fear, Soto brushed past the Indian force into what is now eastern Arkansas, through thickly settled land—"very well peopled with large towns," one of his men later recalled, "two or three of which were to be seen from one town." Eventually the Spaniards approached a cluster of small cities, each protected by earthen walls, sizeable moats, and deadeye archers. In his usual fashion, Soto brazenly marched in, stole food, and marched out.
After Soto left, no Europeans visited this part of the Mississippi Valley for more than a century. Early in 1682 whites appeared again, this time Frenchmen in canoes. One of them was Réné-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. The French passed through the area where Soto had found cities cheek by jowl. It was deserted—La Salle didn't see an Indian village for 200 miles. About fifty settlements existed in this strip of the Mississippi when Soto showed up, according to Anne Ramenofsky, an anthropologist at the University of New Mexico. By La Salle's time the number had shrunk to perhaps ten, some probably inhabited by recent immigrants. Soto "had a privileged glimpse" of an Indian world, Hudson says.
The Caddo had had a taste for monumental architecture: public plazas, ceremonial platforms, mausoleums. After Soto's army left, notes Timothy K. Perttula, an archaeological consultant in Austin, Texas, the Caddo stopped building community centers and began digging community cemeteries. Between Soto's and La Salle's visits, Perttula believes, the Caddoan population fell from about 200,000 to about 8,500—a drop of nearly 96 percent. In the eighteenth century the tally shrank further, to 1,400. An equivalent loss today in the population of New York City would reduce it to 56,000—not enough to fill Yankee Stadium.
To some "high counters," as David Henige calls them, the low counters' refusal to relinquish the vision of an empty continent is irrational or worse. "Non-Indian 'experts' always want to minimize the size of aboriginal populations," says Lenore Stiffarm, a Native American-education specialist at the University of Saskatchewan. The smaller the numbers of Indians, she believes, the easier it is to regard the continent as having been up for grabs. "It's perfectly acceptable to move into unoccupied land," Stiffarm says. "And land with only a few 'savages' is the next best thing." "Most of the arguments for the very large numbers have been theoretical," Ubelaker says in defense of low counters. "When you try to marry the theoretical arguments to the data that are available on individual groups in different regions, it's hard to find support for those numbers." Archaeologists, he says, keep searching for the settlements in which those millions of people supposedly lived, with little success. "As more and more excavation is done, one would expect to see more evidence for dense populations than has thus far emerged." Dean Snow, the Pennsylvania State anthropologist, examined Colonial-era Mohawk Iroquois sites and found "no support for the notion that ubiquitous pandemics swept the region."
The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán dazzled Hernán Cortés in 1519; it was bigger than Paris, Europe's greatest metropolis. The Spaniards gawped like hayseeds at the wide streets, ornately carved buildings, and markets bright with goods from hundreds of miles away. They had never before seen a city with botanical gardens, for the excellent reason that none existed in Europe. The same novelty attended the force of a thousand men that kept the crowded streets immaculate. (Streets that weren't ankle-deep in sewage! The conquistadors had never heard of such a thing.) Central America was not the only locus of prosperity. Thousands of miles north, John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, visited Massachusetts in 1614, before it was emptied by disease, and declared that the land was "so planted with Gardens and Corne fields, and so well inhabited with a goodly, strong and well proportioned people ... [that] I would rather live here than any where."
A principal tool was fire, used to keep down underbrush and create the open, grassy conditions favorable for game. Rather than domesticating animals for meat, Indians retooled whole ecosystems to grow bumper crops of elk, deer, and bison. The first white settlers in Ohio found forests as open as English parks—they could drive carriages through the woods. Along the Hudson River the annual fall burning lit up the banks for miles on end; so flashy was the show that the Dutch in New Amsterdam boated upriver to goggle at the blaze like children at fireworks. In North America, Indian torches had their biggest impact on the Midwestern prairie, much or most of which was created and maintained by fire. Millennia of exuberant burning shaped the plains into vast buffalo farms. When Indian societies disintegrated, forest invaded savannah in Wisconsin, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Texas Hill Country.
Imagine, a densely-populated Neolithic world in perfect control of its environment on a continental scale. My mind often boggles trying to imagine the world our initial ancestors lived in.
I always wondered what the native (north) Americans way of life was like before horses.
Good point, Versailles was not completed until the late 1600's, but botanical gardens were common throughout Europe, particularly Spain, France and Italy. Hunting preserves had been common features since Ancient Rome.
The earliest record of a European Botanical Garden I can find is 1544. A good 25 years after they saw them in the new world.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Also, New England had absolutely been domesticated before the Europeans came. There's a reason a whole bunch of place names end with field,brook and the like. And it isn't because that sort of shit happens naturally.
One thing that's important to remember is that it's very much in the interest of archaeologists to announce findings of mass new worlds settlements. But they mostly haven't been able to find them in north America. That certainly doesn't mean that n. America was "sparsely" populated, or that they were simple savages or anything like that. It's just a question of how much density that land could support.
I'm not saying to discount anthro work done by native tribes today, some of it is very good, but there's also a really unfortunate tendency towards creationism and politicization of their conclusions.
Posting on phone, will try to write something better later
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Good point, Versailles was not completed until the late 1600's, but botanical gardens were common throughout Europe, particularly Spain, France and Italy. Hunting preserves had been common features since Ancient Rome.
The earliest record of a European Botanical Garden I can find is 1544. A good 25 years after they saw them in the new world.
Eh. The Grand gardens of the taifa kingdoms (many of which remained after the christian take-over) could easily have been classified as botanical gardens, as they were collections of plants from all over the muslim realm and sometimes meticulously monitored by not just gardeners but botanical scholars as well.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
edited October 2015
Charlemagne even commanded and laid down regulations for the plants that should be included for their medicinal benefits in monastic gardens, and that was in the 8th Century AD.
Holy Cow, the intertron is a wonderful place. While looking for that painting up above I came across this, one of my favorites. A good title might be "The Final Two Seconds of Blackbeard the Pirate's Career".
Also, New England had absolutely been domesticated before the Europeans came. There's a reason a whole bunch of place names end with field,brook and the like. And it isn't because that sort of shit happens naturally.
Definitely, the entire continent was covered in settlements and had pretty well developed paths and roads between them. Not just in New England either, I remember reading about a plantation in the south that had a pretty boulevard with trees lining each side leading to the main house. The Trees predated the Plantation and the house at the end had been built to take advantage of the effect. Since that kind of thing doesn't happen naturally, natives are probably responsible.
The real question is how big each settlement was and how far away from each other they where. Huge cities with 10s of thousands of people are hard to hide, but a settlement of 4-5 thousand can easily slip through the cracks, especially if was built from wood, abandoned for a 100 years and then built over by western settlers.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
there's a similar debate about the extent to which Aboriginal Australians cultivated the land through fire
as with the American one, though, it's so thoroughly politicized that I find it hard to tell who to believe. the answer is presumably "more than the right would have you think, but less than the left"
Gabriel_Pitt(effective against Russian warships)Registered Userregular
Pretty much. That whole, 'population equivalent to Europe who were masters of eco-culture alteration' sounds just as blinkered and willfully ignorant as anyone who pushes for 'it was virgin wildness with a handful savages.'
I was at at an exhibition this this that had the same theme, was really interesting. Also kinda hilarious that a big part of the european art scene was basically otaku nerds.
Pretty much. That whole, 'population equivalent to Europe who were masters of eco-culture alteration' sounds just as blinkered and willfully ignorant as anyone who pushes for 'it was virgin wildness with a handful savages.'
There were only around 90 million people in Europe in 1500. North America wouldn't need to be too densely populated at all for the very urban societies in central and south america to match that.
I was at at an exhibition this this that had the same theme, was really interesting. Also kinda hilarious that a big part of the european art scene was basically otaku nerds.
It's interesting too how some of those japonais styles then transform into art deco, and then find a home in Japan again as they get further adapted.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Istanbul has no shortage of houses of worship, and the Bulgarian Church of St. Stephen set along the shore of the Golden Horn blends in with its holy brethren at first glance; upon closer inspection, however, this cross-shaped basilica is like few others in the world.
Born of an early 19th century period of architectural experimentation in prefabrication, St. Stephen is made entirely out of cast iron. Even to this day, the walls are metal and spots of rust bloom from its interior archways like scarified flowers. The church consists of poured iron slabs that were floated on cargo ships from Vienna, down the Danube River, across the Black Sea, through the Bosphorus, only to then be assembled on-site.
Now just put engines on it and send it into space and we'll have our first WH40k vessel.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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Gabriel_Pitt(effective against Russian warships)Registered Userregular
So, in less morbid history, welcome to M-42, the secret subbasement of Grand Central Terminal. During WWII, its location was a matter of national security, as the massive DC converters used to power the trains in the underground train yard - and those trains were moving soldiers. All it would have taken to destroy them was a bucket of sand, which is why there were kill on sight orders for anyone unknown during the war.
Also featured in his channel, everything you want to know about late 14th century plate armor.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
I was at at an exhibition this this that had the same theme, was really interesting. Also kinda hilarious that a big part of the european art scene was basically otaku nerds.
Claude Monet showing off his dining room/small portion of his collection of Japanese prints:
That kind of stuff flowed both ways. Western artists taking eastern influences and vice versa. I think the Qianlong emperor had an Italian artist paint massive murals for his retirement palace. Painting Chinese topics with Western techniques etc.
That kind of stuff flowed both ways. Western artists taking eastern influences and vice versa. I think the Qianlong emperor had an Italian artist paint massive murals for his retirement palace. Painting Chinese topics with Western techniques etc.
It's honestly pretty fascinating.
Yeah, cultural exchange gets you some of the coolest art.
A Maori battalion performing the Haka in Egypt, 1941
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
For those who have never heard of them, Green Book guides were for black motorists, telling them where it was safe to eat and sleep, and where it wasn't. And they were very serious about that.
FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
And not such ancient history, either. Most American cities still have Go/No Go areas now, while there are many places where hikers are warned to stay on the most obvious trails so as not to disturb the meth cookers.
Posts
Less disease ridden genocide.
The earliest record of a European Botanical Garden I can find is 1544. A good 25 years after they saw them in the new world.
I'm not saying to discount anthro work done by native tribes today, some of it is very good, but there's also a really unfortunate tendency towards creationism and politicization of their conclusions.
Posting on phone, will try to write something better later
Eh. The Grand gardens of the taifa kingdoms (many of which remained after the christian take-over) could easily have been classified as botanical gardens, as they were collections of plants from all over the muslim realm and sometimes meticulously monitored by not just gardeners but botanical scholars as well.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Holy Cow, the intertron is a wonderful place. While looking for that painting up above I came across this, one of my favorites. A good title might be "The Final Two Seconds of Blackbeard the Pirate's Career".
Definitely, the entire continent was covered in settlements and had pretty well developed paths and roads between them. Not just in New England either, I remember reading about a plantation in the south that had a pretty boulevard with trees lining each side leading to the main house. The Trees predated the Plantation and the house at the end had been built to take advantage of the effect. Since that kind of thing doesn't happen naturally, natives are probably responsible.
The real question is how big each settlement was and how far away from each other they where. Huge cities with 10s of thousands of people are hard to hide, but a settlement of 4-5 thousand can easily slip through the cracks, especially if was built from wood, abandoned for a 100 years and then built over by western settlers.
as with the American one, though, it's so thoroughly politicized that I find it hard to tell who to believe. the answer is presumably "more than the right would have you think, but less than the left"
I was at at an exhibition this this that had the same theme, was really interesting. Also kinda hilarious that a big part of the european art scene was basically otaku nerds.
There were only around 90 million people in Europe in 1500. North America wouldn't need to be too densely populated at all for the very urban societies in central and south america to match that.
It's interesting too how some of those japonais styles then transform into art deco, and then find a home in Japan again as they get further adapted.
Meet the Bulgarian Church of St. Stephen, a church that is more metal than any band could ever hope to be:
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I say we send in Lemmy and find out.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Ahh, but you see? He's already there.
I'm gonna go with "pretty live" as my guess.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
All you never wanted to know about the Icelandic witchcraft known as necropants. Spoilered because we're talking pants made from the bottom half of a person's skin.
Opens spoiler tag.
Looks at preview image.
Closes spoiler tag.
- John Stuart Mill
...I did say less morbid.
Also featured in his channel, everything you want to know about late 14th century plate armor.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Claude Monet showing off his dining room/small portion of his collection of Japanese prints:
He collected over 200 before he died.
Here's a painting he made of his wife:
It's honestly pretty fascinating.
Yeah, cultural exchange gets you some of the coolest art.
And hottest women.
Yes, at one point, Oregon experimented with parachuting beavers in to wilderness areas to repopulate them away from urban areas.
This made me spit-take at work.
For those who have never heard of them, Green Book guides were for black motorists, telling them where it was safe to eat and sleep, and where it wasn't. And they were very serious about that.
Ooh, I was just wondering where I could go to learn about the Achemanid Empire