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2TLCrawford
Given recent anthropological findings I have to ask if the Neanderthals were the first indigenous people to disappear after an invasion by foreigners?
3Muscogulus
>1 Urquhart:
The Backstory podcast (hosted by historians at the University of Virginia) just devoted an episode to the changing significance of the Columbus Day holiday. It opens with a vignette about the protests and scattered violence in San Francisco that accompanied an attempt to re-enact Columbus's landfall in 1992. (Admittedly, Columbus never had a thing to do with San Francisco Bay. But a volunteer actor in period costume was supposed to sail into the bay and come ashore.)
Some interesting, often forgotten points brought out by the program:
1. Columbus was far from an "enlightenment" figure; in fact, he was motivated to make his first voyage by mystical inspiration and a desire to fund a new Crusade. (As is hopefully well known by now, Europe did not still believe in a flat earth in 1492.)
2. Columbus did not consider himself a discoverer of the Americas. He persisted in believing he had found the shortcut to Asia, and that the people he encountered and subjected were properly called Indians.
3. The establishment of Columbus Day was seen at the time as a triumph for immigrants, especially Italian-Americans. It was a milestone in the acknowledgement by the majority that minority cultures brought valuable contributions to American life. (This identification of Columbus as the consummate Italian is ironic, considering that the Genoese sailor's allegiance was always up for sale.)
4. Because of the holiday and Columbus's prominence in public life (compared to later Spanish state servants who staked claims to parts of the North American mainland, such as Soto, Ponce de León, and Coronado), Columbus became in the late 20th century a prime target for accusations of cruelty, slavery, and genocide against native people.
http://backstoryradio.org/shows/1492-columbus/
The Backstory podcast (hosted by historians at the University of Virginia) just devoted an episode to the changing significance of the Columbus Day holiday. It opens with a vignette about the protests and scattered violence in San Francisco that accompanied an attempt to re-enact Columbus's landfall in 1992. (Admittedly, Columbus never had a thing to do with San Francisco Bay. But a volunteer actor in period costume was supposed to sail into the bay and come ashore.)
Some interesting, often forgotten points brought out by the program:
1. Columbus was far from an "enlightenment" figure; in fact, he was motivated to make his first voyage by mystical inspiration and a desire to fund a new Crusade. (As is hopefully well known by now, Europe did not still believe in a flat earth in 1492.)
2. Columbus did not consider himself a discoverer of the Americas. He persisted in believing he had found the shortcut to Asia, and that the people he encountered and subjected were properly called Indians.
3. The establishment of Columbus Day was seen at the time as a triumph for immigrants, especially Italian-Americans. It was a milestone in the acknowledgement by the majority that minority cultures brought valuable contributions to American life. (This identification of Columbus as the consummate Italian is ironic, considering that the Genoese sailor's allegiance was always up for sale.)
4. Because of the holiday and Columbus's prominence in public life (compared to later Spanish state servants who staked claims to parts of the North American mainland, such as Soto, Ponce de León, and Coronado), Columbus became in the late 20th century a prime target for accusations of cruelty, slavery, and genocide against native people.
http://backstoryradio.org/shows/1492-columbus/
4Muscogulus
> 2
Which anthropological findings are you referring to?
I'm not sure it's accurate anymore to talk of Neanderthal "disappearance" after an "invasion." These late 19th century theses of extermination of "primitive" peoples, such as the Aryan invasion theory of ancient India, hamstrung by its assumption that race is a real thing that can be mesured. Maybe it's no accident that the model of "advanced" people annihilating "primitive" people emerged in the context of 18th- and 19th-century colonial empires. Yet the long-predicted disappearance of the Indians, and other indigenous peoples, has yet to occur.
While Homo sapiens neandertalensis is extinct, for more than 30,000 years now, since 2010 we have evidence suggesting that the overwhelming majority of modern Homo sapiens sapiens have a small amount of Neanderthal DNA. The realization that is dawning on us, gradually and rather painfully I think, is that much of what has been celebrated for centuries as a superior "white" phenotype, such as fair skin and light hair, actually originates with the obsolete Neanderthals.
Sorry, I know this is OT.
Which anthropological findings are you referring to?
I'm not sure it's accurate anymore to talk of Neanderthal "disappearance" after an "invasion." These late 19th century theses of extermination of "primitive" peoples, such as the Aryan invasion theory of ancient India, hamstrung by its assumption that race is a real thing that can be mesured. Maybe it's no accident that the model of "advanced" people annihilating "primitive" people emerged in the context of 18th- and 19th-century colonial empires. Yet the long-predicted disappearance of the Indians, and other indigenous peoples, has yet to occur.
While Homo sapiens neandertalensis is extinct, for more than 30,000 years now, since 2010 we have evidence suggesting that the overwhelming majority of modern Homo sapiens sapiens have a small amount of Neanderthal DNA. The realization that is dawning on us, gradually and rather painfully I think, is that much of what has been celebrated for centuries as a superior "white" phenotype, such as fair skin and light hair, actually originates with the obsolete Neanderthals.
Sorry, I know this is OT.
5TLCrawford
#4 I have read, but not kept track of, articles on neanderthal DNA which seems to indicate that they were not exterminated as much as assimilated. Those of us with European ancestry have Neanderthal ancestors.
The old racists feared mixing the "races", I think it will do us all a world of good. If we survive another 30,000 years it will likely take DNA to detect the variations that European descended nations thought set them above the rest of the world.
The old racists feared mixing the "races", I think it will do us all a world of good. If we survive another 30,000 years it will likely take DNA to detect the variations that European descended nations thought set them above the rest of the world.
