California unveils Native American monument at Capitol, replacing missionary statue toppled in 2020

[Hellbilly]

Enough about the injuns before the white man. Let's look at all th great things the white man gave this country

Ok. Let's see your list.
BTW this is my thread. I will talk about anything I want.

 

[theHawk]

The fact that you approve of atrocities tells me all I need to know about you.

I don’t approve of atrocities, I just don’t automatically believe in any story about evil whites and all natives were innocent bystanders. Natives were savages that committed atrocities against their own people before whitey showed up, they also committed atrocities against whites after striking peace deals.

 

[theHawk]

Ok. Let's see your list.
BTW this is my thread. I will talk about anything I want.

I already gave you a list, which you promptly edited out of your response, because you are a coward.

Running water.
Indoor pluming.
Electricity.
Grocery stores.
Automobiles.

Just to name a few.

 

[Hellbilly]

I don’t approve of atrocities, I just don’t automatically believe in any story about evil whites and all natives were innocent bystanders.

No one does. The fact is the civilized white man was far more savage than we ever were.

 

[Mushroom]

Very happy. I see you are too, using white man’s technology.

So until you swear off indoor plumbing, running water, electricity, and all the technology of the modern day, I’d say you are full of shit.

 

[Mushroom]

BTW this is my thread. I will talk about anything I want.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

As will you, 'shroom.

 

[DGS49]

The people who preceded Columbus' "discovery" were primitive hunter-gatherers for the most part. They lacked any sort of metallurgy, or way to make a durable blade, they never domesticated any animal to do work, they had not yet invented or discovered the wheel...the list is endless.

It made no difference which overseas group "discovered" the America's; the indigenous cultures, and probably peoples, were doomed. They would be conquered and subjugated, probably enslaved.

Their only path forward was to assimilate with the conquering populations, which they still refuse to do. No sympathy from this quarter. Statues and monuments? Gimmeafukkinbreak.

 

[Mushroom]

The people who preceded Columbus' "discovery" were primitive hunter-gatherers for the most part. They lacked any sort of metallurgy, or way to make a durable blade, they never domesticated any animal to do work, they had not yet invented or discovered the wheel...the list is endless.

OK, this is both correct, and incorrect.

Quite a few were not "primitive", as they many of the societies were quite sophisticated.

And actually, a lot of them did have metallurgy. They were working in copper, gold, silver, and some were even working in early forms of bronze. However, other than a few tools their use of metals never went beyond decorative. There is a hell of a lot of pre-Columbian examples of their work, and quite a lot of very sophisticated. And paleontologists for decades have been arguing and speculating as to why it never went beyond needles and jewelry. And the consensus is generally that the population densities were so low that it never became required. But both in Mexico and the Great Lakes area tribes had been working for over a century with bronze. But they never made the leap to weapons then armor.

And yes, actually they did domesticate animals. Most specifically, the dog. They had already domesticated the dog before arrival, and continued to use it as a companion, hunting partner, and beast of burden. The traders of Mexico even bred one to provide fresh meat during their travels, as one dog was a suitable meal for two people.

And in South America, they domesticated the llama. However, North America is not unlike Australia, in that it really had no wild animals suitable for domestication. But they certainly had the ability, look how quickly they took to the horse when it was introduced back to the Americas. Within a century even tribes that had never met "white men" were able to find them domesticate wild horses.

One interesting thing about the Americas, is that it was really strange when it comes to the animals. Like in the rest of the world all the megafauna went extinct, but left no apex predator. And much of the herbivores were completely unsuited for domestication. other than South America. No pigs, no sheep, no cattle, no goats. Only animals that barely resembled those and were of a temperament that was completely unsuited for domestication.

And it's the same with the wheel. They had it, but never developed it beyond a toy. Once again, low population densities is likely why.

Myself, I find that era fascinating because it is likely the closest we can ever come to seeing what the rest of the world was like during the late Neolithic era. That is all pre-history to us, but for the Americas that was within the bounds of history. And the same kind of monolithic building going on in Eurasia and Africa was happening in the Americas thousands of years later. I bet if one could travel back in time, the builders of Stonehenge or Göbekli Tepe were not unlike the Indians in culture.

But ultimately, it all boils down to population density. Without the population numbers and a lot of room to expand, they simply had little to no reason to develop at the speed of Eurasia. And I say that lightly, as even in Eurasia it took a long time. Bronze was developed in around 5000 BCE. But the oldest bronze weapons only date to around 3000 BCE. That is two thousand years where they had bronze, but nobody was making swords and arrowheads of them yet.

And why would they? Bronze was expensive, stone was everywhere and easy to work with. One can make stone arrowheads on the move, can't do that with bronze.

 

[DudleySmith]

Just to be clear. Crime, murder pollution, disease, racism, genocide, forced sterilization, stealing children makes for a great country?

Tell me, are you happy with this country that you created?

lol you just described most indian reservations. Quit projecting your cultural failures on others.

 

[theHawk]

The people who preceded Columbus' "discovery" were primitive hunter-gatherers for the most part. They lacked any sort of metallurgy, or way to make a durable blade, they never domesticated any animal to do work, they had not yet invented or discovered the wheel...the list is endless.

It made no difference which overseas group "discovered" the America's; the indigenous cultures, and probably peoples, were doomed. They would be conquered and subjugated, probably enslaved.

Their only path forward was to assimilate with the conquering populations, which they still refuse to do. No sympathy from this quarter. Statues and monuments? Gimmeafukkinbreak.

Exactly!

They act like if whites hadn’t come first, everything would had been so great. If the Chinese had come over they would had been wiped out. If the Africans did it would be the same, absolute savagery.

 

[DudleySmith]

Natives in the western hemisphere did have beasts of burden; they had captive peoples. Some also had developed farming and hence fairly decent population levels. they just kept murdering so many people they never sustained growth. Like the mono- economy of the South in the 'Cotton Kingdom', a reliance on slavery made it a dead weight on the rest of the economy, and made the ruling classes weak and parasitic and pampered instead of aggressive and inquiring. Most empires who reach that point tend to start declining. The U.S. has reached that point, and isn't even bothering to keep its infrastructure in repair, wealth is highly concentrated, and most of its productivity has been off-shored. All this has the same effects as slave economies presided over by a fickle self-satisfied decadent aristocracy.

 

[whitehall]

The Indians finally won the war.

 

[DudleySmith]

Exactly!

They act like if whites hadn’t come first, everything would had been so great. If the Chinese had come over they would had been wiped out. If the Africans did it would be the same, absolute savagery.

One of the flaws of many Christian cultures is they think everybody can be saved or something, and that makes many of them simple and gullible; they say there is real evil in the world but then turn around and refuse to deal with it as it should be dealt with. Sociopaths and psychopaths just see their tolerance and willingness to help others as a weakness and exploit them accordingly.

 

[theHawk]

One of the flaws of many Christian cultures is they think everybody can be saved or something, and that makes many of them simple and gullible; they say there is real evil in the world but then turn around and refuse to deal with it as it should be dealt with. Sociopaths and psychopaths just see their tolerance and willingness to help others as a weakness and exploit them accordingly.

What do you mean being “saved”? Their lives or their eternal souls?

 

[Wapasha]

A statue is a nice thought. What do the people in California feel for people who can trace their ancestors back to tribes that don't even really exist anymore, except as a memory? Is there even a city, county, or street in California named after the Miwok people?

 

[my2¢]

How long before someone demands it’s removal because they find it offensive

Well, if that headdress has any Native American religious connotation, just for the sake of principle....

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

A statue is a nice thought. What do the people in California feel for people who can trace their ancestors back to tribes that don't even really exist anymore, except as a memory? Is there even a city, county, or street in California named after the Miwok people?

The Miwok, which may be the tribe you’re referring to, have a current population of about 3,5001. This includes all subgroups of the Miwok people, such as the Plains and Sierra Miwok, Coast Miwok, Lake Miwok, and Bay Miwok1. Please note that these numbers are estimates and the actual number may vary.

 

[Mushroom]

They lacked any sort of metallurgy, or way to make a durable blade

And I wanted to circle back on this again, because it becomes obvious that you have never studied Neolithic tools.

Stone tools were used for tens of thousands of years largely because they were simple to work with, and even to "resharpen". For a flint blade, when it got dull one simply flaked it again and it returned to razor sharpness. That could be a knife, an axe, or a scythe. The same even with the more sophisticated "swords" of the Aztecs. And they were no joke, even the Spanish were afraid of those things, as those obsidian clubs with obsidian were sharper than their steel swords were, and hit harder as the wood gave them a lot more mass so more bashing power in addition to the cutting of the obsidian.

It takes a much higher level of society to cause metal tools to come about. You need people to gather the raw material, then to smelt them so they could be worked, then to fashion actual tools like a knife out of it. And that knife needed special care, and when one knew how to make a blade from flint, why would one want to use something like copper or bronze?

And it was actually no different for those in Eurasia. They had bronze for over 2,000 years before we saw them make the transition from bronze jewelry and needles to bronze weapons. If you lose an arrow with a stone head, you simply make a new one. If you lose one with a bronze head, then you have to shell out a lot of trade goods in order to get another one. Likely more in goods than whatever you were hunting would have gotten you. Even into the iron age, most hunters in Eurasia were still using stone because of the cost. Only a large kingdom could afford to equip their soldiers with more sophisticated weapons like bronze and later iron.

And even then, not everybody. Even Rome trained and employed slingers. And even into the Middle Ages, the bulk of most military forces were peasants who used little more than their farming tools.



Once again, the exact same thing found in the Americas. Even in Eurasia, metallurgy for decorative purposes long predated the use of it for weapons. And most of the earliest "metal tools" found anywhere are actually needles. One of the few instances where for an individual that has to make their own tools, metal did it better than stone or wood.

But maybe you can answer me this. The chariot dates to around 3,000 BCE. Yet, the wheelbarrow in Europe only dates to around 1100 CE. What, the stupid Europeans could not figure out how to make a wheelbarrow for almost 4,000 years?

And what good is a wheel, when you have no beasts of burden larger than a dog? Or not enough of a population density to make roads? Better to stick with the travois. It works in almost all terrain and weather conditions. There is a reason the nomadic Plains Indians used it, even though they had horses and knew of wagons. A group of Indians with their belongings on a travois could run circles around the settlers in the mid-19th century with their oxen and wagons.

 

[Wapasha]

The Miwok, which may be the tribe you’re referring to, have a current population of about 3,5001. This includes all subgroups of the Miwok people, such as the Plains and Sierra Miwok, Coast Miwok, Lake Miwok, and Bay Miwok1. Please note that these numbers are estimates and the actual number may vary.

I just feel that the statue may have been well meaning. However, if they want to pay their respects, then change the name of a county in California, in the area where the tribe used to live, and rename it to Miwok County. That beats a statue