Respond with at least 200 words and include a question for your peers (posts without questions will not count!).
Things to think about: What new light does Mann shed on your chapters from Page? What is his thesis? What methods does he use to prove this thesis -- do you agree or disagree with these methods? Think historiographically -- how has the way we tell the history of the pre-Columbian world changed over time. What accounts for these changes?
Alright well, I'll start by saying that I really enjoyed some of this reading. I found it a great change in pace from reading Page's writing. I think Mann brought up some really interesting points and he used some really fascinating facts. I think that Mann's main point - his thesis, per se - was pretty much just to disprove a lot of what people think America was pre-Colombus. He was basically just saying that both archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last thirty years proving the general assumptions about people crossing the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago, living in the wilderness where they didn't change much or do much before the Western settlers came, to be wrong. One point Mann made that I found extremely interesting was that in 1941, there were probably more people inhabiting the Americas than there were in Europe. I think just because of the way we're brought up and the things we were taught about America "when it was just the Indians," this idea was completely different from anything I'd ever been told. Also, the fact that that one town... Tenochtitlan (?)... was potentially more populated and even more civilized (do I dare use that word) than any city in Europe at that time.
We heard more about corn in this reading, and I thought it was really interesting how apparently, Indians in Mexico developed some crazy way of harvesting and farming the corn that people NOW are trying to replicate. That's saying something. Pre-Columbus, with zero influence from any Western culture, the Native Americans had developed such intricate, well-thought out systems... Why don't we give them credit for it?
My question is, can someone explain the whole Indian's MHC type thing... I know it's referring to their tolerance to diseases, right? I'm confused.
Also, Mann says, "Unlike Europeans, Indians did not live in close quarters with animals - they domesticated only the dog, the llama, the alpaca, the guinea pig, and, here and there, the turkey and the Muscovy duck. In some ways this is not surprising: the New World had fewer animal candidates for taming than the Old." I'm curious why you guys think that matters? I feel like he could be almost making a really interesting point but I'm not getting it... I'm not sure.
Think historiographically -- how has the way we tell the history of the pre-Columbian world changed over time. What accounts for these changes?
From the reading, it seems like many historians already had theories in mind and used limited evidence to back that up. For example, Betty Meggers believes (believed?) the rainforest is infertile and "Indian villages were forced to remain small" [pg 11]. Her evidence is the chiefdom. ("ecologists' claims about terrible Amazonian land were based on very little data." [pg 12]) But then Roosevelt does an excavation and finds this questionable. Her evidence leads her to the theory about the Native Americans fixing the rainforest in order to make it more bountiful. Here, theories follow the evidence. By trying to improve our understanding of the past, methodology also changes. What do we do when we have physical evidence that doesn't match up with common belief? The theories have to be changed, and when one changes, others must follow suit. In doing so, we get closer to the truth, and also are forced to examine small details that may have been previously ignored or downplayed.
(By the way, doesn't this stuff about the terra preta-black earth kinda remind anyone of the story about the wolf who placed dough upon the earth? )
I also didn't totally understand the MHC thing. I was wondering about something. On page 6, it said the Europeans were used to these diseases, therefore had methods of dealing with it. (quarantine and evacuation). I'm curious to hear what people think. Would less Native Americans have died off if they used these methods, or were they doomed from the start?
I enjoyed the way Mann wrote. He did not jump around as much in his points and evidence which was really nice and he also made the paragraphs pretty short which was nice. Celina just the thing you said about "Betty Meggers believes (believed?) the rainforest is infertile and "Indian villages were forced to remain small" [pg 11]." Meggers is right about the rainforest being infertile. Almost all rainforest soil is red clay with very little nutrients. I found it very amazing that back then the Native Americans were able to transform very unfertile soil into rich black soil to grow crops in. Despite what Columbus or other settlers wanted to believe about the Native Americans they were very sophisticated in their daily lives and were able to tame a huge wilderness. Before reading this tonight I in general thought of Native Americans as coexisting with nature and changing it very little because that is what I have heard and been told growing up. The idea is very new to me that they changed the Americas so much before Columbus but it makes sense that they would need to in order to not only live but thrive. I believe that humans can not live completely in nature without altering it somewhat because that would mean they could not cut many trees for fuel, plant crops or divert waterways. So it makes sense what the Native Americans did. Also I knew that Native Americans died of diseases brought over by Europeans but I never realized the extent that the deaths reached all over the Americas and the horrifying number of people that died. Gina I think the point he was trying to make about the Native Americans not living in close courters with animals is that if they had more domesticated animals they might have been more immune to the diseases domesticated animals bring. But the were not unfortunately so many of them died from diseases that stemmed from the pigs and other animals brought over. And Celina, to answer your question "Would less Native Americans have died off if they used these methods, or were they doomed from the start?"
I believe that less Native Americans would have died off of they had quarantined there sick relatives and friends and also gone away from major towns like the Europeans had. Quarantining peole is a very effective way to slow or stop the disease even though it must be very painful for everyone involved emotionally because the sick person is not allowed to see the person they love.
Do you think that Native Americans were wrong to alter the enviroment so much for their own good and badly effect some of the animals? Is it the same as what we are doing today to the enviroment?
Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 7:53 am Post subject: copoopopopeope
Well first of all I think that he made it very clear that there is a lot of speculation and often misestimation about specific numbers involved in the Native American societies. There is also a lot about speculation of how 95 percent of certain populations were dropped out of the picture. Some say it was a few pigs others say that’s impossible. I think this, like gina was saying, sheds some light on the Jake page book. It’s highly likely that he is taking the data that best supports his thesis as any good scientist should, which is sort of how I see this book so far. I also think he isn’t completely unfairly representing the native American fact either. He does say, especially in the beginning, a lot about how some of these dates are wrong but you can never tell which ones. I suppose he makes his opinions clear rather than completely avoiding some data points.
On the pig killing population note I think its possible, though probably unlikely that, we are putting too much blame on the Europeans for coming to The Americas and wiping out a whole shit load of people through diseases. Now as Europeans they do seem to prove them selves by sending these natives away on the trail of ters and shit like that but original I’m not sure if they had malicious intent yet. I almost, but not quite, want to say that the native Americans were going to eventually have to come in contact with some other people seeing that they lived in world not a vaccum and that they had to learn how to be more diseas resistant
Was this incredible loss of 95 percent of the population in some way helpful to the NA population?
Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 8:06 am Post subject: skalsiwo
The main topic of this article is definitely about the landscape of North America primarily, even though the themes drift around and go off on tangents. Right from the start the article says how "the distinction between anthropologists and archeologist has blurred." So I guess the thesis would talk about how much impact humans have on the Earths landscape and whether it’s actually worth trying to preserve is a toss-up. One example of human affect is the Beni and how: "To keep the habitat clear of unwanted trees and undergrowth, they regularly set huge areas on fire. Over the centuries the burning created an intricate ecosystem of fire-adapted plant species dependent on native pyrophilia." So while something useful came out of the burning and it was effective for achieving these Native American's goals, it still reveals the harmful crossroads of human need/want and nature. The idea of preserving forests and land is all well and good yet seems to be just a feel good band-aid for Americans to be able to continue doing whatever we want.
What is it about Americans ideology that makes us push for national parks, etc. yet doesn’t necessarily inspire us to change our ways of life very much?
I had always known diseases had impact when strangers brought over illnesses to new places but no idea how out of control it really was. Wow.
I did not really like this reading but it wasn’t that bad. It was just kind of all over the place and hard to pin down.
Hi all.
So I defiantly preferred this article to Pages writing merely because of the organization. It was really clear to me what point was being made and how it connected to everything else.
That being said, I also thought that there were a lot of really interesting points in here. I am actually going to start with Celina’s question about whether or not the Native Americans were “doomed from the start.” I think that though quarantining may have helped the situation, a large part of the Native Americans would still have died. Even though not as many may have gotten exposed through that method, there were still other ways that the disease spread. Like Soto’s pigs. As it was said in the reading “only a few of Soto’s pigs would have had to wander off to infect the forest.” (pg 5) So, in a sense, the Natives outlook was not bright. Also remember, they were combating a host of different diseases (Smallpox, typhoid, bubonic plague, influenza, measles, whooping cough, mumps…) It would have been pretty hard to quarantine all those infected and the Native American’s immune systems just couldn’t combat these viruses. I really don’t think the Natives stood a chance, not with what they were facing. If it had been just one of these diseases, as the reading said, it is rare the viruses are “lethal on so wide a scale.” (pg 5) It was the bombardment of illnesses that truly destroyed a large portion of the Native Americans.
I thought it was funny that on page 2 Mann asks Balée if they should let the people keep burning the plains or let the trees invade and Balée asks if Mann is trying to trap him. This is the discussion we were having all of class today and I just laughed when I saw it.
The part that I found the most interesting was on page 8 where Elizabeth Fenn is quoted as saying “the consequential finding is not that many people died but that many people lived.” In this paragraph she talks about the true devastation is in the loss of the cultures. These diseases caused entire ways of life to be wiped out. There was so much more than lives lost in the epidemics, so much we could have know, that could have still existed today, had the Europeans not infected the Natives.
My question was the same as Gina’s (the MHC thing), so I’ll ask a different one. It to me that Mann is saying that if the illnesses had not spread through the Native Americans, that the Europeans would have had a much tougher time invading the Americas. They were facing a thoroughly weakened populous when the really started to move in. Do you think that if the Natives had not been so affected by the viruses that they could have held off the Europeans? Would the United States exist today?
I am skeptical of the theory that the amazon was created by natives. But I am disappointed by the lack of specifics presented by the author about the subject, he gave no time line as to when anything happened, and did not at all explain the feasibility of enriching the soil. I find it hard to believe that anyone had the agricultural know how to enrich soil like this on such a large scale long enough ago to develop the speices diversity found in the amazon. In addition I feel that more human friendly vegetation would be present if this was the case. In general there seems to be a lack of evidence to support this theory.
It seems that there is a ton of politics surrounding every part of Indian history. Defiantly way more then I would have expected. I am going to be more critical of anything I read now, because it seems like many people have an agenda when they come up with theorys or numbers.
Do you think the man made amazon theory is accurate?
i absolutely loved this reading, it embodied everything that i found interesting about environmental history. i feel like it is rare to get evidence in history classes as to why people thought the things that they did; here is historical evidence that speaks to why European's (wrongly) thought of themselves as gods chosen race. they felt as though the diseases that preceded them were the hand of god wiping out their opponents where in reality the diseases they carried were the result of a far less sanitary European lifestyle.
im a huge fan of a reading that includes data like the whole MHC thing which i think i understand. as far as i can tell that part was saying that Native Americans had a more homogeneous genetic makeup than Europeans (or Africans) of the time and one of their common genetic traits left them more susceptible to mutated forms of bacteria/viruses. the reading speculates that unlike europeans/africans they never developed this trait because they cultivated different breeds of livestock in ways that exposed them to fewer forms of pathogens.
anyhow i think my favorite part was the whole alteration of environment thing. it is just so ingenious to change the environment you live in to be more beneficial to the animals you want to kill rather than try and domesticate the animals themselves. changing the environment ensures that the food you need will thrive for years to come.
i guess my question is how can we apply what we know about the way the Native Americans altered their environment to current issues surrounding sustainable fuel ect?
I thought the main idea of the article was less about the landscape of North America pre-Columbus and more about the peoplescape. He mainly talked about the populations of different tribes and the impact that was had on them by disease and the settlers etc. I found it absolutely shocking when he said that “In the first 130 years of contact about 95 percent of the people in the Americas died-the worst demographic calamity in recorded history” previously, I had absolutely no idea what the true impact of European settlement in North America was.
I had a few questions also, first when said that “One out of three South American Indians have similar mhc types; among Africans the corresponding figure is one in 200. The cause is a matter for Darwinian speculation…” Was he in anyway implying that there is a change that American Indians are genetically inferior? Or was that just me reading into it too much.
My other question is that, hypothetically, if hot peppers, potatoes, corn, and tomatoes had never been introduced into the rest of the world, what do you think the lasting effects would have been on the rest of history? One thing I can think of immediately is the whole Irish Potato famine thing would have been a bit different.
I think this reading had a lot of useful information about the the Americas before Columbus. Mann did a good job of describing the land and aspects of the culture. However i did feel as i was reading it that it did not necessarily tie back to any one main idea unless it was just that our perception of the history is flawed.
This reading really reminded me of environmental history. The main questions that we discussed in that class were about the way that nature "should be" and if their was an inherent right way for nature to function and how should people's history (especially natives) play into how we judge things.
"Should we let people keep burning the Beni? Or should we let the trees invade and create a verdant tropical forest in the grasslands, even if one had not existed here for millennia?"
This seems to be an unanswerable question quite similar to the discussion we had today.
I guess that i do not have a question as i realize now that the forum has taken a very different path. sorry i started writing when there were only two posts. But i guess just think about the concept of the way people change the environment and how do you feel about the way the Natives changed the environment was it worse or better than the way it is done today.
Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:17 am Post subject: Da Mann
Ok So as a lot of us have identified already this article by man seems to want to disprove a lot of societal staus quo accepted theories about Pre - European Americas. I have to agree with Gina's first post, in that the tone change in Mann's article as compared to Pages is weclome. In fact I feel that while Page tries to remain neutral about many topics regarding Native American history, Mann goes for the gut and pushes his not commonly accepted opinions. Right on Mann, right on. Anyway moving onto content. I have to say I agree with Mann's opinions for the most part. I do agree with the point that it is hard for people to keep a large population when they are constantly getting wiped out for diseases. And yes, it is acknowledged that this topic is still in debate I have to guess with a continet that darn big, I am gonna find it more probable that at one point there was a good ratio from population to continent. Also I have to agree with celina that many of the opposers of the old school of thought had many holes in their theories that further point towards many of Da Mann's views as more probable. I have to say this article also opened my own eyes. I too for some reason (society?) had this view of their being more trees than people in the americas pre-columbus. I also imagined a few small villages here and there, but again more animals and trees than people. This article was a true eye opener for me
Q: Do You think that if the native americans had not been decimated by many a disease, we would be here today? could they have fought us off? or were they doomed?
The part about MHC types was really interesting to me. I'd heard about how illnesses brought by the Europeans killed off lots of the Native Americans, but had never heard how Native Americans had unusually homogeneous types. That just seems so evolutionarily backwards that an entire population could evolve and thrive for quite some time with such little variation in what illnesses they can fight. I'd really like to know why this happened. With this information, it seems like Native Americans were kind of evolutionarily doomed. If they had quarantined and evacuated sick people and lived through the European diseases better, eventually another group of people with a whole new bunch of diseases would come, and their bodies wouldn't have been able to fight those either. It seems like a huge amount of the population dying off was inevitable. Makes me think of people who are just allergic to everything and have to be in a totally uncontaminated area or they die. That's just not going to work for very long...
I've got a few questions-
First, is there any information on MHC types in early humans? Like, back with the species was developing? I want to know if early humans had more varied MHC types and the people that traveled here just lost that somehow, or if we all originally had similar MHC types and later the rest of the world started evolving to have more varied types while the people here just didn't for some reason.
Then...I remember in the first few days of class when we were talking about the Europeans thinking the Native Americans thought they were gods because they were white, Martha mentioned Columbus probably hadn't been their first encounter with people from other parts of the world. If it wasn't, and they'd had interaction with other societies before, was there a huge outbreak then too?
So to start I didn’t like this as much as the Page book, mostly because I really like hoe Page writes and this was very different. I thought there was a lot of good information in this though. To comment on Copper’s post, I think that while we do put unnecessary blame on the Europeans for bringing diseases, things like the trail of tears definitely prove to me that they were trying to get rid of them. I think that they had to have known what the trail would have been like to some extent and then there’s the fact that they were harsh the Native Americans while on the trail, making their experience that much worse. However I completely agree with the fact that the Native Americans had to have come in contact with the Europeans and their diseases at some point.
I also think Connor brought up a very interesting point in his post. “What is it about Americans ideology that makes us push for national parks, etc. yet doesn’t necessarily inspire us to change our ways of life very much?” I think that the main reason most of us don’t change our lives is that most of us don’t think of national parks that way. When I go to a national park the first thought in my mind is not, oh this makes me want to save the environment! I think most of us appreciate that these parks are there and try and enjoy their beauty, but don’t take it much further than that. Also, I think there is a certain beauty associated with national parks that we don’t associate with, for example, our backyard. Its special and I think that we make the assumption that our backyard could never be as beautiful as Yellowstone, for instance.
So my question is why do we always think that the Europeans gave the Native Americans blankets with smallpox and that they were extremely mean and purposely wanted to harm them? I just can’t see them coming over to the Americas and immediately trying to kill the natives.
Alright so I agree with Alex that I really prefer Page’s book over this reading. I like Page’s writing style a lot better than Manns. However, I do think that Mann brought up a lot of really interesting points that Page didn’t touch on. I agree with Gina, in saying that Mann’s thesis was to “disprove a lot of what people think America was pre-Columbus.” To prove his point he used a lot of direct quotes from historians, which I think is a very smart strategy to persuade people to agree with him.
Like Cooper said, I also think there is waaaay too much blame on the Europeans for the wipe out of Native Americans. To answer Alex’s question, I think we accuse the Europeans of wanting to harm the Native Americans because it also gives a plausible answer to the age-old question of how the Native Americans disappeared. The answer is really a mystery and I think saying that the Europeans came over and were the cause of this can be argued to make perfect sense.
I don’t think that they came over to purposefully hurt the natives. I do believe that when they came a lot of the Native Americans were wiped out partially because of their arrival, but I don’t think everything can be blamed on the Europeans.
I also loved the part about the alteration of the environment. Like Max said, I also think that it’s just so smart and interesting “to change the environment you live in to be more beneficial to the animals you want to kill rather than try and domesticate the animals themselves. It sucks that everything was going really well until Columbus showed up.
My question is similar to Nates:: If diseases hadn’t swept over the land, and there were more natives when the Europeans showed up, do you think the natives and Europeans would have successfully gotten along? And if so, what do you think would have happened from then on?
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