The 'mystery' of who built the earthen mounds in the Midwest was nothing but white dude propaganda

Yeah that’s not exactly how these ideas came about. It’s not as if some simple farmer said to himself. “yeah I bet white people totally built that hill for Christian purposes”.

These theories were created and propagated by well off academics, politicians, And religious leaders.

Now it’s true that they were functioning in a culture with different assumptions, academic standards and what have. For example even the secular often considered the Bible a valid historical document until surprisingly recently. But these are not organic folk beliefs. These were proposals from the top. Often formulated to excuse or justify specific positions, circumstances, And ideologies.

And these ideas and those approaches still have currency. You can roll over to the nastier end of reddit. Or even jump into the deep end and visit where ever the hell all those storm front guys landed. And you’ll see this very same myth bandied about to support that only white western culture has done anything for the world.

Or hell turn on Curse of Oak island and watch a bunch of asshole jump through hoops. Generate bullshit. And make fools of themselves. In an attempt to claim a North American culture just has to have had a secret European base.

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I left off the point. That being that at least that’s still not the case.

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“Idolatry” is the missing link that allows those two ideas to coexist.

I am ordering this right about now. Thank you for recommending this to me.

I discovered Macauley in my school library when I was in third grade, and have loved him ever since. Both my kids have his books on their shelves. But somehow this one escaped me.

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Is this still considered a mystery? I grew up in the shadow of the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio, and even in my little rural school, they taught us that it was made by the Fort Ancient culture.

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Next you’re going to tell me those Mystery Spot locations aren’t actually anything special.

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One popular theory these days is that they were for teaching about birth.

I saw water flow uphill and a chair balance on two legs, with my own eyes!! (and, this being the late '70s, it was attributed to “Indian Magic”. See how I tied it back to the OP? :slight_smile:

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All I said was that sometimes I don’t feel like a nut! I didn’t realize it would cause so much controversy…

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this sort of propaganda is still alive

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For the African version, see here:

Long, but very good.

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Before this thread gets closed again: Is this another case of US exceptionalism? Because grand Native American architecture is not questioned south of the Rio Grande.

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Yeah,some of the afrocentrists claim the moundbuilders.

Lots of crackpots all around.

that’s from “They came before Columbus”-- in the bibliography for Akala’s talk

Kinda shaped like pyramids of sorts.

white people also claim the headwaters of Donny Brook, near yon marble head.

so is the eiffel tower; steel having a steeper angle of repose than your average stony loam.

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@milliefink already gave you all the answer you deserve, but just to satisfy any lingering debate…

Because it’s a false equivalency clearly meant to be provocative and elicit an emotional reaction as opposed to a reasoned point of discussion. To wit: The population of North America at the time period this article refers to was racially mixed with approximately 83.8% European heritage 15.6% African, and approximately 1.4% Native N American (though that last number is very fudgy due to a number of factors, mainly racism), while Uganda in the time period you are referencing (now) the racial breakdown is 91% African of various tribal ancestry, 1% European descent and 8% “Other”. The clearly disingenuous falsehood in your logic is that, while the motivations of crime in Uganda may be ethnically motivated, they are not committed en masse by races alien to the region as they were by European-heritage white people against indigenous North American populations. Therefore, it is cogent to the topic to refer to these people as white, yet would be completely irrelevant to a discussion about Ugandan violence. Ya dig?

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I was thinking more of the white historians’ habit of claiming that African civilisations were not created by Africans.

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