Yeah? I don’t know about that, Western European colonialism seems pretty global to me.
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Ok, poorly stated. The effects are global, the source is local.
But to my original point, it’s still not terribly accurate to point all fingers at Western Europe (just most fingers). Whomever the top dog of the moment is tends to spray their piss pretty far and wide.
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I don’t know anyone who points fingers at Western European (nor USian) imperialism while also denying the existence of any other forms of domineering evil.
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It’s cheap and easy to call long dead people dicks for what they did or believed, esp when they were often ignorant and poor (by comparison to us). At some point people in the future may say the same about us … think climate change or inequality - or maybe a better comparison is to choose something you actually believe, like racial equality or universal citizenship and human rights - 21st century dicks! how wrong were they.
(Greetings to anyone from our future reading this tedious lunchtime comment from your distant past)
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But on the other hand, there’s no particular reason to believe they were, any more than the current residents of the Mississippi valley built these mounds. Migration has been a fact of human existence as long as there have been modern humans, there’s places on the globe that have been conquered and reconquered over thousands of years, with the residents displaced.
For thousands of years the entire Central Asian Steppe has been like slow brownian motion of humans, bumping up against one another, and occasionally a tribe popping out to terrorize and conquer a region on the perimeter. From Turkey to Mongolia there are peoples who did not originate there.
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These judgments were arrived at without scientific consideration of migrations, or any hard linguistic, anthropological, or archaeological evidence, however; my point (and the point of the original post) is that these judgments were arrived at under the influence of bias.
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It’s sort of fascinating to me that old-timey archaeologists were able to justify two simultaneous beliefs:
- ancient and indigenous peoples were dumb, ignorant savages who had to be shown how to be human by white saviors
- but they apparently also spent most of their time either crafting sophisticated ritual objects or holding elaborate rituals.
I’m glad the thinking of “y’know, they were probably humans like us who got horny and sculpted naked ladies for fun” is a better possibility these days as well.
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Came to say something similar. I grew up in the area in the 70s and 80s and was never taught anything except indigenous people built them.
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Well then I guess it’s a good thing you weren’t living in the 1800s, the time period that the bb post is about.
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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? 
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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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