These are the 3 main reasons I think native americans were considered primitives: lack of metal tools (some groups had access to copper and bronze, but none had iron), lack of any sort of writing (writing didn’t extend much beyond central America) and, especially in the warmer places, wearing little to no clothing.
Still, no one in their right mind would ever look at the huge temples and cities built without animal traction and think “Yeah, only a group of primitives would do that”. I mean, when you look at the megaliths of Sacsayhuaman, you immediately think “How the fuck did they do it?”
When I was a kid, Washington the state, Washington DC, and the whitehouse all blurred together, and then we learned that the whitehouse burned and was rebuilt, and for the longest time I thought it was relocated… to the state… of Washington… and I believed that for years. I think I figured it out before high school, but it was definitely 7th or 8th grade before I could point on a map where the president sat.
There’s a 4th: absolution. If you see their societies as having equal right to exist then what was done was a horrific atrocity that specific people are guilty of, often including one’s ancestors. It’s the same with a lot of anti black racism.
These are the 3 main reasons I think native americans were considered primitives: lack of metal tools (some groups had access to copper and bronze, but none had iron), lack of any sort of writing (writing didn’t extend much beyond central America) and, especially in the warmer places, wearing little to no clothing.
Still, no one in their right mind would ever look at the huge temples and cities built without animal traction and think “Yeah, only a group of primitives would do that”. I mean, when you look at the megaliths of Sacsayhuaman, you immediately think “How the fuck did they do it?”
There were a group on the Washington coast that work with iron that washed up from old japanense shipwrecks before any contact of Europeans.
There are also a few Inuit groups who made knives for centuries from a metallic meteorite that landed in the arctic circle.
Isn’t Washington coast on the east side of the continent?
Washington state is on the West Coast. Washington DC, the capital city, is on the East Coast.
It’s… not intuitive.
When I was a kid, Washington the state, Washington DC, and the whitehouse all blurred together, and then we learned that the whitehouse burned and was rebuilt, and for the longest time I thought it was relocated… to the state… of Washington… and I believed that for years. I think I figured it out before high school, but it was definitely 7th or 8th grade before I could point on a map where the president sat.
We have Washington state on the west, and DC on the east.
Washington state. The one above California.
Nope.
Nope
There’s a 4th: absolution. If you see their societies as having equal right to exist then what was done was a horrific atrocity that specific people are guilty of, often including one’s ancestors. It’s the same with a lot of anti black racism.