The shaman people that inhabited North and South America prior to its brutal Anglo European takeover built a vast and organized civilization. They lived in structured societies that were democratic and very connected with spirituality and nature. There was very little sickness and they had medicinal plants for every condition which were far superior to today’s pharmaceuticals. The indigenous people were extremely happy, things like depression, mental illness, crime or greed were not nearly as prevalent in their culture, as is seen in ours. Now I’m not so naive as to think that all the natives were totally peaceful, but the kind of mass violence seen in the west was certainly not present. There were many different tribes scattered throughout North and South America, some of them peaceful, some of them violent, it was literally a whole new world inhabited by a vast network of societies each with their own unique culture. One common myth about the native people is that they had no respect for property rights or trade. In reality native cultures had complex systems of trade which even included various currencies, using anything from shells to animal pelts. They just didn’t happen to keep complicated records and write everything down on paper as the westerners did. There were definitely some tribes that employed slave labor and practiced human sacrifice, but these groups were more hierarchical in structure then the rest of the native populations. This kind of organized violence was also more common in areas of dense population. To say that there was just one civilization here before colonization began would be a disservice to the diverse culture of the pre Columbus Americas. Making the generalization that every tribe in that hemisphere was the same would be like saying that Canada, Mexico and the United States had identical cultures today. Contrary to the Europeans claims that the Americas were a vast uninhabited wilderness, there was actually a massive native population that numbered in the hundreds of millions. Traces of this large population seemed easy enough to destroy at first, considering the natives put a great deal of care into making as little an impact on their environment as possible. However, as time passes archeologists are continuing to uncover evidence that the pre Columbus civilizations were much more advanced and populated then the historical record tells us.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 20:13:20 +0000
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