With a 5000 BCE PoD, how likely is the Americas to be as advanced as Eurasia when they make contact?

With a 5000 BCE PoD, how likely is the Americas to be as advanced as Eurasia when they make contact?

  • < 1%

    Votes: 34 33.3%
  • 1 to < 5%

    Votes: 13 12.7%
  • 5% to < 10%

    Votes: 13 12.7%
  • 10% to < 20%

    Votes: 15 14.7%
  • 20% to < 30%

    Votes: 12 11.8%
  • 30%+

    Votes: 15 14.7%

  • Total voters
    102

CalBear

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This is way too heavy-handed, I think. @TheArbiterofAwesome did not say RBG was a revisionist racist, only that the denial of "intentionally manufactured genocide" is such a notion.

I too consider the claim that Native Americans were not subject to genocide at least inspired by racism, but it's a very pervasive notion in the public, so holding that idea doesn't make the person a revisionist racist. Similarly, I wouldn't consider a Turkish person a denialist bigot simply for denying the Armenian Genocide, since the nationalist revisionist notion that the Genocide didn't occur is very pervasive in the Turkish public.
Actually he did say that exact thing. RBG thinks he did, and I agree.

As far as heavy handed - Heavy handed might have been to simply Ban him (which, BTW, has been done more than once in Chat for this sort of thing) without allowing the opportunity to prove his accusation.

As far a denial of the Armenian Genocide, that IS A Banning level issue, not an InstaBan, but not somewhere folks want to go. Not Even Close.
 
I think the better argument with this issue is to reframe what's problematic here. The issue I think William has is the treatment of the Colonization and Depopulation efforts as basically a 'Control' that Disease has to be weighed against; in effect basically positing that the attempt to dominate the New World was basically pre-ordained by...whatever, and that it is then on the onus of the New Worlders to repulse them or not. But the decision to seek total dominance over the people's of America was a conscious decision European empires made.

I think what's striking about European colonization, besides its obvious proximity and wide-ranging effects it has scarred the world with, is just the base hypocrisy of it. It was conducted by a Europe that was beginning to formulate ideas of a universal 'humanness' that transcended traditional boundaries; while the colonies created rigid racial heirarchies created out of pure greed. I feel like the sort of parochialism of the European colonizers is much less forgivable than say the Greco-Romans who associated civilization with their specific set of values. Europeans of the Renaissance knew better yet acted in bad faith with other societies because they could get away with it.
 
It was conducted by a Europe that was beginning to formulate ideas of a universal 'humanness' that transcended traditional boundaries; while the colonies created rigid racial heirarchies created out of pure greed.
I wouldn't entirely agree with you. The colonisation era was also the moment where people were categorized with sophrology and some catalogue as criminal due to the shape of their skulls. Racial categories were all the rage, including in Europe

As for greed and humanness, many people saw colonization as what we'd see now as humanitarian work, with missionaries and campaigns to end slavery.
I'm not saying this is a compensation or the main reason why there were colonies, but it was a thing that happened and it was definitely used as justification
 
I wouldn't entirely agree with you. The colonisation era was also the moment where people were categorized with sophrology and some catalogue as criminal due to the shape of their skulls. Racial categories were all the rage, including in Europe

As for greed and humanness, many people saw colonization as what we'd see now as humanitarian work, with missionaries and campaigns to end slavery.
I'm not saying this is a compensation or the main reason why there were colonies, but it was a thing that happened and it was definitely used as justification

I guess I just feel that a lot of those new divisions came about directly to justify the new opportunities of exploitation.
 
But the decision to seek total dominance over the people's of America was a conscious decision European empires made.

Well, was it? A conscious decision that is.

How much of was the causal factor concept of total domination and from there on flowed down? Against how much European presence was established through a set of private motives for material things (an escape from poverty, land for smallholdings, riches: plantations, gold, silver, furs) and abstract things (freedom, religious ideology, opportunity, the chance to build radical new societies, even ideas we still find admirable today), that were sort of independent of desires for total dominion (territorially or of the people).

Then when Europeans were established found that they could always in the long term defeat native forces on their borders and almost always found that there were reasons to and found over the long term it was almost always the most expedient choice?
 
I guess I just feel that a lot of those new divisions came about directly to justify the new opportunities of exploitation.
It's an interesting discussion which came first, I wonder if any studies has been made on the subject?
At the end of the day it's probably a vicious self sustaining circle
 
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