Recent content by Pixel

Actually I think you've told me several times why you keep bothering with me

My dude, Spain is mostly just suspiciously absent from most cultural media. Americans barely know what a Spain is, you guys eat tacos and wear huge sombreros right?

Those are all pretty bad movies, and the one of them that is popular and semi culturally relevant Spain has like 15 seconds of screentime.

MadVader said:

As a huge Anglosphere culture consumer, I can testify to the Black Legend about the Spanish there

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As a huge hispanosphere culture consumer ... this idea of it being an anglo thing is bizarre to me. Spain's empire is not well-remembered in Latin America either, except by a fringe group of insane reactionary tradcath Mexican monarchists and people like that. The only people who seem to consider Spain's actions as justified or alternatively humane and enlightened are sensitive Castilians. I don't know if Terco is Castilian, but like, hardly any one of the various other nations in Spain view the empire so positively, let alone so vocally and personally.

I guess it's true the average joe in US, UK, or probably Australia doesn't view Spanish history with much interest or charity but that's true of like 80%+ of the world's countries going both ways and isn't the same as saying academia has no interest. Certainly, despite everything, Terco, I have an intellectual interest in Spain, it is a country with profound influence on world culture, art, literature, and political thought, far out of league for its size, just not always for good reasons. I'd love to visit someday, storm the library in Sevilla to steal forgotten colonial records and make fun of the funny accents. If you want to be proud of Spain, there's a ****load to be proud of! You don't have to defend empire and deny genocide, we both know your country is more than that.

Vermillion_Hawk said:

What is the value in casting Spain as an "antagonist"? What makes the Indigenous societies of Mesoamerica worthy of being the protagonist (since we're making moralist judgments), beyond your own personal investment?

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Diego de Landa - by his own admission mind you - burned thousands or tens of thousands of Maya books. He had little good to say about those people, decrying them and their works as savage, heretical, and inferior - yet Diego de Landa remains, for better or worse, an extremely valuable resource for studying the Maya. In fact, without his documentation, decipherment of the Maya written script would probably have been utterly impossible. He is cited as a primary source frequently.

Granted, we are not exactly spoiled for choice of non-supremacist assholes for the period and region, and had Diego de Landa just not burnt the books at all, a greater corpus of text would have survived which would likely have facilitated faster decipherment. I just happened to have a Mesoamerica-related example come to mind, I doubt you have to look far for others in other places. His opinion and judgement of the ethnicity he documented by no means diminished the historical value of the documenting. If I had phrased that paragraph about writing to have said effectively the same thing but with more neutrality, would that have added value to what I said? Would you have reacted the same way? I hope I don't come off as facetious, I really don't mean to. I disagree with de Landa's opinions - the substance of his facts, however, is obvious enough. I think others are capable of this kind of source criticism as well.

Sure, stating the facts in a way that connotes my opinion may not *add* value per se (although it may be informative to future historians what biases the author has to keep in mind while referencing them. And since we all have those biases...) yet asking where value comes from is a philosophical question. But whatever value means to you or means to me, I don't think any is necessarily lost in this case. It seems to have no effect in the long run.

Vermillion_Hawk said:

Sure - if we're studying them as an interesting relic, like any other past civilization, the Spanish of the sixteenth century included. But what I've seen lately is this overcorrection which often manifests as the resurrection of a somewhat better-educated version of the "magical Indian" trope, the idea that there is some special knowledge inherent in these societies which makes them valuable as more than an object of study.

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When I say there is something to learn, I actually meant "practical" things (although obviously there is also the kind of things you're talking about too). When settlers came, they did things Old World style - that much is exemplary in Paradox of Plows and Productivity which I suggested reading in an earlier post. Things that work great in the Old World, don't always pan out here. Just as indigenous land management (and they by no means left the land pristine as the myth goes) and exploitation is ill-suited to the Old World - it's not "special" or "magical" or "superior" (inherently) knowledge it is just different knowledge that is shaped to the specific circumstances of the place they have lived for thousands of years and which we are relative newcomers to. No more special than medieval European knowledge.

I already presented one example demonstrating that learning and applying practical knowledge from indigenous societies has literally already happened, but there are others that have yet to be implemented (and may never be due to political reasons), not to mention lots of people in the US that apply native agricultural methods which are understood in part because we were lucky enough to observe them in practice. In the same earlier post I also suggested a treatise on public health in Aztec society, in which 24 herbal treatments recommended by Mesoamerican physicians were tested. Of those, 17 were newly found to be effective in the manner described. I previously mentioned Amazonia (in which the techniques were not yet understood, because no one was alive to tell us) because this is probably the most obvious example, although there are implications for water management here in the American Southwest also. I don't know where you live, it may be that this stuff is very well irrelevant to you, but there are millions of people in the Americas for which this stuff potentially could have an effect on policy if the right people ever listened.

EDIT: this is not to say this "practical" stuff is the only reason to study any ancient culture, hell it is probably not even the best reason to

It's okay, I don't drink

Terco_Viejo said:

I fully agree with you that the native peoples suffered the violence of the imperialist expansionism of the Spanish crown; violence that inevitably goes hand in hand with this kind of confrontation

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You haven't done a good job of letting me know that you think this, as up until now you were saying stuff like 300 years of peace and how Spain granted them human rights and other such things. Guess it took more of a sentimental argument.

There is a black legend: but it exists as deflection, so when someone brings up US or British genocides they can be lightened by "well what about Spain? they had the mountain that eats men!" (you are probably familiar with what that term is referring to). It makes out Spain as uniquely evil, not especially evil. There is also a white legend, which seeks to portray Spain as uniquely civil and enlightened. As we've gotten this far, I'm sure you will agree that neither of these are true. Spain is not the worst, it's just as bad as the others.

You are quick to lay crimes (that is to say, more grave than what is typical for "this kind of confrontation") at the feet of other countries, including the aforementioned 2. It seems to me that the only reason you don't want to admit the same for Spain is because you feel like I or others would hold it against you personally or something.

Terco_Viejo said:

and I think that the direct consequence of that particular word, perhaps misused or not, originated from epidemiological causes and not from organized large-scale mass murders orchestrated by vile minds as a "spanish proto-final solution".

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There were definitely some massacres, but there was also a lot of fatal forced labor, which I've mentioned several times. Genocide isn't just like, shooting people. While you're killing them off you might as well have them work for you, no? Nazis, among many others, evidently had the same idea.

Having said that, I should probably also mention that while the conquest of the Americas was a long ordeal that killed millions, I would hesitate to compare most of it to the industrialized mass murder of the Holocaust, let alone what would have happened had the Nazis emerged victorious. It doesn't have to be a Holocaust to be a genocide, all the same.

Vermillion_Hawk said:

Obviously the Spanish weren't stupid, but these tactics have probably been around as long as there have been fortifications to siege.

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Sure. Genocide is probably as old as warfare.

Vermillion_Hawk said:

Again, not the best book out there on the specific subject of Mesoamerican history, but an interesting one in that I don't disagree with some of the conclusions he's drawing.

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Hey, sure. A broken clock is still right twice a day. For example I don't think most historians necessarily think the point about north-south vs east-west geography to be completely without merit. I guess there is also something to be said for getting millions of people to read and think (if not always critically) about something they otherwise would never have considered. I think though that attempting to construct a global narrative for the evolution of societies is more or less going to be wrapped up in some kind of determinism (in Diamond's case, environmental determinism).

People in similar environments worldwide have made very different choices, often the very opposite: in the Kalahari, the harsh arid environment meant that Khoisan peoples were not so interested in agriculture when the Bantu migration came that far south. In the Sonora, a similar environment with few natural resources encouraged irrigation systems and stratification. The northern half of the lowland Yucatan peninsula doesn't have a single river, yet in the 15th century it was home to a sprawling civilization of millions of people. Point being, humans rarely follow rules. I'm not sure a neat global narrative is possible, or if it is, that it wouldn't be too broad or reductive to be constructive to the field as a whole.

Other books also approach how humans interact with environments better... though granted, they also focus on specific regions. Sanders' The Basin of Mexico: Ecological Processes in the Development of a Civilization was written 20 years before GG&S and has a much better grasp of how that worked in Central Mexico. The issue I guess is that it's also pretty technical, but it's still cited today alongside Denevan and others. 1491: Revelations of the Americas before Columbus is also generally held by those knowledgeable in high-esteem, although Mann is no anthropologist either (rather a journalist who got in touch with the academics) and makes several points I disagree with or which are 10 years or more dated, we often recommend it to people as an introduction to the ancient history of the hemisphere in lieu of GG&S, as it is very approachable.

Some people also have a lot to criticize about what he has to say about China. China, however, is not my wheelhouse, and I don't know enough about it to fairly assess which of those criticisms have merit and to what degree. Nonetheless, it does appear there is contention about his hypothesis in more places than just Mesoamerica or the Andes.

Vermillion_Hawk said:

just smacks of some misplaced moralism.

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Certainly I am human and not completely without biases. I consider the Spaniards who participated in the conquest at the time to be the antagonists of the story, I didn't think that would be controversial. Now that being said, unlike some people who are interested in this stuff, I also am fascinated by colonial and modern Latin America (even if the countries are often assholes, with or without US backing of assholes) and the fusion of worlds that was created by colonialism. It is just as interesting and merits study as the Pre-Columbian setting which preceded it. I am anti-colonial, but obviously like every other person alive there are products of colonialism I like. The food I eat, music I listen to, languages I learn. Cross-fertilization between cultures is the coolest thing about history. It is a shame it often happens alongside abuse, violence, and extinction. If American societies survived better, they would have had a lot to teach us - just look at the work being done in pre-contact Amazonia. Their near-annihilation as a result of genocide is a loss for *all* humanity, both in the "less to study" sense and the "what could have been" sense, I don't see what's wrong lamenting that. This is part of the reason genocide is a bad thing: it is a theft from *all of us*. By extension, those who commit it are on the wrong side of history.

While "preventing harm" is maybe some part of my motivation in posting, I just generally like telling people about the Ancient Americas. I would like for the ancient New World to be just as respected and admired as the Old World is - it deserves it - and I am well situated to be a communicator such that breakthroughs don't stay in the ivory tower. No self-loathing here.

Terco, I thought you were done? If you're back into this, mind getting to those questions I popped at ya over the past couple pages? 'preciate it.

I would indeed be wrong to attribute it exclusively to deliberate sabotage, but that's not really what's intended. Maybe I mis-phrased something, possible given that the sun is now up. What I hoped to get across was it being a consequence of war and societal upheaval/collapse, which were certainly products of Spanish military campaigns and repression. Even in European wars, diseases spread during sieges and the like. As a tactic of waging war, the Spaniards most definitely did things like poison the water supply of resisting settlements (like Tenochtitlan) and from bitter experience they were fully aware measures like these and others would spread disease. The Spanish were a lot of things, I wouldn't call them stupid though.

When a society collapses, we are talking also about the degradation if not destruction of the systems it had in place to manage sanitation of cities, social support networks for sick people and those in need, and to some extent malnutrition, all of which dramatically weaken a society's ability to deal with epidemic. When we look at other parts of the Americas (and indeed Old World too), we do not necessarily see such dramatic declines as a result of disease alone, for things to get as bad as it got it is in combination with the violence we are describing. What we see over and over is the pattern of a cycle: disease makes waging war harder, waging war makes disease worse.

I mean, far as I know, we're not all that entirely sure what happened at Cajamarca exactly - we only have parts of the story from one side, and some of those parts don't add up. Diamond's account of Cajamarca is very likely wrong, if not in whole then in part, as he does what even back then was considered a bad habit: kind of just taking conquistador memoirs at face value and repeating everything they say without a grain of salt. There are plenty of other ways and reasons that Atahualpa may have been susceptible to an ambush, I would put "he was unfamiliar with strangers lying to him" near the bottom of the list.

Diamond is well-regarded mostly among laypeople, he is not a trained anthropologist, he doesn't understand domestication or epidemiology, and advances teleologic conclusions which are generally frowned upon in the field. He has some very strange ideas like steel armour turning people into space marines and Atahualpa being easily tricked because his people don't write as we do, so he would have no inking of the concept of dishonesty. Far as I'm aware experts have not thought all that highly of him, I don't even see him cited in my papers from 20 years ago. None of the historians I have had the privilege of being in direct communication with have ever had anything positive to say about him or GG&S.

Salmonella's role in the 16th century demographic collapse in Mexico is a mainstream Mesoamericanist conclusion, has been for a few years now as far as I'm aware. Certainly other diseases, including smallpox, measles, and notably but rarely mentioned malaria, had a role to play. The important thing is that it was not just European diseases, it was definitely also native diseases. As already said, these things would not nearly be so calamitous without the self-perpetuating cycle of warfare (there's this weird myth that all of Mexico was just totally 100% conquered and occupied after Tenochtitlan surrenders, not to mention revolts) and enslavement (such as mobilizing large-scale native labor to drain Lake Texcoco).

Demographic work on this region and period suggests around 20-22 million people in Greater Mesoamerica in 1519, a number which dwindles to 6 million in Spanish censuses taken in 1600. Even if we were very generous and assumed that only 40-50% of this decline is directly attributable to evil malice on part of the colonizers (I would say it is much higher) there's uh... a lot to account for.

Terco_Viejo said:

Surely in your academic eyes you see it as me running away like a rat from the discussion in which you want me to participate. However, we could be in an infinite loop, with both sides providing data in an infinite intelectual struggle to see "who will bend the other". For what? for absolutely nothing.

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Oh certainly, I had no intention of continuing beyond one post. There's no need to, really, I was aware it would not be read, at least not by its intended audience. You are welcome not to waste any more of your time on me. That said, I can't help but admit my infinite curiosity for this dataset you claim to have which has the power to overturn decades of ethnography, archaeology, epidemiology, demography, forensics (osteology, x-rays, lasers), linguistics...

@MadVader
When the word genocide was first coined some time ago, it encapsulated what you call "cultural genocide" and even to some extent acts targeting political groups (like say massacres of leftist groups in Cold War Latin America or Stalinist purges of political opponents). This is because targeting the culture of a people or ethnic group effectively does the same thing as just shooting all of them would do: ultimately they cease to exist as a culture. Part of the reason that genocide is to be considered a heinous crime is the destruction of the cultural diversity of mankind: genocide is, in its original conception, anything anthropogenic which threatens that diversity.

Unfortunately the UN is an organization that had to compromise between a bunch of genocidal colonial democracies and a bunch of genocidal authoritarian empires, some of which were major powers with a big hand in drafting the international law that is quoted there. That you say it's broad - even too broad - is actually like bewildering considering it was deliberately tailored to be insanely specific so that the parties responsible could not be blamed for genocide by their own declaration. Take #5 on your list: it specifies that children being removed from their families is genocide. Children specifically: if you do the same thing to adults, which does happen and with often if not always has exactly the same motivations and repressive means, it apparently does not count as genocide according to the United Nations. Awkward. All you have to do to get off scot-free by #5 is wait a couple years for them to grow up before genociding them.

So when we are saying that "normal people conceive of #1 when they hear the word genocide" which uh... I'd be curious on the stats of that, we would do well not to forget that it was in the interests of numerous powerful people on both sides of the Cold War to influence people a certain way. You also conveniently leave out the opening paragraph which specifies who can be a target of genocide, so you can say "you're genociding ME lol".

Also normal people aren't a hive mind. Certain incidents during the dictatorships of Latin America are known to people from those countries as genocides, even though they targeted political groups. If you're gonna pick just certain "normal" people to listen to I have to wonder what the justification is for that.

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Terco_Viejo said:

But unfortunately all this veil of hatred towards the Hispanic nature is what we find nowadays, the new revisionism is doing its good work. Despite this, and no matter who it bothers, it is Spain that is responsible for having brought to America urban planning, law, structured economies, agriculture, universities, cathedrals, architectural techniques, the influence of the Renaissance, the printing press, the wheel, writing, music and faith, among countless other things.

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Okay tell you what - I'll humor you. You want sources, data, good faith. Alas, so vast is the history and achievements of pre-Columbian civilization that I must content myself with a focus on Mexico and the United States. Luckily (but not for you), this is an area I have a scholarly expertise in and the passion to match, so I hope you won't mind if I attempt once again to broach the subject you keep begging for facts about. Unfortunately I must disagree with you though, revisionism has generally been unkind to Spain, but most of the sources I talk about here do not mention Spain (apart from like, spaniard man #231 says XYZ) and so do not express opinions one way or the other. Hardly 'black legend' stuff.

Urban planning: You could probably read like literally any archaeological review but Sanders' The Basin of Mexico: Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization would be a good start. Has a big chapter dedicated to and a map of Teotihuacan, city with flush toilets, apartment blocks, and a grid pattern that was vibin' with 200k people 1000 years before contact.
"The Xolalpan phase center of Teotihuacan, on the basis of data from Millon's Teotihuacan mapping project, was a large, compact center. During this phase it covered 20 km^2, had an estimated mean population of 125,000 (Million et al 1973 suggest a maximum of 200,000) and a mean density of 7000 per square kilometer. In terms of the monumentality of civic architecture, degree of planning, and overall size it ranks with the greatest pre-industrial centers of the world"
Nothing in Spain ca. the Xolalpan phase, or 400-500 AD, would even compare.

One city not good enough? Marilyn Masson's Kukulkan's Realm: Urban Life at Ancient Mayapaan. Definite example of urban planning, divided by four sections with four gatehouses presided over by the city's four dynasties. 9.1 kilometers of walls. Urban and market institutions compared in the book to "Europe north of the Alps".

Ah but Pixel, those are just two cities in Mexico. Spain brought cities to the Caribbean and Central America and American Southwest and beyond! Okay I simply do not have time to list every city ever and tell you what study to read. If you really are in good faith and intellectually open as you insist you are, then you can look for yourself at Cahokia (US state of Illinois), Pueblo Bonito (in the US state of Colorado), Ciudad Perdido (in Santa Marta, Colombia), the Marajoara earthworks... and of course Mesoamerica and the Andes were home to thousands of settlements in the range of 10,000 people or so, similar to medieval Europe. None of these are isolated examples: Ancient Americans were city builders far back as 3000 BC. Aspero and Caral-Supe are contemporary with Sumer.

Law: I'll make this one quick and link a virtual exhibit from a University website. Law and legal systems are discussed in numerous books and articles as, of course, it varies from time to time, place to place, culture to culture. I admit I do not know much about legal systems outside of Mesoamerica. Regardless, Mesoamerica had codified legal systems written down and interpreted by judges based on certain principles. Y'know. Law.

Structured economies: I mean every society has an economy, which is structured in some way that we can categorize. But I'll take this to mean some kind of feudalism, market economy, or centralized palace economy, economies which are associated with state-level societies as they involve hierarchies of settlements, a characteristic of states.
Mesoamerica: Frances Berdan, Deborah Nichols, Michael Smith, Rethinking the Aztec Economy among other things discussing the calpolli-teccali system of land management as well as markets, trade routes, currency, and taxation. Berdan's other works such as Aztec Archaeology and Ethnohistory are obvious candidates as well, also the aforementioned Kukulkan's Realm and Basin of Mexico. Mesoamerican states (altepetl federations) are characterized as feudal with some twists, but in the Late Postclassic there is a powerful market economy.

Andes: Craig Morgens, Adriana von Hagen The Inka Empire and its Andean Origins a good overview of Andean civilization in general, explores the ayllu-kuraka-suyu system of land management, the centralized palace economy held on the principle of Ayni or sacred reciprocation, as wel as the market economies of northern South America which includes the use of metal coinage and long-distance maritime trade routes that reached Mexico, also discussed in Dorothy Hosler's West Mexican Metallurgy: Revisited and Revised as they are considered the means by which bronzeworking technology diffused to Mesoamerica.

See also Herbert Harvey Public Health in Aztec Society, Deborah Chiconautla, Mexico: A Crossroads of Aztec Trade and Politics and Berdan's Aztec Merchants and Markets: Local-Level Economic Activity in a Non-Industrial Empire

Agriculture: The Americas are home to several hearths of agriculture: the Three Sisters Complex, Great Lakes Complex, Amazonian Complex, Andean Complex. This is most definitely a field in which the old world was outclassed, sorry. It was an exchange: it could just as much be said that the Americas taught the Old World agriculture. European methods of farming these complexes were also objectively inferior, see Jane Pleasant's Paradox of Plows and Productivity.
"Iroquois maize farmers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced three to five times more grain per acre than wheat farmers in Europe. The higher productivity of Iroquois agriculture can be attributed to two factors. First, the absence of plows in the western hemisphere allowed Iroquois farmers to maintain high levels of soil organic matter, critical for grain yields. Second, maize has a higher yield potential than wheat because of its C4 photosynthetic pathway and lower protein content. However, tillage alone accounted for a significant portion of the yield advantage of the Iroquois farmers. When the Iroquois were removed from their territories at the end of the eighteenth century, US farmers occupied and plowed these lands. Within fifty years, maize yields in five counties of western New York dropped to less than thirty bushels per acre. They rebounded when US farmers adopted practices that countered the harmful effects of plowing."

Universities/cathedrals Ok I'm not sure how the Cathedrals matter. I guess I admit the Americas indeed did not build catholic Cathedrals prior to European conquest. I also admit that during my time in Mexico and Guatemala the colonial cathedrals are indeed very beautiful structures and deserve the protection given to them. Nonetheless the equivalent of cathedral certainly existed, as in a large religious structure around which communities congregate, including the Great Pyramid of Cholula, largest pyramid in the world by volume, which unfortunately was demolished and an ugly orange church on top built to symbolize Mexico's religious conquest. Several other pyramids like La Danta, Teotihuacan's Sun pyramid, and Tikal IV, two of which I have climbed, are held to be among the top 5 tallest buildings of their respective time periods, worldwide. To go back to the urban planning a bit, that modern Latin American cities are basically organized around a 'sacred precinct' plaza with a cathedral in place of a temple is a pretty good example of things

Institutions of higher education also existed, in Mesoamerica these are calmecac in Nahuatl. I am unaware what the term is for the Andes or I have just forgotten, but nobles also attended similar institutions. Mesoamerica is home also to the first recorded instance of mandatory public education, in Tenochtitlan with all children in certain age groups going to school to study subjects which included the arts (mainly for women, like dancing/singing). Some people could potentially earn the privilege of going to calmecac, also.

Nobles went to such places to learn to read and write (including a rich poetry tradition) just like they did in Europe. I guess, however, you may contend that these institutions are not the same thing as modern universities, but I'm not actually very enthralled in semantic arguments. Last time I shared words with you, you ignored Spanish universities which had less savory things to say about Spanish actions, so it's not like you hold European education of the time in very high regard.

Architectural techniques This one is weird. Every building has some kind of architecture, even if it is the wattle-and-daub hut which typified a commoner's housing in both sides of the world for centuries. Hopefully I do not need to repeat myself though. American architecture is pretty advanced, see my list under urban planning. Spain introduced European architecture (like Baroque stuff) but I'm not sure how that's relevant unless you're saying Baroque is superior somehow to like, idk, Talud-Tablero.

Influence of the Renaissance The intellectual foment caused by the Columbian Exchange went both ways. That is to say that the mere existence of the Americas defines later Renaissance thought in many, hopefully obvious ways. Anyway, it seems you mean to imply that the Renaissance (a historical construct) is superior to cultural and philosophical movements and aesthetics of the Americas. I'll assume you meant better than that - anyway, the Post-Classic period was a "Renaissance" (we even borrow the word) for Mesoamerica, which was cut short by Spanish intervention. See Berdan and Smith's The Postclassic Mesoamerican World and Michael Coe's Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs. It's literally got philosophers debating metaphysics over chocolate at the bathhouse.

Printing press It is true no culture in the Americas had printing. I believe the first operational was in Santo Domingo. Mesoamerica was, however, only a couple steps away, as they had stamps and rollers, which are the precursors to early means of printing in China. Amatl paper is also pretty good.

The wheel The Americas did have the wheel, and used it in several "utilitarian" applications. I saw some non-utilitarian examples while I was in Mexico with my own eyes. What you probably want to say is Europeans introduced draft animals, which could overcome the inherent friction between the rotating wheel and non-rotating axle enough to be useful and iterate wheel development. Again, the Columbian Exchange went both ways. Livestock revolutionized native life, American crops revolutionized Old World life.

There actually is a lot to say on this topic. If you are in fact genuinely intellectually curious, maybe I can return to this.

Music and faith I... music is a cultural universal. All humankind does it. Europeans certainly introduced new instruments (particularly the brass family) but otherwise are you saying European music is just innately better? See Arnd Adje Both's Aztec Music Culture

Faith, again, if you're referring to religion, this only makes sense for your argument if Christianity is just innately better than say Zuyuanism or Katsina or whatever else. Considering the verbose philosophy and esteemed art produced in light of these religions, and the mostly fruitless theological debates during the colonial period which ended up with the super-warped syncretized idea of Catholicism which prevails in Mexico today, I would say no. The religion which ultimately spread to the Americas is really not Catholicism at all, nor is it fully indigenous, it is something new entirely just with Christian/Baroque aesthetic. Jesus actually was just the teotl of metal tools and horses.

Writing At least in this case, one could actually think to make the argument about the merits of the Latin alphabet over indigenous semasiographic and logosyllabic writing systems. Certainly there are advantages to Latin, however, there are also advantages the latter two systems possess: semasiographic systems sharing with ideographic ones the ability to be read without knowledge of the spoken language, which in a land with as many language families as Mesoamerica, was a pretty significant advantage. Reading Latin required knowledge either of Spanish or occasionally Nahuatl when allowed... uh I hope it's clear where I'm going with that. There were hundreds of languages in Mesoamerica, now everyone is being forced to speak just the language of the imperialist and their local lackeys. Aka perpetuating an oppressive system, obviously. "Luckily" with the literal non-stop warfare, pointless forced labor projects, along with outbreaks, most languages aside from those two went extinct anyway so I guess it's ok.

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As for all that dated narrative about the diseases, unfortunately that would require a longer post and sources that are less... uh, neutral about Spain's empire in the Americas. I should inform you however that the biggest disease killer in Mesoamerica at least (I do not know if this is corroborated in other places, however the epidemiology and genetics are pretty similar) was not smallpox, it was probably salmonella. Salmonella leaves a detectable trace in the skeletons of those it kills: the numbers don't lie. The reason that this is significant is because salmonella would only have been so virulent if, all of a sudden, somehow, social institutions including healthcare and sanitation infrastructure as well as uncontaminated food supplies were to catastrophically implode. I'll give you a hint: they didn't sabotage these things on their own.

By the way. Just so there is literally no excuse. If you want the links to download any of the above articles and books, among others which have gone unmentioned for sanity's sake or plain forgetfulness, send me a PM and you'll get them. There's like $2000 worth of research from the last 15-20 years alone and dozens if not hundreds of authors on my hard-drive - FREE for your perusal! I guess that goes for anyone else, too.

Also this hilarious article https://phys.org/news/2020-03-mesoamerican-copper-smelting-technology-aided.html

Also for the record terco, you totally 100% glorified genocidal conduct in your deleted post (hinted at in some of those that remain), though it may be from a place of genuine malicious ignorance or something (since you seem blissfully unaware of genocide taking place)

MadVader said:

I haven't seen his deleted post, so I can't judge that. He's just being a bit of butthurt nationalist here - normally in the on-topic boards he is a voice of moderation and non-insanity.
I don't think genocide denial is a good reason to be moderated (except for the Nazi and Armenian genocides which are special). For example, I believe that the Chinese are not committing a genocide against the Uyghurs and that those claiming this need to calm down and look at the definition and the facts. But if a moderator believes there is genocide, then he has grounds to slap me with a warning, which I would think is completely unfair.

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Yeah I skimmed that stuff in the other thread. Regardless, I'm not sure why only those two genocides should be the special exceptions. Maybe that's not what you meant, but unlike the uighurs' the genocide(s) in the Americas isn't some current ongoing event (well not as of like the 90s anyway to my knowledge) we can look at through the lens of the glaringly flawed UN definition of genocide and debate semantics over. Calling something not a genocide by some narrow definition of genocide as a gotcha is somewhat distinct to just saying nothing untoward happened at all and in fact the Spanish were heroic and altruistic liberators or whatever. In fairness not terco's exact words but more or less the gist from this conversation and the one I had with him a couple years back.

If you said that about the Chinese in relation to the uighurs, maybe I'm totally wrong, but I would imagine someone might be inclined to do something as taleworlds' whole thing is not wanting their product to be associated with that stuff. I presume they also don't want it to be associated with Spanish nationalism/fascism, of which there definitely is an undercurrent of in the general movement of denying or downplaying the conquest of the Americas.

They of course seem to have a fairly pragmatic attitude about it though, seeing as they are reluctant to alienate the Turkish base by just outright banning Armenian genocide denial altogether.

I don't believe the questions I am asking would lead to answers which will lead to infraction, but well I've been surprised before.

Terco_Viejo said:

It is incredible the level of demagogy, should I as a Spaniard of Celtiberian origins judge the expansionist campaigns of the Roman Empire in Hispania with the morals of the 21st century? For God's sake, what kind of circus is this?

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You admit a roman conquest in fact happened and that there may be reason to have moral qualms with it having happened, big steps there.

Since you insist on not using perceived modern standards to judge the past, okay, whose ancient moral standard would you prefer us to apply? Obviously the romans must have thought their wars there justified no? ( In fact they supposedly debated how just they were to intervene in Sagunto, because as usual the past is complicated ) one imagines the Iberians thought rather poorly about being invaded. Why do you only apply moral relativism only in certain ways? You're almost there dude, next step.

If you want us to use roman morality, tell us why or why not. Also which Roman perspective.
If you would prefer us to use celtiberian morality, tell us why or why not.
Or is there another ancient society who is the arbiter of ethics for that time period? tell us who.

MadVader said:

I'm practically an outsider, so I have the benefit of looking at the drama here with fresh, disinterested eyes. I was amazed at people ganging up on Brutus (not cool) and now at Terco being moderated (although he is being an ass). Things have changed, and not for the better. Except for Kurczak, of course - she is evil, but fair.

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I'm not sure how any of this is different aside from maybe someone getting moderated for it for once and it being literally the only conversation in off-topic for like a week. Terco's post was deleted pretty quick - but yeah uh, it deserved it. He is literally insane.