Tidbit From The 10,000 Year Explosion
In The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond describes this pattern in highland New Guinea, one of the last places in the world to make contact with outsiders. He wrote, “When I was living among Elopi tribespeople in west New Guinea and wanted to cross the territory of the neighboring Fayu tribe in order to reach a nearby mountain, the Elopis explained to me matter-of-factly that the Fayus would kill me if I tried. From a New Guinea perspective, it seemed so perfectly natural and self-explanatory. Of course the Fayus will kill any trespasser: you surely don’t think they’re so stupid that they’d admit strangers to their territory? Strangers would just hunt their game animals, molest their women, introduce diseases, and reconnoiter the terrain in order to stage a raid later.” Before outside contact, New Guinea highlanders spent their entire lives within a few miles of their villages, and as far as we know, none had ever seen the sea, which was just 100 miles away. It seems likely the whole world was like this in prehistory.
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4 comments:
Of course all humanity lived like this 10,000 years ago, and not much removed from this condition for the vast majority of people on this planet even 200 years ago.
But now in this era of enlightenment, all we have is looking glass eyes seeing tangerine skies, as the liberal and enlightened welcome the gentle displacement they expect from primitive invaders, but fail to recognize the inevitable final acceleration into slaughter once the tipping point of control is reached by those recent arrivals more in touch with their "traditional" and historic "humanity".
Sadly, I will be too old to join those similarly armed in The Camp of the Saints.
> hunt their game animals, molest their women, introduce diseases, and reconnoiter the terrain in order to stage a raid later
All in a day's work for the Somali invaders in Minneapolis!
Interesting take, though of course unknowable. Murder has a long history, but is it the only history? And also an interesting example of the endowment effect: the rivers over the hill probably aren't any more sparkling than the rivers on this side, but you'll still kill to defend your rivers.
@High Plateau Drifter and Anonymous: I'm a bit surprised to see you guys standing up so vehemently on behalf of Native Americans against the scourge of Europeans (though, Annoymous, that's not how you spell "Swede"), but hey, we all have a right to let our opinions evolve, don't we?
(And that's not how I USUALLY spell Anonymous!)
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