Reminds me of the recent finding that the Amazon River basin was much more cultivated in the ancient past than was thought:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/its-now-...
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/its-now-...
At the end, he tangentially mentions that we only know about this calendar because it is described in one of the three surviving books of their culture, out of thousands[1]
> "Just imagine our civilization reduced to three books, just the particular ones left by accident, which ones... So eh.. anyway, I get off the subject..."
The genocide of Native Americans is of course horrible by itself, but somehow this remark made me realize what "genocide" means beyond people being killed en masse. So much culture and knowledge was lost.
Yet in terms of lost culture, putting a high enough percentage of individuals in prison, and confining enough of the others to ghettos, while driving them out of historical cultural centers, has an equivalent result to genocide in some ways.
Essentially, a percentage of the people can be alive while also having “the culture” be as dead as dead can be.
Of course the culture is born again in a different form, as Native American culture endures today, despite “genocide”. And rendering that invisible is just a continuation of that genocide so I certainly don’t want to intimate that such culture is truly gone.
Well, a culture is born again; culture just tends to happen if you put people together, it's in our blood. The question is whether it flourishes. I am from Europe so cannot say this for certain, but I get the impression that all over both American continents, Native Americans are still very much an ethnic minority whose rights are being trampled over.
Look at the (pagan/polytheist) Romans' actions in the seige and destruction of (monotheist) Jerusalem, for one example. Or (pagan) Viking raids on English/Welsh/Irish Christian monasteries for another.
What about the Nazi party? The Japanese occupiers of Korea and China during WWII?
The British burning the Burmese royal library in the late 19th century? Or the current massacres of Muslims in Myanmar by Buddhists?
The US Army in its genocide of indigenous North American tribes?
My impression is that there are at least some anti-intellectual authoritarians in every country, religion, and political movement.
Yes, actually. The religion was Marxism (i.e., the most murderous religion in history), with Mao Zedong as its Prophet.
Hoffer's treatment of the phenomenon is just as fresh and relevant today as it was when he wrote the book in the 1950s.
I got downvoted for suggesting that Maoism was a religion, but it quite clearly had more commonalities than differences with the more extremist religious cults (as did Stalinism, Nazism, etc.)
> We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction. – Bishop De Landa
EDIT: My best guess is that this was intended as a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292738 an referring to Charles C Mann and his book?