I blame Jason Colavito. He told me to look up the Solutrean hypothesis, and I did, and now I can’t unsee it — this stuff is flamingly racist, stupid, and wrong.
Here is the shit. The ‘hypothesis’ is that 20,000 years ago, white Europeans, the Solutreans, peacefully settled in the empty wilderness of North America (there is no evidence for any of this). And then…
And it was the American Indians who came way later, ten thousand years later, around 10,000 BC, crossing over from Siberia into Alaska and then down through Canada to what is now the USA. It was those American Indians from Asia, a merciless, slant-eyed people related to the Mongols, a race given to horrific tortures and genocides, who killed them off, just as the Asiatic Indians did horrific tortures to American pioneers in the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s, and Asians committed indescribable atrocities to white soldiers, sailors and marines during WWII in the Pacific, during the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
You may close your mouth now. I know you’re sitting there slack-jawed with shock.
We didn’t know about the horrors that Asians committed against pure, white European peoples because, as this bozo claims, the jew-owned
press won’t publish it. However, he has no evidence for any of the above — there is no archaeological evidence of an advanced Aryan culture inhabiting the Americas 20,000 years ago, nor evidence that non-white people are more savage than Europeans; I think the Nazis are a persuasive counter-example. There is also no evidence for this story:
The Amerindians from Asia unfortunately prevailed over our kinfolk, the Solutreans in North America, who had immensely superior technology, but only by sheer weight of numbers. Man for man, then, as now…..our people were immensely more advanced in technology, and our women incomparably more beautiful.
Wait, how does he know that these non-existent women were more beautiful? Where is the evidence of “superior technology”?
Most of his myth seems to be derived from a 2005 Discovery Channel “documentary”, which employed white Canadians to play the role of European settlers of the continent, and we all know how reliable those are.
And what about this claim that the Solutreans were smarter than Asians? More stereotyping and bogus pseudoscience. This gets even uglier.
Today, the IQ of Amerindians is the same as that of American blacks, about 75. The average white IQ is 100, and our race has produced many geniuses far beyond that, with IQs in the 140s or 160s. In ten thousand years after the Amerindians genocided almost all of the original white Solutreans in North America, after wiping out the spark of civilization and invention that we represented, they never invented a written language, never even invented the WHEEL, or learned to hoist a sail to help their canoes plow through ten thousand years of windy waters, and they never found any use for the metals in which North America abounds, such as copper and iron. They just stared at them as a buffalo stares at a star. The red man talks slow not because he is wise, but because he is dull. And he won by brutality and sheer quantity.
Oh dog make it stop. This is pure garbage. The only places you find this crap about sub-normal Indian IQs is on racist websites, like VDARE or Rense. I teach at a university with a significant proportion of Indian students — they don’t have an intelligence two standard deviations below the mean of our white students, nor do they exhibit significant cognitive impairments.
The clearest examples of a mainstream, average people exhibiting severe deficiencies in reasoning or comprehension seem to be found among white people, on racist web sites like that, or at Trump rallies.
It’s the kind of person featured in this video clip.
The average white American has IQ = 100 is the actual definition of I Q. The numbers are a normalized curve putting the average test result exactly at 100. The test being designed by and for people of “white” descent makes the bias inherently designed into the test. It is entirely reasonable that different heritage people will produce different distributions than the Normal (as in Gaussian normal, not the colloquial use of the word). To then rank them on an absolute, common scale is the big mistake. To keep them individual based on heritage is also a mistake, so the whole concept of IQ needs to crash. *boom* done
My bias is to read references to IQ as a big red flag to doubt everything said in said article. just me, carry on..
That reminds me, is there something similar to this in Mormon beliefs?
That stuff is nasty. The Mormons had a similar theory (totally bonkers), but even they have mostly dropped it after actual archological work. At least that’s my takeaway from the Feminist Mormon Housewife podcast, which is amazing btw, although it leaves me scratching my head about why she’s still a Mormon. Definitely goes to show that adding “feminist” to a thing is much more likely to make it amazing than adding “atheist” or “sceptical”.
Also anyone know if “Amerindians” is like.. a word nowadays? I’ve been seeing it cropping up but haven’t yet sussed out if it’s a useful new term for me or a racist dogwhistle.
=8)-DX
So slow speech = slow mind. Got it.
But wait a minute. The Japanese and Spanish are the fastest average speakers. That must mean they are also the most intelligent! What do you mean it doesn’t work that way?
It’s depressing that this myth is still going. It started in the 18th and 19th centuries with the Mound Builders myths. European settlers found the remains of large earthen mounds in Virginia and other eastern states and decided there was no way that savages could have built them, so they decided there must have been an earlier white civilization that made them who were later wiped out by brown savages. It’s pure made up racist bullshit.
The Solutrean theory sounded an awful lot like Mormon beliefs, so I looked it up. According to RationalWiki, the Solutrean hypothesis was originally a rejected historical hypothesis based on similarities between mitochondrial DNA of Native Americans in northeast North America and the Druze, in the Middle East. However, the theory was adopted and transformed by white supremacists, incorporating elements from Mormonism. In the new theory, the connection between supposed Solutreans and Middle East are erased, and the Solutreans, rather than becoming northeastern Native Americans, are instead killed by Native Americans.
So it’s basically ordinary pseudohistory, twisted into white supremacist pseudohistory.
Yes, it’s clearly cut from the same cloth as the Mormon origin story. For that matter, it’s not far removed from “X device was really invented in Russia/China/France first”, or the Israeli government spending millions looking for the exodus route in Sinai in the 80s and coming up short. People love a good homeland ass tickle.
I’m willing to bet the IQ scores are derived from misleading attempts at national averages, such as from this site, where you’ll find East Asia is supposed to average 5-8 points higher than NA and Europe, with Africa 30-40 points below. I’m not sure what use people think these tests would have even if they were accurate, but they aren’t. In the paper cited in the site, for example, most African countries represented were based on a sample size of 2-6 people. For another, it is disingenuous to administer the same test to every person on the planet, when education levels vary widely.
When you take the IQ test you’d get in 1950, and administer it to the same region periodically up until the present without updating it, you find people across the board do better each decade. For a country whose average education is a few decades behind the wealthiest nations, a score of 75 on a current test is pretty much 100 or greater on a test more appropriate for their schooling. IQ tests are not a test of intelligence, but of critical thinking reasoning skills we all learn in school, or don’t. But it is essentially a learned behavior and when regions are already separated by economic and education standards, it is laughable to think you can ascribe differences to race. Even if race were a factor (and we all know it’s not), there’s too much noise in the data.
So, yeah, racists aren’t good with statistics.
Overheard conversation: three teenage girls. One tells the others she took an IQ test and got 100. The other girls responded with “Wow!” and “You’re sooooo smart!”
It seems that his understanding of IQ is about the same as those girls’.
kosk11348 @ 3:
Unless you’re white. Then it just means you’re laid back, relaxed; genteel.
=8)-DX
Clearly you’ve missed all the gay and lesbian Mormon adult video sites floating around. Lots of special underwear…. My favorite involved a recreation of Joseph Smith meeting Jesus…intimately.
Most people just pay lipservice to the religious cults they’re brought up in, even if they are likely to defend their involvement with it. Deep down they know whether it jibes with their worldview and are prepared to make the strangest concessions to themselves to maintain the delusion.
Ugh, does anyone have some brain bleach I can borrow?
I’m a slow (and low) talker, the main effects of which seem to be (a) putting people to sleep and (b) getting interrupted.
So, even if this garbage were true, how does a genocide that happened 12,000 years ago justify a genocide that began ~500 years ago?
Also, if speaking slowly is an indicator of low intelligence, I must be stupid as a fucking stump. Erm… well, it’s still horseshit.
Do you really still call them Indians? For an international audience this might be a little confusing. I have to keep reminding myself you actually mean Native Americans and not actual people from India.
Those poor, poor Solutreans. They were in NA for thousands of years, developing an advanced civilization, but were incapable of reproducing enough to resist the few hunter-gatherer invaders from Beringia. So, what examples are there of a “highly civilized” society – which necessarily needs a large population to maintain itself, being overrun by a necessarily small in number group of hunter-gatherers.
The only situation even remotely like this was the mass death of millions of Native Americans in the 16th century from the small in number encroaching Europeans with their diseases. So, a small number of invaders from Asia must have killed off the Solutreans by the diseases they introduced rather than genocidal behavior. Those innocent Solutreans must have been so civilized that they didn’t need to develop any kind of advanced medical care. Also, some groups of the civilized society never could have had any competition with another highly civilized group. White people are genetically so peaceful.
The snark-bait just keeps coming.
Well, you see, they lived in small anarchic communes where – whoops no, not that….let me see…
They were advanced, yes, but not in warfare, and they had no locks on their doors, because their neighborhoods had all gentrified. Of course they could have developed guns, but they didn’t since they were peacelovi–crap no, not that either…
Ah! You see, they had capitalism, of course, trading as they did with….uhm….with, well…Atlantis?
In before they claim it was a gradual degeneration of society that started when they let their kids go to the same schools and let all that Muskogean drum music warp their brains.
The Bering Strait theory is dead.
Yes, Indians had written languages. And so much more. Christ, the stupid…ugh.
jonmelbourne @ 13:
You could try asking an Indian. As I’m here, the answer is yes. The tendency is for white people to get upsetty about that, not us Indians. If you get in the mood to argue, please take it up with all the people at Indian Country Today Media Network, Indian Country Times, Last Real Indians, Indianz.com, all the Indians on FB and Twitter, and a zillion other sites and people I could link to, but won’t. You can find a lot of this info at Affinity, or the search engine of your choice. The bottom line? We decide what we call ourselves, not white people. Yes, we got stuck with Indian, and we decided to own it.
The Solutrean Hypothesis has been around since the 1940’s. It is based on the idea that since Clovis tools bear some similarity with Solutrean tools Clovis tools must have been derived from Solutrean. Hence Solutreans had colonized America. Recently this hypothesis has been revived by the Archaeologists Bradley and Stanford. Both of whom I should say are not racists to the slightest degree. Sadly along with finds such has Kennewick man, (Who allegedly had “Caucasian” features.), this was grabbed by racists and pseudo-Archaeologists.
Well lately the hypothesis has not been doing well.
1. Pre-Clovis remains / tools have been found in the Americas and they are not similar at all to Solutrean remains.
2. DNA studies have revealed that Kennewick man despite his “Caucasian” features is in fact well within the ambient of Native American. Also the remains of a child found buried with Clovis tools have shown that the child has no genetic relationship with Europeans except of course for one tens of thousands of years earlier. The child is also well with the ambient of Native Americans.
3.The Solutrean culture ended c. 6,000 years before the Clovis culture emerged in the Americas. (the Solutrean disappeared c. 17,000 years ago, Clovis emerged c. 11,000 years ago.)
4. The appearance of an allegedly rare genetic marker ( At least among Mongoloids.) in North America that can only have come from Europeans. The Genetic marker was Haplogroup X which has been found in pre-conquest remains indicating that it was not a post conquest contribution from Europeans. I should point out it exists only in a small amount among Native American populations past and present. The Thing is though Haplogroup X has been found in small numbers among populations in Siberia and Asia indicating it could have originally come from there.
5. The Clovis assemblages of tools are missing a great deal of the Solutrean tool kit and artifacts. Like ivory etc., figurines backed bladelets etc.
6. The Solutrean culture was not a sea faring or maritime culture but a hunting one. It appears they did not go for seafaring pursuits or even much fishing. So we have no evidence the Solutreans could go to sea.
7. Finally the voyage would have been about the time of the height of the last ice age sailing along the great mass of a floating ice cap that stretched across the North Atlantic would have been to put it bluntly highly dangerous and maybe impossible especially since we have no evidence that the Solutrean’s had such a maritime technology.
A curious note I am rather surprised that Bradley and Stanford insist upon a voyage across the North Atlantic given that the 6,000 year gap between the end of the Solturean culture and Clovis would leave ample time for Solutrean’s to migrate and arrive in North America via Siberia and Alaska.
For more please see First People’s in a New World, David J. Meltzer, University of California Press, 2009.
Do you really still call them Indians?
I know some Native Americans who really prefer to be called Indians. The reason being is that Native American makes them sound like just another immigrant group like Italian American or African American. They explained to me that it makes it sound as though they didn’t have an identity before the European invasions. The term Indian is far from perfect, but many Indians don’t have what you might call a deep love and affection for the USA. I know this will shock some people, but almost every Indian tribe would much prefer that the USA didn’t exist.
Fair enough, call yourselves what you like. I’m sure the ~1 billion people from India don’t mind at all :)
jonmelbourne:
Y’know, I don’t know why white assholes think this is either witty or some kind of argument. I know East Indian people, and they don’t have a problem with it at all, just stupid fucking white people. If stupid fucking white people want this to change, then you can get busy and start learning the names of every single tribe and nation, in their language, and start using them. Until then, fuck off, and stop thinking you’re all that.
@19 jonmelbourne
Indians (from India) usually refer to Indians(from USA) as “Red” Indians – till we come to know that its a racist term.
I don’t think we care that some other group is called Indians as long as its clear from context.
Silver Fox:
Just to be clear, us Indians love Turtle Island. America? Yeah, that shit can go, especially seeing that after the attempted genocide and other atrocities, along with stealing this part of Turtle Island, the white colonials also stole the whole government concept from the Haudenosaunee Confederation, and they have seriously fucked it up ever since, in every possible way, and continue to do so, daily, and they excel at using it to continue fucking over Indians.
I’m not upset and I don’t have a problem with it at all. You’re the one who seems to be upset. To be clear, I live in Australia, don’t think I’ve ever met an “American Indian” in my life, but am in fact surrounded by people from India, who most definitely call themselves Indians. So my original question was genuine (“Do you really still call them Indians?”) as from down here, that seems like an incredibly out-dated and racist term. If in fact it’s all hunky dory then that’s great, and this stupid fucking white person sincerely apologises.
Deepak Shetty:
Which it generally is. :D Plenty of choices for the uber sensitive white people though: Oyate (Lakota/Dakota/Nakota), means People. Indigenous peoples. Native peoples.
White people need to get over the fact that you think you ought to get to us name us a second time around, after the first fuck up. We aren’t your bloody pets.
jonmelbourne @19: Do you annoy West Indians with the same sort of objection? If the Board of Control for Cricket in India has complained to the West Indies Cricket Board about their name, I haven’t heard about it.
Most people grasp the concept of context, and thus manage to avoid confusion, or having to remind themselves that they’re reading about, say, Mississauga people rather than Marathi people.
jonmelbourne:
That’s obvious. It’s also obvious you’ve never once bothered to learn one damn thing about any of us, either. Instead, it’s just open your mouth without a thought. Never seems to occur to anyone to educate themselves. If you knew anything at all about (Western) Indians, this would not have happened, and with the ‘net, there’s really no excuse. I cover a lot of Indian issues at Affinity. Don’t like me, fine, go to http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/ or http://indianz.com/ or http://lastrealindians.com/ or dozens of other sites.
If you could have arsed yourself to learn a bit first, everyone would have been spared pain. Well, I would have at least. And yes, I’m upset. Arrogant asshole white people do that to me.
Yeah, the Solutrean hypothesis doesn’t have any real evidence to support it, and it has been seized on by racists to revive the whole “lost white race in North America” nonsense.
Youtube keeps suggesting to me that I want to watch a well dodgy ‘documentary’ about this. I assumed it was because I’d shitted up my recommendations with an Ancient Aliens binge a few months ago when I had flu.
Learn before posting? That isn’t how the internet works, sorry.
By the way, if you google the phrase “Is it racist to call Native Americans Indians?”, the answers are hardly definitive and seem to err more towards “yes, it is”. Either way, you’re the one who comes across as the asshole, not me.
I’d also point out that India, the Asian sub-continent, is home to a lot of diverse populations that sometimes go to war with each other, and it’s also simplistic to call them all just the one grand name, India, that we white people also assigned to them. Why are we so blithely lumping together Punjabi with Bengali with Sikh, etc?
Considering the first peoples of the Americas had the name “Indian” forced upon them, they get to use it any damn way they please. Some have rejected it, many have embraced it. In a lot of ways, it’s a shit ton better than having to listen to colonial bullshit like “I was born here, so I’m also a native”. That’s been used extensively by bratty petulant racist pricks to attempt to argue that colonial governments should ignore their legal treaty obligations.
In Canada (I wonder how the Iroquois feel about us using that word? Oh, wait! I could just ask some!) “Indian” has a legal, constitutional definition on top of the cultural one. Someone granted the legal title of Indian is granted certain rights and freedoms as outlined in the treaties made between the first nations and the colonial government, or between the first nations and the soverigns and parliament of Great Britain.
The word has a long and complicated history, and it really appropriate for outsiders to attempt to reimpose their meaning on it. That’s like having Ted Cruz define atheism or Donald Trump define feminism (or common decency).
#30: Consider the source. What proportion of the responses on google to that question are actually by the affected minority group?
Here where I live, the term doesn’t come up a lot. We refer to the Circle of Nations Indigenous Association (CNIA) when talking about organized affairs with diverse people, and personally, if someone introduces themselves as Lakota, for instance, I’d call them Lakota rather than Indian.
The rule is that you ask, and you respect how people refer to themselves. You don’t argue with them.
I am pretty sure the Solutreans are one of the species the Doctor had to defeat a few times.
jonmelbourne:
No, Cupcake. That is how the internet works; its just not how you work, given your preference for being an obnoxious, arrogant, willfully ignorant white asshole.
Ah yes, google, the white asshole’s answer to everything! Couldn’t be bothered to click on one of the links I provided, could you? No, no, too much work. Did you click on every link which came up on google? Did you work out how many of those ‘answers’ were from white people who think it’s in their purview to name us like pets? Did you work out how many of those ‘answers’ were by non-natives who think it’s up to them to decide what constitutes racism towards Indigenous peoples without ever bothering to, oh, ask indigenous people? I’d put my money on no, you did not.
How do I know that? All the furious digging you’re doing is in an effort to put this fuckin’ Indian in her proper place. How dare some Indian tell you, a white man, what constitutes bigotry toward Indians? Oooh, the uppitiness of it all.
Just once, it would have been nice to see a white person putting a foot so damn wrong, realize they were wrong, and say something along the lines of “I definitely need to learn more, and I will do that.” That does happen, y’know, at least with the white people I hang with, who are decent people who realize that ignorance isn’t a crime, just something to be corrected. It’s a pity you seem to be of the opinion you’re above all that.
Other people in this thread have also pointed out that you are wrong, and they all bothered to be nice, hold your hand, and sugar coat it for you. Why aren’t you listening to them?
Signed,
One pissed off Indian, Oglala Lakota, to be specific, but you didn’t ask, did you?*
*If you bothered to lift one of those delicate fingers weighed down by white man’s burden, and clicked over to an Indian Paper, you’d note something – on every article, the author’s specific tribal affiliations are listed, even when that goes on a bit, because you see, that is the important bit, not the ‘Indian’ bit.
@ =8)-DX, #30:
“Amerindian” is a legitimate word. Most of the times that I’ve come across the word, it’s been in books and articles by historians and anthropologists. I hardly ever see it used in any other context.
deepak shetty, #21
This. It’s the same on the whole subcontinent too. The common view of Indians for me growing up was what was seen on old Bugs Bunny cartoons. It’s a simple case of the genocider writing the history.
And because the two groups are so distant in so many ways, I have yet to hear the term being used without the context being perfectly clear.
Regardless, unless you’re Indian (either kind), you can’t pretend to be concerned about it. Why would their choice of name even be any concern to you?
Man, I love a good origin myth. If this was a couple thousand years back, we could easily spin it into a bonafide history…from fiction to fact…that millions of people believe.
Right, and there’s considerable evidence to contrary.
Anathema @36:
“Amerindian” is used in the Shadowrun role-playing game. Of course, that’s a setting where a bunch of tribes came together, launched a revolution, and recaptured large parts of North America from the US and Canadian governments.
That’s revolting. How atrociously vile people can be. It’s the same old shit with new bigot varnish.
@Caine and Jonmelbourne: “Indians” is by way of exception an example of Dutch having an advantage compared to English.
We call the people from India “Indiërs” and the indigenous people of the Americas “Indianen”.
“Why are we so blithely lumping together Punjabi with Bengali with Sikh, etc?”
Because people are stupid. Why else do you English speaking people call the inhabitants of The Netherlands “Dutch”, which is derived from “Deutsch”, which means German? Why do you call the country “Holland”, which since 1840 only is a region in England (Lincolnshire)?
Not that we Dutch do any better – during the Cold War every inhabitant of the Soviet-Union was a “Rus” (Russian).
“The rule is that you ask, and you respect how people refer to themselves. You don’t argue with them.”
OK – will you stop calling my native country Holland then? I wasn’t born in Holland – I am from Guelders, more specifically the Achterhoek. So I’m a HØker (good luck pronouncing that one).
Nah, kidding. Hardly any Dutchie cares. But you would do people from Friesland a favour by calling them Frisian (who in English seem to be called West-Frisians, who according to us Dutchies live in …. the province North-Holland).
Calling someone what they want to be called is polite. I encounter new names all of the time, this is little different. One of the people at my ADHD support group prefers First Nations and and it was easy to accommodate.
Among the many problems PZ mentioned, these are just lies.
1. The Olmecs and successors notably the Mayans, did develop a written language based on glyphs and IIRC a syllabry like Japanese. The Mayans were a literate people with their own libraries. We don’t know much about their literature because the Spanish burned every single book but 4.
2. Some Indians did invent the wheel. They didn’t find it very useful. The meso-Americans didn’t have any draft animals to pull wheeled vehicles.
3. Some Indians did invent metallurgy. They worked gold, silver, and copper. It was an important reason why the Spanish invaded. They stole all of it they could find.
4. Sails I don’t know about and Google didn’t help. For most of our history, we didn’t have sails either. Some say the Indians didn’t really have any where to sail to. Sails were developed in the Mediterranean, where there are lots of close by islands and countries and its calmer on average than the oceans. .
The TL, DR answer.
Read Jared Diamond’s, Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Sort of.
1. The native Americans in the Book of Mormon are…Jewish. They came to NA in 600 BC and split into Lamanites and Nephites.
They brought their horses too and had metal swords.
2. One group got on the wrong side of jesus and he turned them brown. These are the Lamanites and supposedly gave rise to the Indians.
When they return to the fold, jesus will turn them white again.
3. A common Mormon belief is that if Indians join the Mormon church and do the whole 4 kids in suburbia thing, they turn lighter.
How much of this they still believe, I don’t know. Probably most of them believe all of it. We’ve all seen how creationists are immune to evidence. The Mormons aren’t any different.
johnmelbourne #23
It is very important for white guys to tell racial minorities what is racist. (/sarcasm).
johnmelbourne #30
No, no. It is definitely you.
The Mormon version seems a lot more likely and that’s saying a lot because it’s total bullshit also. Next idiot, please!
Interestingly my parents don’t like it when I call Mormons Christians (they are Protestant).
This is more a weird nit to pick, but why are they “The Solutreans.” Broadly speaking, there are 2 major ways groups are named: endonyms; what they call themselves, and exonyms, names given to them by others which ends up more thoroughly passed down.
We have examples of both in the English language. There’s also examples which are blends of the two, exonyms which are corruptions based on mispronunciations of endonyms.
Did they call themselves “Solutrean?” Did the villainous Asian Indians who killed them call them that? Is it the smaller third name group: ideosyncratic names based on other features when we have no direct records of what they were called by themselves or their contemporaries. So you’ll get things like “Jomon culture” which refers to a “cord marked” pattern on pottery appearing on some of their artifacts, or “Mississippian Culture” which refers to a later name for a river they were located near.
A quick search reveals Solutrean actually refers to flint tool makers in Europe, a culture where artifacts were found near Solutre, in France.
And their sole bit of evidence is “Clovis Culture in America used flint, just like the Solutreans.”
which is specious, even by racist speculative pseudo-archeology.
#10 @taraskan
Ofc, which leaves me with even more headscratching since this particular podcaster takes her religion, history and feminism equally seriously.
#36 @Anathema
Oki thanks, makes sense.
@Caine #AllTheNos
Thanks once again for all the education and patience on these issues, it is as always sorely needed, especially a good kick or two to stubborn ignorance. Thx
=8)-DX
PZ Myers @31:
it’s also simplistic to call them all just the one grand name, India, that we white people also assigned to them. Why are we so blithely lumping together Punjabi with Bengali with Sikh, etc?
It’s slightly more sensible than blithely lumping together Swedes with Italians with Lutherans under the moniker “European”, I suppose. (Which is to say, perfectly sensible under some circumstances, and slightly more so because there actually is a state called the Republic of India: “Indian” seems to be the standard term for citizens of that country. “South Asian” is a perhaps more appropriate term for everyone from the subcontinent, rather than just people from the Republic of India.)
(Except for the religious terms. E.g., “Sikh” is a religious identity. Many Indian Punjabis are Sikhs; some are not; most Pakistani Punjabis are Muslim.)
As for why “we white people also assigned them that name” — blame the ancient Persians, who used a corrupted version of “Sindhu” (the river also known as Indus) to refer to that general region. The Greeks learned about it from the Persians, and here we are.
@mnb0 #41 – That’s odd, given that the Dutch do use the word Holland themselves. “Een gezonde Hollandse jongen”.
Another problem with this horseshit: the Solutreans most probably weren’t white, and aren’t in any reasonable sense “our people”, since their culture disappears from the archaeological record around 15,000 BCE.
Well, it’s not quite that simple – there are many different ways of working flint, and many different styles of artefact you can produce. There are some suggestive similarities between Clovis and Solutrean artefacts, both in terms of style and production methods – but that’s all they are: suggestive.
Anyone remember a libertarian numpty with the nym “africangenesis” who commented for quite a while at Pharyngula* in pre-FtB days? He was a devotee of a slightly different racist-pseudotheory-without-a-smidgen-of-evidence according to which the first human inhabitants of the Americas came from Australia, and the wicked incomers from north-east Asia then invaded their lands and exterminated them. The point of this was to deny modern Indians any right to the land, because they stole it and committed genocide themselves, you see.
*He eventually got banned for sheer obnoxiousness, reappeared briefly as “Spence”, then vanished, to general relief.
@ Caine
jonmelbourne:
don’t think I’ve ever met an “American Indian” in my life
That’s obvious. It’s also obvious you’ve never once bothered to learn one damn thing about any of us, either.
Why would he bother? He’s Australian. North American Indian culture probably have about the same relevance to him as how to drive a skidoo.
Most of his myth seems to be derived from a 2005 Discovery Channel “documentary”, which employed white Canadians to play the role of European settlers of the continent
!
Let’s try this again;
Most of his myth seems to be derived from a 2005 Discovery Channel “documentary”, which employed white Canadians to play the role of European settlers of the continent
Oh lord, the Americans have been watching Rick Mercer again!
Every excuse for genocide basically comes down to: “But they are bad people!”
Nothing has changed since the days of Lot.
raven @43:
Sails were developed in the Mediterranean, where there are lots of close by islands and countries and its calmer on average than the oceans.
As best as I can tell from some cursory searches, boats with sails possibly first appeared in southern Mesopotamia around 5000 BC and were used for travel in the Persian Gulf (and maybe for river travel as well). They may have been independently developed in Egypt around the same time. Mediterranean use came later.
It seems plausible that sails were independently invented sometime before 2000 BC in East Asia or Southeast Asia, otherwise it becomes difficult to explain the spread of Austronesian speakers from Taiwan, and the later Pacific colonizations of Micronesia and Polynesia.
(I have seen a suggestion that they were also invented independently in the Baltic during the Iron Age.)
jrkrideau to Caine @55:
Duh. Because going out of one’s way to publicly opine based on one’s ignorance is stupid, whether or not you and jonmelbourne are cool with it.
(Especially egregious stupidity, given the complaint indicated that jonmelbourne knew perfectly well what the referent was)
Some years ago, a White Power dumbass wrote a schlocky novel named “White Apocalypse”. It was discussed and ridiculed in the original version of Dispatches From The Culture Wars.
It was basically a neo-nazi fantasy about an aryan archaeologist who finds evidence for the S. hypothesis, but his boss suppresses the truth.
The novel ends with the hero taking a sniper rifle, driving to a spot where he has a clear shot at the race traitor addressing a crowd of black people, and shoots him, then he drives away (without bothering about trifles like cops taking an interest with guys with rifles driving a Harley away from a neighbourhood where a murder has occurred a few seconds Before) and goes to meet his “volupterous girlfriend”.
Wish-fulfillment fantasy for nazi teenagers?
I will add to the “Indian” comment. The English speaking countries in the Caribbean are usually referred to as West Indies, especially those who share a cricket team called The West Indies Cricket Team. It is not uncommon for a citizen of those countries to be referred to as a West Indian.
jonmelbourne
Great goodness, is there an independent sentient entity called “the Internet” that forced your fingers? Or are you a person with agency to choose as you did? “That’S just how the internet works/men talk/guys from Saxony are” is the most boring and laziest excuse for being a shit for brains ever invented.
jrkrideau
Why use the World Wide Web if you want to stay as ignorant and bigoted as your great-great-grandparents who never went any further than the market next town?
Giliell @63:
Why use the World Wide Web if you want to stay as ignorant and bigoted as your great-great-grandparents who never went any further than the market next town?
Since jonmelbourne was actually asking a question (however hamfistedly), your premise doesn’t really apply.
And if people are going to castigate you for not already knowing the things you are trying to find out, then I suppose the alternative is to stay off the Web and remain as ignorant, etc. (Assuming his ancestors were ignorant and bigoted, which might be likely, but I don’t think you really know that for sure.)
Caine’s criticism was “It’s also obvious you’ve never once bothered to learn one damn thing about any of us, either.” The question is whether that (i.e., knowing some things about American Indians) is a reasonable thing to expect of, say, all Americans (and I would agree that it is) versus whether it’s a reasonable thing to expect of all Australians or Chinese or Kenyans or people from any other country that isn’t the US (or maybe an immediate neighbor).
If you believe in American exceptionalism, then the answer is obviously yes: the US is the only country that matters, and everyone else in the world should know as much about it and all of its inhabitants as Americans should. If, on the other hand, you don’t, then it’s not so obvious what people in other countries (particularly those far away) should be expected to know.
Me, any time white supremacists bring up “Aryans”: GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH! WE ARE NOT ARYANS!
No matter how you slice it, or whether you still find “Aryan” to be a problematic term in its proper context, we pasty blond folks are not Aryans.
Peter Erwin
Good thing that reply wasn’t to jonmelbourne but someone else who was going to excuse jonmelbourne on accounts of being in Australia.
Why won’t you educate meeeeeeeeeeee?????? How can I ever learn if you, marginalised person of choice don’t drop whatever you’re doing and take my hand and walk me through the 101 of everything?
Seriously, I’m sick and tired of that shit.
Also, there’s asking questions and there’s just asking questions. Let’S look at what dear jonmelbourne wrote.
Are you honestly claiming that this is a polite question from someone who wants to clear up something they’re ignorant about?
It’S not. It’S a condescending accusation of doing something wrong with a quote a miff of superiority.
When told by an actual Indian who takes some exception that yes, they do call themselves Indians, he replies with some more condescending tone and goes on about people in India. At that point at the latest all supposed good will and honest intentions go out of the window because this person came to play “gotcha” and teach those damn ‘Muricans a lesson in how to properly call themselves.
Nope, that is not what is happening. It’s not about excepting every person from all over the world to have studied US history and pre-conquest indigenous societies. It’s a request that if you join a discussion about American Indians you bring the minimum of knowledge to the table so you can contribute to the discussion.
It’s akin to demanding that somebody who joins a discussion about evolution understand the principles of natural selection at minimum.
Fun fact: I’m not American. Never visited the place, probably never will. I guess I know more about US history than many US Americans, but that’s kind of professional. I also make the effort to learn about other places and cultures. I found out that I learn the most by listening to what they say.
Peter Erwin @ 64
Yes, that’s right. Indians, so subjugated we can’t even get the USian federal government to honor their treaties with our nations, are imperialist Americans. Indians, who are in fact rejecting the term “American” by using the name Indian, are insisting that the nation that claimed our lands and killed our ancestors is the only one that matters. Indians, who have our own nations, are fervent believers in American exceptionalism. You sure did nail the situation here. (That’s sarcasm, BTW, if it’s too much of a burden to figure that out before posting.)
#64
Which Caine answered factually and effectively. Caine’s “It’s also obvious you’ve never once bothered to learn one damn thing about any of us, either.” Came many comments later, after several hole-digging… “gosh, american political correctness sure is tricky; you sure seem kind of prickly from down here where you existence is a humorous anectdote to me” comments.
I didn’t object to the original question and judging from Caine’s first post it doesn’t appear she did either.
Then response (#19) is essentially “meh, if you say so… but sure seems silly if you think about it”. Which made me wince but I’d be willing to ignore it which is pretty easy as it’s not my people being belittled and, also, not really my people to defend either.
Caine’s response (#20) was reactive and strong but not harsh or final. Basically, “That’s really offensive, if you don’t see why, here’s why. Now don’t do it again because it really pisses me off and now you know why.”
And from then on his responses (#23 et. al.) are all the hole, nyah-nyah, “Well, you’re the unreasonable one; I’m just the sensitive nice guy whose only fault is caring too much but you’re the mean one”.
Well…. screw that.
Peter Erwin (#64)
We’re not talking about “the US.” We’re talking about two continent’s worth of indigenous people and their right to self-determination—something American exceptionalism actually stands in opposition to. Also something that an Australian, being from another colonized continent, should have a fucking inkling about.
As an indigenous person (from Oregon) our community has always called ourselves ‘Indian’ at least when speaking about multiple tribes… y’know if I had my druthers as to nomenclature, I would love to use the Canadian term “First Nations”. Alas, it does not seem to have caught on in the US, and I am sure many white Republicans would reject it.
# 64 Peter Erwin
Thank you Peter.
An excellent reply but I do think you touched a nerve. Cannot be American exceptionalism though.
# 70 Patricia Phillips
I would love to use the Canadian term “First Nations”
I don’t think there is a Crown Copyright on it, so please feel free do to use it “with proper attribution of course :)”.
jrkrideau @71: you didn’t really, as a white person, give a First Nations person “permission” to self-define using whatever term she wished? I’m really hoping you didn’t do that. Sadly, I’m pretty sure you did.
Maybe think a little more before putting the fingers in motion? Just a thought, one clueless white to another.
jrkrideau
Hello, I’m European. Not even a native English speaker one. What was your point again?
+++
Anybody surprised that Peter Erwin didn’t return after he thoroughly chastised the women and the Indians?
+++
Caitie
*hugs and higs and everything*
I miss you!
72 CaitieCat, Harridan
Please read carefully. I was pointing out that the term “First Nations” is not copyrighted (believe it or not the Crown can and does copyright things in Canada) so anyone is welcome to use the term.
I am white?
jrkrideau, you’re acting as if it’s important that you’re giving other people permission to use the term. That’s what’s angering them. As if your permission or lack thereof is of any consequence to what they should decide to call themselves.
I’m a Soul Trainian. Peace, Love and Soul!
I’ve heard this soultrean hypothesis before. It’s actually a pretty common story that tries to justify mistreatment of colonized peoples; The Portuguese imagined white kingdoms in Africa to justify their colonialism, the SApanish did the same in Mexico and the southwest, both the dutch and British quietly erased the khoisan-speaking people of south Africa to claim “terra nullus” status and proclaim the Xhosa and Zulu to be invaders (which they were, in all truth, but the Europeans had no real space to complain.) it’s even been used in far-flung New Zealand, claiming that not only were there pre-Maori European settlers, but that these settlers were Celtic (We see this with the mythology of “Prince Madoc” in the US Southeast.)
But what makes the racist variety of the Soultrean Hypothesis especially amusing among these… is that there’s pretty much no chance in hell the Europeans of the Ice Age looked much, if anything like modern Europeans. They certainly wouldn’t have been blonde or blue-eyed, both traits that post-date the ice age entirely, and the Soultrean culture in Western Europe by over nine thousand years. We know the humans of these eras had much more robust jaws, somewhat lower cranial domes, and bonier brows than modern humans (not quite “brow ridges” but still, they have beefy brows.) We know they were somewhat recent immigrants from southwestern Asia, from people who were themselves recent emigres from Africa. These early European sapiens would have still had a lot of the “look” of equatorial humans. There’s also the high probability of mate-sharing with hte native European humans – Neanderthals. Nah, whoever was chipping those points in the south of france probably did not look much like modern French people at all, being separated by twenty-two thousand years, and all.