Theos-Talk Archives (April 2004 Message tt00440)

stevestubbs wrote:
> Ali: "When America was Europeanized, one remarkable thing was the 
> continent was so rich that any industrious person who wanted to could 
> become quite well off.
>
> If that theory made any sense, the Indians would all have been rich.
They were, at one point. Unfortunately, after being isolated from the 
cradle of humanity, and therefore the parasites that fed off of 
humanity, for a few thousand years, they were effectively "bubble boys". 
When they made contact with Europeans and Africans (which would have 
happened eventually, and the same would have happened if they had made 
contact with Asians), the diseases that were transmitted to them wiped 
them out. By the time the Europeans started making real inroads into 
North America, they were meeting a post apocalyptic society.

Consider, for example, the Plains Indians. They were a nomadic culture, 
traveling on horseback. Except: Horses didn't exist in North America 
until AFTER the Europeans came. Which means that the Plains Indians 
didn't exist until after the Europeans came. Essentially, they were 
formed by remnants of civilized (in the anthropological sense) groups, 
who had been wiped out by disease to the point where their societies 
could not function.

Bart