LL-L 'History' 2006.08.08 (04) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 08 August 2006 * Volume 04
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From: 'ANNETTE GIESBRECHT' <beautyaround at email.com>
Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.08.08 (03) [E]

I suppose one has to consider that only the hardiest survived the cold winters
without central heating and there were probably relatives of your ancestors who
died before their fifth birthday and there were those who became weaker.  Think
of those like my mother and  brother and a friend of mine who suffered from
bronchitis,    As for the other subject, it does make it easy to blame one for
the demise of others, the North American Indians for others, because we developed
an immunity to diseases because we caught a less virulent form of the disease
through repeated exposure.  But one shouldn't blame one for something one had no
control over.  It isn't that the Euopeans who came to America said, "Let's all
cough in the Indians's faces and hope they all die of consumption." or something
like that.

Annette R. Giesbrecht 

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: History

> But one shouldn't blame one for something one had no control over.  
> It isn't that the Euopeans who came to America said, "Let's all 
> cough in the Indians's faces and hope they all die of consumption." 
> or something like that.

I totally agree.  Long-distance voyages came with health problems the extent of
it had not been known previously, and most of the diseases were not understood at
the time, nor was immune deficiency and the need for hygienic precautions.

I hardly think that blaming a whole "race" of people for something like that is
appropriate, and hopefully this sort of simplistic thinking is fading away.  Nor
should all early European immigrants be blamed for atrocities committed against
indigeneous populations, though at the time most of them supported them, at least
tolerated them, even if they didn't directly participate.  This includes
organized killing sprees ("hunts"), often government-organized of -sponsored,
especially in North America and Australia.  It includes operations in which
masses of blankets contaminated with small pox where handed out to indigenous
communities, aside from programs that tore native children away from their
families to "civilize" them and make them forget about their native languages,
cultures and families, an operation that in Australia, Canada and the USA
continued through most of the first half of the 20th century.

Let's not forget that the vast majority of early European immigrants were
dirt-poor and uneducated.  Most of them didn't even know what went on in the next
town.  They were plenty busy just trying not to starve or freeze to death.

Blaming a whole "race" for those kinds of atrocity is simplistic, but so is
denying that the track record of Europeans as colonizing communities is anything
but unblemished.  While these kinds of things ought not be forgotten or
whitewashed, I believe it's time to stop pointing fingers one way or another. 
It's time to move on and show we've learned the lessons.  Retrospective blame and
apologism are a waste of time, as far as I am concerned.

Cheers!
Reinhard/Ron

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From: 'Mark Dreyer' <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.08.01 (08) [E]

Theo, Ron & Co.

Subject: LL-L 'History'

>> And arguably did. There is some evidence that,
> although the Norse
>> Greenland settlements vanished, the people didn't;
> they got absorbed
>> by the Inuit.

At about this point one should go & look for record in the Groenlander's
folk-memory. I remember reading of something of the sort but I can't for the
life of me remember the source & haven't the time right now to hunt it up.
Here goes, a Greenland Inuit tells a tale retold of a final scirmish between
them & these other people, until there was only one man with an infant, who
fled along the foreland carrying the child, & seeing they were utterly
without resource, embraced the child & cast it into the water, & returned to
face his enemies & so died.

For my part the only strong argument against Europen or African contacts
with the Americas is the apparent total absence of cultural transfer! It is
as though Native America passed the Late Stone-Age, the Bronze-Age & the
Iron-Age by, not to say every other advance since the domestication of the
dog, on the American side of this Narrow Ocean (& that they brought with
them from the Old Continent). They missed out on the First & Second
Agricultural Revolution, in fact all of them up to & excluding the Norfolk
four-course system! & any innovations in that line can be traced to native
inginuity in the Andean populations, their own agricultural discoveries in
isolation, the domestication of llamas & alpacas, spinning & weaving &
supurb civil engineering.

Native Americans never knew the potter's wheel, or any wheel for that
matter, in an economic sense, though the Maya made toy animals with wheels
on to pull on a string. They never used draught animals apart from dogs &
the travois, & never domesticated another animal, although they hunted to
extinction several breeds of horse, a few more of camel & two kinds of
elephant, whereas their counterparts on the Mother Continent domesticated
the lot, & the native bovines & reindeer as well...

It is not necessary to carry one artifact with you; enough to remember what
you did & made at home! What happened to ideas? If it wasn't for that I
would insist there never was a beginning or end to contacts across the
Atlantic, ignore Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci & even the Pilgrim Fathers. I do
recall Brazil takes its name from a Punic word for iron, 'barzel'. Now
THERE's a string to chase up, if it was any of our business in a Lowlands
Language group!

Yrs,
Mark

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