Aboriginal Americans: cultures, histories, and issues of the First Nations of the New World

Correct. Basically I believe moral agency is subordinate and in fact an adaptation to infrastructural forces. It doesn't matter how empathetic, principled, or consistent you are, if your upbringing shapes that in a way that hurts people, or if the power dynamics and systemic pressures of your society mean that "good" people are shunted out of power, wealth, and maybe even life, while "bad" people find themselves in positions to influence events and make decisions for everyone else, prosper, and live long. Moral judgment is irrelevant, impotent, and maybe even an impedance on the path of getting to the truth.

edited 1st Apr '18 1:38:00 AM by TheHandle

We should no more inflate the moral standing of people who lived in the past than we should demonize them for having fallen short of our standards. We should strive to understand them, and make our own decisions about ourselves based on what we learn.

Yeah, that's basically why I have tried to not allow our past history with the Spanish to paint my opinions on either the Tawantinsuyu and the Viceroyalty, while I will not forget the acts of horror the conquistadores did, I won't try to pretend that the Incas were all saints before the appearance of Spain in America.

I dont think that anyone think that the Andeans were morally perfect, but acting like if that makes the genocide of andeans morally tolerable is pure bullshit done mostly for Spanish fanboys, semi-comparable to Holodomor and Holocaust apologism.

edited 2nd Apr '18 3:17:24 PM by KazuyaProta

That's not what I meant, trying to dismiss the evil of the conquistadores by saying that the Tawantinsuyu was equally bad for conquering their neighbours is plain out wrong; what I meant is that we also need an objective view of both times to draw comparisons and point out what things were better in one time, what things were worse in the other; always to learn and strive for better in our present and our future.

Also, you know that in our country there are people and movements -mostly from the left- that do go for the Native = good, Spain = evil oversimplification, so I kind of needed to make my point.

The Peruvian Far Left is weird, they have literally everything from Far right movements. The Traditionalism, the anti gay stuff, the militarism yet they're considered leftism here.

Racial supremacy is left as long isn't white, right?

While it technically lands to the left here, it doesn't make it any more desirable, in fact, that's one of the reasons I took distance from the left of our country, too many parallels to bad things in Europe.

It's kind of weird, I remain proud of my Quechua heritage but I also don't want to dismiss my Spanish side nor the others that came from elsewhere after the Viceroys began to rule (I mean, I know I have African blood too, my maternal grandfather was black afterall).

Bottom line: lessons from the past are complicated.

Your culture's name is now a brand of arffordable outdoor sports equipment.

Hmm, who owns the rights to that name?

Which one? Quechua? I want see that.

(I'm peruvian and andean too)

You might as well ask who owns the rights to the word 'English'. The brand itself is run out of France by some French dude and specializes in mountaineering-related stuff.

Are their products good, nice and cheap?

It's French manufacturing. You get what you pay for.

Sorry, it's an in-joke here in Peru, we have a slogan of looking for the big three B's whenever we buy anything: Bueno, Bonito, Barato (good, nice, cheap).

Well, that seems skeezy (I mostly buy my outdoor equipment at Walmart).

That's suspiciously close to an English saying (though this is more on the side of things like software or custom work). You have three options, fast, good, cheap. Pick two (or for the really cynical/overworked, one).

Edit becasue I missed the after posting.

edited 4th Apr '18 12:11:28 AM by KnightofLsama

No, I mean because they stole the name of an indiginous tribe for profit.

Do they have the sense of at least promoting the place or people that give their brand its name?

And I wanna revive this thread.

I'd read that Geographically, the andes are the luckiest part of South America. Which explain why the Incas were able to conquest half of the continent.

Also, while European and Andean parallelisms aren't unheard, I'd read that there a large group of scholars that agree who the Inca Empire was the most "European".

Bloodline patriarchal sucession, a Monarchy, royal families, etc.

There a reason why even Andean themselves like calling it the Andean Rome.

Is interesting think about it. Especially when you live in a cultural mix like Peru.

I'd said it in other threads, my father is a andean man (with a Spanish descent grandpa) running from terrorists who married a costean woman (with a Afro-Andean descendant father, yeah, I'm part black. I'm part white too via paternal line).

Is weird, you know? Living in a Post colonial culture.

I guess that Native North Americans living in Urban cities can understand that.

edited 16th May '18 10:12:27 AM by KazuyaProta

Can you provide a link with re to the Inca's being compared to a European monarchy/empire?

....that make me ask: we do have any indeginous native troper here in the forum?.

Depends of how we define Indigenous, if we mean in purely genetic ways, I am one of them, if we mean in the cultural sense, dunno, I kinda always wished find someone from the Andes using Internet and shitposting.

I am sure that someone must be this picture◊. I just wanna find the who.

edited 18th May '18 3:52:56 PM by KazuyaProta

Yay, this thread is live again.

To answer @ Kazuya, well, it's not far off, the Tawantinsuyu was governed by the descendants of Manco Capac with the only major change being the switch of the ruling house from the Hurin Cuzco to the Hanan Cuzco (Lower and Upper if I'm not wrong), aside from that, the Inca ruled over the Cuzquean nobility, who themselves were in charge of the conquered territory, in a manner not dissimilar from what could be seen in Europe, more so when we consider that there were "foreign" leaders that could count as part of the nobility as they accepted being part of the empire instead of being conquered.

As for its army, it was, much like Rome, born from the huge manpool that the Cuzqueans had access to thanks to the use of andenery and the fertility of the region they ruled over, not to mention that they had a conscription system in the form of the hatun runas and, keeping with the example, the assimilation of the idols of each conquered or annexed state was similar to the roman system, letting people to their worship with the addition that now their top god was the Inti and the Inca, symbolized to an extent with the transfer of the idols back to Cuzco to join the ever growing pantheon.

In fact, much like the Aztec empire, the level of cultural sofistication is what allowed the Spanish Empire to conquer and effectively replace the Inca with the King of Spain with a lesser hassle as the Curacas that chose to side with the Spaniards were left with their previous possessions, switching allegiance from the Sapa Inca to the Spanish Emperor.

That said, there are debates on the parallels on the comparisons between the Tawantinsuyu and the European Monarchies or the Roman Empire, I myself have a book in which researchers of Japan debate and compare the degree of likeness that the Tawantinsuyu had with the western definition of an empire.

I missed this thread which is a pity.

I have a question perhaps some of you could help me with. Going by the past few pages the subject has been touched on by authors to varying degrees. My question is this. Are there any detailed studies of metallurgy of the American continents? I know some about the metallurgic history and development of the regions but I am lacking some details. For example I know both copper and iron working we known in parts of both North and South America and that iron working may have in fact traveled along trade routes from South America into North America. Copper working was the most common form of metal working in the Americas pre-European continent because of both ease of access and ease of working copper compared to iron. The America's never really had any sort of adequate access to tin to make bronze in the same way Europe did.

Now one of the common questions I have seen and could not answer was that why not a leap to an iron age? Both copper and bronze tools provide sufficient capability to mine and eventually process iron and from there increase access to more materials and lead to a number of changes in both the societal sense and the technological sense.

One of the only things I can think of is that the reduced access to some materials including a developed Bronze Age for the regions left the populations without the same metallurgical developments that helped push the Bronze Age into the iron age far more rapidly. This included pursuit of more effective smelting techniques but also a greater focus on developing better methods for working iron. Steel proper is a discovery of accident more than anything else and is a byproduct of the pursuit of better iron smelting and processing techniques until enough collective knowledge built up across enough population to turn it into a consistent process.

I feel I am missing something I should know but for the life of me I can't sort out what that might be. So in short what are some of the factors that delayed the development and exploitation of iron as a resource in the Americas?

edited 18th May '18 7:43:30 PM by TuefelHundenIV