What We Can Learn from Native American History

I have just published my sixth book, Forgotten Landscapes: How Native Americans Created Pre-Columbian North America and What We Can Learn from It. I am starting a series of essays and videos to promote portions of this book.

I have posted a video about how pre-contact Native American cities had many practices from which we, in industrial society, can and must learn today, which corresponds to the last chapter of my book.

There are many things we can learn from Native American history, but in the video and book I focused on three things.

First, we could learn to live more sustainably. They had satisfactory and comfortable lives without making a big impact upon the Earth, over the long term. They practiced agriculture that we today call agroforestry, which requires less input of energy, chemicals, and labor than the “modern” agriculture we practice today. They did not do this because they were ecologically advanced but just because it was easier for them to leave the trees standing than to cut them down. The result was less soil erosion and fewer pests. They also lived sustainably because they allowed trees to keep their villages cool rather than, as we do today, cranking up air conditioning (which of course they did not have).

Second, they celebrated cultural diversity. They had to. There were five hundred different tribes, most of them with mutually unintelligible languages. No tribe was big enough to ignore all the others, with whom they had extensive trade networks. No wonder they were so good at sign language. They could live alongside other tribes who were different from them, which we seem unable to do today. They had wars, but not as many as Europe did at the time.

Third, they had a love of discovery. Modern politicians, and most other people, are boastfully ignorant of the natural laws of how the world works and our ecological impact on the planet. Modern people don’t know or care how to live on Earth. But if Natives had that attitude, there is no way they would have spread from Siberia to the tip of South America in about a thousand years, all the while figuring out how to survive in habitats totally unlike any they had ever encountered.

You can probably think of a lot more ways. I hope you read my book and think about this.

Joan of Arc and Science

I recently visited the equestrian statue of Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc) in Strasbourg, France. I have posted a video about what I learned.

Joan of Arc was a peasant girl, aged about 17, when she claimed that the Archangel Michael and Saints Margaret and Catherine had told her that she needed to lead the French troops to victory over England, which at that time (1429) occupied a large portion of what is today France. This was during the Hundred Years’ War, and France was not doing too well. The French troops were under siege in Orléans.

Jeanne must have had a mesmerizing personality, because she convinced the future French King Charles VII that the voices in her head had told her France would prevail and Charles would be king. She was put in charge of the portions of the French army that eventually drove the English away from that siege and some others as well. She was a military heroine—a 17 year old peasant girl. The story did not end so well for her. She started losing battles, and when she was 19 she was put on trial and convicted of heresy. She was burned at the stake in 1431. One of the charges was that, in leading battles, she had worn men’s clothing. Later, a new trial found her not guilty and today she is esteemed as one of the patron saints of France. Everyone has heard about her.

Every artistic depiction of her shows her to be very beautiful. The usual standards of physical beauty, however, is not at all necessary. She would have appeared beautiful to those who believed her divine claims, no matter what she actually looked like.

What this means for us, as we examine the role of religion in human history, is that even the craziest of claims are credible if the person making them is persistent and absolutely convinced of them. She heard the little voices in her head and had not the slightest doubt of their authenticity. Many historians today believe that Jeanne was schizophrenic (the little voices were in her brain) or had Menière’s disease (the little voices were in her inner ear). We do not know. More to the point, she did not know.

Religious claims can be made and believed on no further basis than the assertion of those who make them. No other evidence is needed. Many people claim that there is, in fact, evidence other than assertions that support many religious beliefs, such as Jesus’ resurrection. But such evidence is not necessary to true believers.

Scientific thinking, however, requires that the person making a claim provide evidence that is verifiable to people other than the one making the claim. You can read more about it in my book Scientifically Thinking. This is an important reason that we should depend on science, rather than religious assertion, to guide us in making decisions of worldwide importance—which nearly all of our decisions are these days.

Why America is Mostly White

Today, Africa is still mostly African, and Asia is still mostly Asian, even though they were both conquered by white people. But North and South America are mostly white. Why? This was because when Europeans conquered Africa and Asia, many Europeans died from African and Asian diseases, just as many Africans and Asians died of European diseases. But there were very few Native American diseases; European diseases killed up to 90 percent of Native Americans. This is why, even though Europeans conquered America, Africa, and Asia, America is unique in being mostly white. It is the legacy of epidemic diseases. 

I explain this in my YouTube video. It is explained further in chapter 7 of my new book Forgotten Landscapes.

 

Native Americans Were Clean People

I have just published my sixth book, Forgotten Landscapes: How Native Americans Created Pre-Columbian North America and What We Can Learn from It. I am starting a series of essays and videos to promote portions of this book.

I have posted a video about how pre-contact Native American cities were clean, which corresponds to chapter 1 of my book.

When they came to North America, Europeans thought of themselves as the clean, bright representatives of godly society. But the facts do not bear this up.

European cities were mired in sewage, which flowed freely in the streets. Europeans threw their garbage into the street, and let free-roaming pigs process it. Meanwhile, Native American cities (some of them, like Cahokia, quite large) were clean. If they were dirty, they would have bred diseases, of which there is no evidence.

There is eyewitness evidence that Native American cities were clean. William Bartram, a botanist, visited Cherokee territory about 1776. He observed the Cherokee green corn festival. (Green corn is what we usually call sweet corn, eaten without being dried and ground.) The Cherokees would sweep any garbage out of the streets, then burn all their old possessions (which might have had fleas in them). Then they would all run to the river to bathe. These were clean people, unlike the Europeans who conquered them.

When Europeans captured Natives and took them to display to kings and queens, the Natives had to endure weeks in filthy European ships. The first thing they did when the ship docked in Europe was to run to the nearest river to take a bath.

The “dirty savage” image of Native Americans was wrong not only because they were not savages—they had cities and farms and trade networks—but they were also not dirty.