Shear Modulus posted:

africans had indeed settled in the americas before leif erickson landed because there were humans there, and all humans originated in africa

Cocoa Crispies posted:

Frog Act posted:

that isn't really universally accepted, I mean, I've read a lot of books that make that claim but even the "high counter" proponents of a very active native civilization in the americas that claim their various discoveries are evidence of exchange with Asia didn't feel very compelling iirc. this stuff came up a bunch in my seminar on the history of Latin America and the professor I had was generally dismissive of the notion, particularly since there is an increasingly substantial volume of evidence for transcontinental trade that would explain the provenance of some things found on the west coast

I'm not saying you're wrong but I would be very interested in a contemporary source from a historical or anthropological journal that makes that claim without ambiguity or assumptions because it mostly seems like a similar attempt to the one I mentioned that started this discussion to reclaim what is basically a useless, white supremacist narrative instead of constructing a new and more inclusive type of historiography

i'd be fascinated if it were true, but it seems to me like even the most compelling evidence just points to a few small groups of polynesian sailors in their awesome boats accidentally washing ashore, or maybe even a ship blown off course during the brief period when Chinese traders went pretty far afield, which is kind of different from the purposeful colonial "discovery" made by columbus

Frog Act posted:

its also fair to argue leif erickson's landing didn't and doesn't mean dick except as a white supremacist trope designed to sustain the relevance of notions of colonial domination being like a natural or chronologically inevitable phenomenon

i just hate it when people abuse historical fact to push Liberal narratives designed to atomize and diffuse social grievances. despite my love for the field and whatever notions of truth and authenticity are baked into it, I care a lot less about the historical record when it's being used to propagandize decent, upstanding communist beliefs

Taintrunner posted:

what is this

Not a Children posted:

gold-fringed flag equivalent for Airbnbs

Shame Boy posted:

I got most of it from my friend who just finished their history degree a couple years ago so I'll ask them about it, but the stuff I heard wasn't so much about claiming the "first colonizer status" or w/e but more just "people were moving and trading a long time after the land bridge stopped being a thing". There's also little bits in the genome of certain populations as far south as Ecuador that hints at something going on: https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1003460

I'm definitely talking out my rear end though so

Shame Boy posted:

See the way I interpreted the whole asian contact stuff in relation to white supremacists was less "ha you can't be the colonial dominators because they were first!" and more "finding America is not actually that big a deal and you're not special for doing it"

Frog Act posted:

that's interesting - I won't pretend to understand genetics so I can't speak to that, but I suspect the actual truth is something closer to the notion that there was sporadic contact on a small enough scale to be historically meaningless (in causal terms) but to leave a genotypical footprint of some kind. the thing about the moving and trading i think is more contemporarily explained by a crazy system of trade that allowed products from like, the south of Brazil to end up in California exclusively via trade networks that abstracted wealth through pseudo-currencies like shells or just engaged in large-scale barter.

as much as I like that interpretation i think that's basically something only a cspam poster is likely to reflexively feel. most people seem to have a very simplistic view of history that places a tremendous weight on raw chronology and the misguided notion that discovery is even a thing in the first place. it isn't that arriving first makes Asians the colonial dominators instead of whites, per se, its more that the framing of "arrived first" is kind of toxic, but doesn't have a real alternative, especially since most people interested in the chronology and ethnicity of new-world arrivals are unlikely to accept the domination-based settler colonial understanding in the first place. like Asian or Polynesian sailors may have literally arrived first but white settler-colonial projects are regarded as the actual first arrival because they initiated a massive physical-cultural exchange. often claims about earlier arrivals on the west coast are tied to the same sort of assumptions about ensuing change, which is what give them their historiographically colonialist overtones. basically it isn't that they're trying to appropriate the mantle of colonial domination, but rather that they're trying to undo it, and in doing so actually sort of perpetuating the same toxic notions.

if more people interpreted things the way you did i think our national narrative would be considerably less toxic. this post is kinda incoherent but you get the idea

Frog Act posted:

right, I mean, even accepting the argument that Polynesians landed on the west coast, my principal issue with the speaker is that he was attempting to insert black people into a white, colonialist narrative. like by attempting to claim the mantle of original "discoverer" or something, he's just slotting his preferred demographic into an existing piece of historiographic poison, instead of discussing the meaningful cultural and political legacy of black people in both the Americas and Africa.

it was just part of his broader Liberal narrative full of basic acquiescence to prevailing capitalist ideas - everything was individuated and reduced to either an emotional transaction or discussed in terms of its relationship to diversity metrics, they weren't interested at all in meaningful improvements to the lives of the student body. what incensed me the most was they spent all this time talking about inclusion and poo poo but of course our actual non-degree holding staff, that clean and cook and work incredibly loving hard to maintain the college, were excluded from this stuff entirely because they're contract workers. the whole thing was an exercise in narcissism for tenured professors making $90k but are nevertheless desperate to feel as though they're the most victimized people in any given room.

it was the entire school, so a good number of people, and the presenter started the morning off by asking people what racism is. he didn't wait for hands to raise though, he singled people out in an attempt to make them uncomfortable. i was the only white guy below the age of 60 (i.e. not a dean) in the room of 60+ people so he picked me out first, I think in an attempt to get me flustered and start a conversation about white obliviousness. luckily I did my MA in history and spent a long time studying eugenics and contemporary neo-nazism's antecedents so I was able to give a high-quality academic answer, but it was very uncomfortable

best part was when someone called him out for using "sir" and "ma'am" to refer to people, then someone called out the caller-outer for using gendered language in her call to eliminate gendered language, and then they both castigated the speaker for misgendering the second caller-outer. it was just such a parody of liberalism I could barely believe it

CommonShore posted:

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3883865

spacetoaster posted:

Good thread.

But also actually getting involved at a gym does wonders for self-esteem and channeling aggression in an appropriate way. Things that will actually help to stop someone from being a bully.

quote:

Fallout 4 fans may end up feeling especially frustrated. If Loot Crate fails to fulfill all of its missing shipments, folks who subscribed to the six-part Fallout Series 2 set (which costs about $228) in hopes of getting a complete Liberty Prime set...could end up never receiving its head.

Not a Children posted:

gold-fringed flag equivalent for Airbnbs

duz posted:

some how selling blind bags of random garbage isnt profitable
http://io9.gizmodo.com/loot-crate-files-for-bankruptcy-and-lays-off-workers-bu-1837204311

on the plus side

duz posted:

some how selling blind bags of random garbage isnt profitable
http://io9.gizmodo.com/loot-crate-files-for-bankruptcy-and-lays-off-workers-bu-1837204311

on the plus side

Frog Act posted:

that's interesting - I won't pretend to understand genetics so I can't speak to that, but I suspect the actual truth is something closer to the notion that there was sporadic contact on a small enough scale to be historically meaningless (in causal terms) but to leave a genotypical footprint of some kind. the thing about the moving and trading i think is more contemporarily explained by a crazy system of trade that allowed products from like, the south of Brazil to end up in California exclusively via trade networks that abstracted wealth through pseudo-currencies like shells or just engaged in large-scale barter.

comedyblissoption posted:

i assume computer monitors are eventually gonna fall to the advertise literally everywhere phenomenon unless you pay a huge markup

Squalid posted:

oh these connections were much more than just trace genetic fingerprints -- but they are also obscure enough that I don't think they contradict your point about history. I didn't bother to read more than the headline of that article and I haven't refreshed myself on the subject in a few years so I might make a couple mistakes, but the genetic and linguistic evidence is pretty clear that the Bering Sea was crossed multiple times.

The Na-Dene language group has been theorized to have represented a population that remained the Berengia region after the rest of the America's were peopled. Including Native Americans like the Haida and Tlingit, it has been hypothesized to be connected to some Siberian languages. They began migrating south as I recall around 6,000 years ago, although this article does not relate that to the genetic signature they found. There is not a consensus if they started in Asia or North America or began migrating around the time Berengia sank.

Following the Na-Dene peoples, the paleo-Eskimos and then the modern Eskimos also crossed the Bering sea. These migrations are well documented and uncontroversial, there is substantial genetic, linguistic, and material evidence. This should be unsurprising although many people are unaware of it, afterall we know they sailed to Greenland from North America, what's stopping them from going to Siberia? Most likely they originated in Siberia. Paleo-Eskimo culture began spreading across the neo-arctic from around 4500 years ago. At some point maybe 1000 years ago some of their decedents, related to the modern Aleuts and Yupik, traveled back to Siberia. Today their descendants the Siberian Yupik have declined in numbers as they were hit hard by European diseases and have been assimilated into the neighboring Chukchi reindeer herders and Russian population, but they still have a few villages left:



The inset map shows the distribution of the Na-Dene/Athabascan linguistic group in red. Genetically Eskimo people tend to be more similar to Siberians than other Native Americans, while the Athabascans are in between.

This subject is easily ignored because it doesn't really impact our western perspective on "History" with a big H much. It doesn't really matter to our narratives. None of these migrations introduced pigs or sweet potatoes to anywhere. Arctic Hunter-gatherers never threatened to take over whole continents. It's just a little piece of trivia that show the world has always been smaller than we think.

Tangentially related, but Australia was also never as isolated as most people think. I mean just looking at the Torres straight and it should be obvious it wasn't much of a barrier

quote:

Australia was never entirely cut off from the rest of the world; there is evidence of frequent contact with the peoples of New Guinea and, beginning in the 17th century, there were also sporadic encounters with Dutch mariners along the western and northern coasts. Most remarkably of all, the Aboriginal peoples of the far north – what Australians today call the “Top End” – were, for several centuries at least, part of a vibrant and extensive trading system, one that brought them into annual contact with seagoing merchants from Indonesia, and linked them to civilisations as far away as China and Japan.

This is a history that remains comparatively little-known, not least because it involves no Europeans. But, since it so subverts the popular conception of what actually went on in Australia, it is a story well worth telling. In this history, Aboriginal Australians not only met and worked – often on terms of easy friendship and equality – with peoples from cultures quite different from their own; they also lived and sometimes travelled with them. Perhaps the most startling outcome of this series of events was a surreal encounter between the first group of white explorers to penetrate the deep interior of the north and an Aborigine who – they were amazed to find – already spoke a little English, picked up in the course of a voyage he’d made to Singapore. But surely the most fascinating was the creation (decades, probably, before Cook came ashore at Botany Bay, and perhaps as early as the 17th century) of a small Aboriginal community in the busy port of Makassar, in Sulawesi: that extraordinary island, all peninsulas, that lies in the heart of the East Indies, and looks like nothing so much as a child’s sketch of a dinosaur.

Shame Boy posted:

I'm not talking about the land bridge, I'm saying there's quite a bit of evidence for communication between the western Americas and east Asia long after the land bridge was gone.

e: Basically America has been "discovered" at least once and quite possibly multiple times after it was isolated but before even Leif Erikson, let alone Columbus, stumbled on it.

The Xkdc Larper posted:

Gamers will never stand for this kind of bs

Tashilicious posted:

gamers are bending over backwards to excuse some of the most blindingly greedy cash grabs in any industry outside of banking.

quote:

Everyone's been fed up and ready to explode at management for weeks," production designer Carolyn Wurster said. "But then all those pizzas showed up, and it just didn't seem like the right time to start demanding a legitimate healthcare plan or salary raises that reflect the amount of work we do."

Added Wurster, "They ordered like 10 huge pies."

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Like, where? Like literally everyone I've seen hates lootboxes and store exclusives etc and bitches about them at every opportunity or has given up

Frog Act posted:

good post, and I think it underlines that we basically don't know. i do think that it bears pointing out that it mostly isn't about multiple bering sea crossings that these discussions come up so much as its about later, during what we might call like late antiquity or the middle ages, when people claim advanced cultures from Asia made the journey but left no meaningful evidence. it's a little harder to buy the idea of Chinese junks en masse or African sailors than it is multiple bering sea crossings during the prehistorical populating of what would eventually be the new world. so what you're talking about here is still compatible with the more generic prevailing narrative (which is white supremacist and bad, but not "wrong" in the same way as the stuff that started this discussion).

all that aside here's a great article about trade routes and precolonial Australian contact with the outside world to piggyback on your point about the Torres strait

https://mikedashhistory.com/2016/10/31/dreamtime-voyagers-australian-aborigines-in-early-modern-makassar/

KiteAuraan posted:

The only archaeological evidence I am aware of is some iron of possible shipwreck origin, and some coins in a somewhat disturbed context, and some other even more uncertain material. It likely was down-the-line trade from Kamchatka across the Bering Strait to Inuit, Yupik, Yup'ik and Aleut peoples,to Northwest Coast groups as far south as Ozette.

http://staff.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Asiatic-Objects.pdf

This is a good paper by a specialist in the area that discusses the topic. I would rule against direct contact, as there isn't any known Indigenous histories, or Chinese, Korean or Japanese for that matter, that unambiguously mentions the eastern Pacific Coastal regions or peoples. Also a general lack of disease transmission or evidence of epidemics of Eurasian diseases until the Russians/English/Spanish/French show up in the late 1709s.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Like, where? Like literally everyone I've seen hates lootboxes and store exclusives etc and bitches about them at every opportunity or has given up

Tashilicious posted:

By continuing to buy those games anyway.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

A crooked casino is still the only game in town. We should know by now what 'there's no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism' means; individual choices don't matter when there's nothing actually stopping companies from pulling heinous poo poo and marketing it everywhere and consumers keep buying it out of habit and because it's there. The argument isn't far removed from 'Oh, but you participate in society. Curious!'

Tashilicious posted:

There is a difference between existing in a capitalist society and engaging with it for mere acts of survival (Food, shelter, entertainment) and continuing to support the worst parts of it. I still play video games, and buy them, while still raging against the most eggregious bits of it (Microtransactions, lootboxes, etc) which falls under "no ethical consumption".

However, if I were to do all of the above and also buy Fifa and participate in the lootboxes that are half of EA's income, my protests would literally be lip service.

"Tech companies use child slavery to build their devices" while purchasing one phone every 6-7 years.
VS
"Tech companies use child slavery to build their devices" while purchasing the new high end device yearly.