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Re:Ancient DNA sheds light on what happened to the Taino, th... by losteric on Monday February 19, 2018 @07:45PM (#16417005)
No one's suggesting otherwise. Every culture has blood in their past, "civilization" is the slow process of collectively maturing to avoid those conflicts.
Re:Ancient DNA sheds light on what happened to the Taino, th... by abusoufiyan on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @04:49AM (#16419048)
So, does that mean that cultures currently engaged in war are less civilized than cultures currently disengaged from war?
Re:Ancient DNA sheds light on what happened to the Taino, th... by losteric on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @06:21PM (#16425255)
I would argue that cultures engaged in war as a means to resolve tension are less civilized, and those engaged in war without tension are even worse...

Similarly, totalitarianism is a less civilized form of organization than, say, successful democracies.

Re:Ancient DNA sheds light on what happened to the Taino, th... by oh_sigh on Monday February 19, 2018 @09:25PM (#16417383)
OP was lamenting genocide, and then wondered what the world would be like if the Europeans never came. That seems to me to imply that OP believes Europeans are solely responsible for Indian genocides, which is what I was responding to
Re:Ancient DNA sheds light on what happened to the Taino, th... by spicymaki on Monday February 19, 2018 @11:03PM (#16417767)
You are confused.

Honestly if Europeans never came to the Americas there would not be losses of up to 98% of the indigenous population (depending on location). Even if disease "accidentally" killed 80%, the rest were murdered due to greed and evil.

Those events have been well documented, unlike the "rarely kept records" in your previous comment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples...

After the Europeans could not find enough surviving Native Americans to enslave, they went to Africa next to start another round of cruelty. There is no honest comparison to be made between warring tribes and European conquest.

Re:Ancient DNA sheds light on what happened to the Taino, th... by thaumasiotes on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @01:26AM (#16418239)
> After the Europeans could not find enough surviving Native Americans to enslave, they went to Africa next to start another round of cruelty.

This is off. The problem wasn't that there weren't enough natives, but that they tended to die quickly when enslaved.

Re:Ancient DNA sheds light on what happened to the Taino, th... by losteric on Monday February 19, 2018 @09:47PM (#16417483)
Indian? You mean native Americans? Europeans are solely responsible for bringing new diseases to South America - that wiped out most of the population, far more than swords and guns.

Britain also killed a lot of people in India, but they didn't commit genocide.

Re:Ancient DNA sheds light on what happened to the Taino, th... by oh_sigh on Monday February 19, 2018 @11:01PM (#16417759)
I never said Europeans weren't responsible for genocide.

And "Indian" is an accepted, defined way to reference Native Americans. See: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Indian

Re:Ancient DNA sheds light on what happened to the Taino, th... by wavefunction on Monday February 19, 2018 @10:24PM (#16417616)
Of course the actual Indians had their own genocidal maniacs, like Ashoka the Great