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A comment on Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Mediterranean. Parent comment

Re:Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Medite... by saalweachter on Wednesday April 25, 2018 @10:07AM (#16921609)
Oh, I'm not talking about the "loosely populated" part. I'm referring to the way that they by and large didn't really consider the inhabitants to be "people". Into the 20th century they were largely denied agency by the colonists, and in the 21st century we still displace Native Americans with roughly the same sort of discussion we have about disturbing turtle populations.

I don't think 16th century Europeans considered the Americas any more inhabited than the Moon. Native populations were just another natural resource the New World was teeming with, not "people".

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Re:Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Medite... by InitialLastName on Wednesday April 25, 2018 @04:27PM (#16925739)
If you look at it, that kind of humanism (where the distinction between "humans" and "not humans" is more important than the distinction between, say, "Christians" and "not Christians" wasn't in vogue in the 16th century. 16th century Europeans sent enormous numbers of missionaries to the Americas with the aim of converting the natives; they wouldn't have done that if orangutans were the prevailing primate on the continent.
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Re:Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Medite... by kirghiz on Wednesday April 25, 2018 @11:24AM (#16922347)
An oversimplification perhaps:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valladolid_debate

Not that practice matched theory but...

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