A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

Re:A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas by bobthechef on Friday September 24, 2021 @09:52PM (#28649726)

Also, languages like Guarani survived because of the efforts of missionaries (the Jesuits in this case).

(But I will say that the current policy of "protecting" the isolated tribes in the Amazon from human contact by categorically shutting them off is quite horrible and uncharitable. This is rooted in the preposterous myth of the noble savage. Tribal peoples are not innocent children.)

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Re:A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas by FooBarBizBazz on Saturday September 25, 2021 @12:24AM (#28650517)

> the current policy of "protecting" the isolated tribes in the Amazon from human contact by categorically shutting them off is quite horrible and uncharitable

I dunno. If you make contact with them, most of them will die of diseases to which they have no immunity. This happens over and over. Amazon tribes. Pacific islands. On a huge scale in the Americas. For those that do survive, the event may be so traumatic that they develop a very understandable hostility to outsiders.

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Re:A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas by ChainOfFools on Friday September 24, 2021 @10:55PM (#28650063)

I'm not sure anyone would thank Bishop de Landa for burning the entire written work of a thousand year old civilization.

Disrupting a cycle of ritualized torture may find some support on humanitarian grounds, but it was no excuse to annihilate the rest of Maya literary culture as well.

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