Re:When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps
by tshaddox on Thursday May 12, 2022 @01:33AM
(#31349646)
All those anecdotes are cute, but has there been any attempt at systematically determining whether the net result of all instances of a particular culture’s practices which are justified by “do it this way because it has always been done this way”? This seems difficult to analyze, but it’s critical to the validity of any argument that invokes these cute anecdotes. Isn’t it plausible that generations of repressing people’s curiosity in experimenting with food preparation had a net negative effect?
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Re:When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps
by philwelch on Thursday May 12, 2022 @12:15PM
(#31356235)
Interesting point. I think you could characterize "being conquered by the Portuguese in the first place" as a negative outcome, so there's a plausible argument that the Portuguese were more willing to embrace innovation, which is how they gained the ability to conquer the Tukanoans in the first place.
On the other hand, if you dig into the history of colonization, indigenous cultures had a massive home field advantage, and it was common for Western colonies to utterly fail, either starving to death in the same lands that indigenous people were able to survive in or in some cases, completely defecting from their original culture and joining indigenous populations.