# Bosda, say what? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 24, 2004, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455 "2004-11-24T12:17:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/21 "2004-11-27T02:11:18Z")
**Miller** , welcome to the fucking Pit, dumbass. And piss on you absurdist, PC whining. The way you & a certain twit in the GD thread go on, I’m thoughly sick of your crap. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/22 "2004-11-27T03:55:13Z")
**Bosda** , what point were you trying to make when you said that “The **Pre-Colombian Native Americans** didn’t have metalworking, stone masonry, roadbuilding, or a written language”? Again, I’m not pitting you. And you’ve already admitted the error. Just trying to understand your point. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/23 "2004-11-27T04:49:46Z")
> [@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor](#): > > So sorry to hear that you’ve lost your frickin mind. I’ll help you look for it. Marble-sized and puce in color, yes? I’ll check in the sofa cushions. > Every single resource needed to build a stone building, or even a spilt level duplex with attached garage & hot tub, can be found in the US. > > **But the Indians lacked both the tech knowledge and the social organization to build them.** > > This thread is infested with people who confuse “political correctness” with _fact_ . > > Was the US a wilderness at the dawn of the Colonial Era? Yes. First off, you’ve already been proven wrong in your initial assertions in that the Aztec culture contained every technology you mentioned and then some and your _ad hoc_ distinction about them being "culturally “South American” is meaningless. You made a categorical assertion about culture as it pertained to a particular _geography_. Your loophole doesn’t even make sense. They were a North American culture by definition. You can’t alter the geography by pretending that they were really part of the culture of another continent (which is not even true, btw. Aztec, Maayan and Incan cultures were all vastly different from each other and the Aztecs were the most “advanced” technologically of all of them). Secondly, the cultures you speak of who did not develop stoneworking because there was _no necessity_ to develop it. Technology is born of _necessity_, not inherent intellect or some organic outgrowth of cultural development. How good is your icecraft lately? Can you build an igloo? Should the Inuit people have abandoned devoloping this craft and focused instead on smelting ores from beneath the ice? As to your last question- could you define what a “wilderness is?” In your mind is the value of human culture determined solely by it’s proximity to your own? By “wilderness” do you mean an environment which has been unaltered or unadapted to human habitation? If so, let me recommend a book called _Changes in the Land_ by William Cronon. You will find that contrary to popular belief, the environment of the New World before the advent of white people was far from “natural,” pristine or unaltered. In fact, American Indians had been altering and adapting the “wilderness” for centuries with techniques such as controlled burns. And contrary to one of your previous assertions, agriculture was widespread, although the methodology was different (for example, they sowed corn and beans togeether in such a way that they grew intertwined. This protected the corn from soil erosion and the cornstalks served as “beanpoles.” Such innovations were used in other ways as well). As a matter of fact, the only true hunter-gathering cultures were the Plains tribes as well as some far northern tribes like the afore mentioned Inuits. Dwellings that were built of wood and hides were built that way for mobility. It would be a dumbass tribe indeed who who build stone houses when they lived in a migratory culture. I’m sure this won’t matter to you but all of the Nort American cultures also had highly developed cultures when it came to things like religion, kinship systems and political networking with other tribes. This continent was teeming with culture and “civilization” long before Columbus ever blundered into the Bahamas. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/24 "2004-11-27T05:53:11Z")
The roadbuilding skills of the Chaco Canyon people were interesting too. They built a wide and very straight road for two hundred miles. Their knowledge and incorporation of solar and lunar patterns were rather extraordinary too. If you are feeling down about something, I’m sorry if I have made it worse. I wish I had never put this in the Pit. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/25 "2004-11-27T15:47:27Z")
[ol] [li]I am not talking about the Aztecs! They are not inside the borders of what would become the USA. [/li][li]Chaco Canyon was abandoned before Colombus arrived, much less before the Jamestown Colony’s founding. The technology was lost to the Native Americans.[/li][li]My OP was about the conditions that existed when the settlers arrived in what would become the USA.[/li][li]Not one single example any of you have given qualifies as refuting my posts.[/li][li]I concede a geographical error about Mexico.[/li][li]Endlessly repeating the same silly rubbish about Chaco _does not make you correct_! Chaco Canyon _does not qualify_! It was a ruin, not a city, when the Colonial Era began.[/li][li]The Native Americans _did not_ have sophisticated art. Realism had yet to be achieved.[/li][li]The Native Americans _did not_ have metalworking in the USA.[/li][li]The Native Americans _did not_ have sophisticated musical styles. No orchestration, no multi-stringed instruments, no musical notation systems. Not in the US.[/li][li]The Native Americans _did not_ have writing. Not in the US.[/li][li]The Native Americans _were not_ as sophisticated as the Medicis of Italy. Get over it.[/li][li]Asserting that all cultures are equally good is utter nonsense. Even by the crudest standard, that of the amount of protein in one’s diet & the frequency of famine, clearly places European civilization ahead of any of the Native American cultures. **Including** the Aztecs. (Remember the cannibalism in their relgious rituals? It served to add protein to an otherwise deficient diet.)[/li][/ol] ---
**Author:** ![kung\_fu\_lola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f4b2a3/32.png) [@kung\_fu\_lola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kung_fu_lola)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/26 "2004-11-27T16:16:49Z")
[QUOTE=Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor] [ol] [li]Asserting that all cultures are equally good is utter nonsense. [/ol][/li][/QUOTE] But why does that matter? “Good” is irrelevant. What matters is “what works”. Any tribe does what works. If something works for a particular tribe, they continue to do it. If it doesn’t, they abandon it. _There is no one right way for people to live_. There just isn’t. The only reason why white people took over was not out of inherent rightness, but because their style of agriculture allowed them to determine their own population growth (which they chose not to put a cap on). They exempted themselves from the laws of nature that every other living organism on the planet is subject to, and they used the legends and myths of a nomadic tribe to justify themselves. And now that we have violated the laws of nature for hundreds of years, our planet is dying and we will die too, forever, and the planet will go on orbiting the sun without us. That’s all. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/27 "2004-11-27T16:24:49Z")
> [@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor](#): > > Even by the crudest standard, that of the amount of protein in one’s diet & the frequency of famine, clearly places European civilization ahead of any of the Native American cultures. **Including** the Aztecs. (Remember the cannibalism in their relgious rituals? It served to add protein to an otherwise deficient diet.) If you’re going to start throwing out assertions like this, you should at least be honest enough not to pretend that it’s an undisputed fact. The idea of cannibalism as a corrective to a protein-deficient diet among the Aztecs has quite a long history, with a key piece of literature in the field being Michael Harner’s 1977 essay “The Ecological Basis for Aztec Sacrifice,” _American Ethnologist_ 4:1 (1977), pp. 117–35. The issue has been roundly debated by anthropologists, archeologists, and others with an interest in the various pre-Columbian civilizations, and quite a lot of scholars believe that the theory is very difficult to support. While the idea has not been completely discredited, it has undergone serious challenges, and most scholars in the discipline now believe that Harner’s article overstates considerably the protein deficiency in Aztec culture, and also fails to give sufficient attention to cultural and religious factors in human sacrifice. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/28 "2004-11-27T16:28:35Z")
You keep moving the goal posts. NOW you’re only talking about what became the USA? Within the borders of what is now the US, native peoples still had agriculture, they still had complex social and kinship systems, they had highly developed religious systems, they still had sophisticated art (and sophistication in art is _not_ defined by realism. Non representational art can be the most sophisticated of all. Take a look at a real Persian rug sometime). You also haven’t answered my question about how you define the word “wilderness.” When you say that not all cultures are equally “good,” could you explain what you mean by “good” and tell us in what way European cultures were more “good” than Plains Indian cultures? The Aztecs didn’t practice cannibalism for “protein,” btw. It was completely ritualistic. They believed they gained certain powers by consuming certain parts of the body. It was also pretty rare, only a an elite few, such as warriors, really ate any human flesh. I’d also remind you that Christianity itself contains a core sacrament of ritual cannibalism. ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/29 "2004-11-27T16:45:49Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > If you’re going to start throwing out assertions like this, you should at least be honest enough not to pretend that it’s an undisputed fact. > > The idea of cannibalism as a corrective to a protein-deficient diet among the Aztecs has quite a long history, with a key piece of literature in the field being Michael Harner’s 1977 essay “The Ecological Basis for Aztec Sacrifice,” _American Ethnologist_ 4:1 (1977), pp. 117–35. > > The issue has been roundly debated by anthropologists, archaeologists, and others with an interest in the various pre-Columbian civilizations, and quite a lot of scholars believe that the theory is very difficult to support. While the idea has not been completely discredited, it has undergone serious challenges, and most scholars in the discipline now believe that Harner’s article overstates considerably the protein deficiency in Aztec culture, and also fails to give sufficient attention to cultural and religious factors in human sacrifice. Don’t bother, Bosda’s decided that primitive = stupid, and confusing him with facts will likely just make him let lose with more spittle flecked diatribes. You know what Bosda? I’m not buying that the Europeans of the time were even civilized, because they didn’t have representative democracy. They were ruled by men who claimed that some mythical God had personally coronate them, and the ignorant citizens believed it! How primitive can you get? Christ, they didn’t have TVs or airplanes either! Listen you silly git, your arguments are not just stupid, they’re arbitrary. You’ve picked a couple of technologies and claiming that simply because Indians lacked these technologies, that they are therefore somehow less advanced than Europeans. Not true at all. The things you mention are not technologies that American Indians needed, why should their failure to develop them come as a surprise? Here’s a question for you: If I plunked your 21st century ass down smack in the middle of the Great Plains in 1623, how well would you survive, if at all? Native Americans did it easily. I don’t think that anyone would argue that you come from a culture a lot more advanced than that of the Great Plains Indians, but I bet within a couple of months you’d be a lot more dead then an Indian in similar circumstances too. “Primitive” is often simply what works best for the time. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/30 "2004-11-27T17:06:47Z")
To **Diogenes** I repeat–CLICK ON THE LINK TO THE FIRST THREAD! If you _had_, you’d have noticed that I haven’t moved the goalposts. To **Weirddave** --fuck you, you lying whoreson. I never called anybody stupid. Straw man argument. > [@](#): > > Listen you silly git, your arguments are not just stupid, they’re arbitrary. You’ve picked a couple of technologies and claiming that simply because Indians lacked these technologies, that they are therefore somehow less advanced than Europeans. Not true at all. The things you mention are not technologies that American Indians needed, why should their failure to develop them come as a surprise? Here’s a question for you: If I plunked your 21st century ass down smack in the middle of the Great Plains in 1623, how well would you survive, if at all? Native Americans did it easily. I don’t think that anyone would argue that you come from a culture a lot more advanced than that of the Great Plains Indians, but I bet within a couple of months you’d be a lot more dead then an Indian in similar circumstances too. “Primitive” is often simply what works best for the time. Yeah, and if we gave the Mohawk 1920’s Style Death Rays they’d conquer the Universe. Fairy tales & pixie dreams don’t count. From the first, my statements applied to– [list=A] [li]The continental United States[/li][li]The extant & living Native American cultures.[/li][li]Whether or not the Continental US was a wilderness.[/li][/list] BTW–I bet that if my 21st Century ass was plunked down in 1623 England, I’d do OK. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/31 "2004-11-27T17:25:16Z")
1.) What is a “wilderness?” 2.) You weren’t asked about how you’d do in a 17th century European colonial culture, you were asked how you would do in a Plains Indian culture. The answer is you would probably die within weeks. largely because you would have no technical aptitude whatsoever. This was a culture where each individual knew how to make his own clothing, tools and weapons, how to build his own house, how to move it when necessary, how to gather edible foodstuffs and prepare them, how to hunt and trap small game, how to fish, how to hunt _big_ game, how to clean, section, cook and otherwise prepare that big game, how to cure the hides and put them to use. And those are just the broad outlines, I haven’t mentioned the individual artistry or signature tribal craft which went into each technology. You wouldn’t be able to do _any_ of that stuff and neither would I. It’s requires a ridiculous amount of knowledge and a diverse array of skill sets. There was no specialization, no one to hire to make your shoes for you if you sucked at it. You had to be good at everything or that was it for you. Neither one of us would even know where to take a dump or what to wipe our asses with. ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/32 "2004-11-27T17:39:44Z")
> [@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor](#): > > To **Diogenes** I repeat–CLICK ON THE LINK TO THE FIRST THREAD! > > If you _had_, you’d have noticed that I haven’t moved the goalposts. Bullshit. You said “continent” in your first post there, you said continent in your second post there. When called upon it, you tried to weasel out by claiing you were only talking about “North America”, when called upon that, you have now defined it as “Only lands that became the USA”. When someone points out that the cliff dwellers of the Southwest constructed houses from stone, are you now going to say that you’re “only talking about the lands that became the US except for Arizona and New Mexico which don’t coun’t because they are culturaly something else”? Here’s a couple of words for you to try out. They won’t kill you: “Sorry guys, I was wrong. I didn’t think it all the way through” > [@](#): > > To **Weirddave** --fuck you, you lying whoreson. I never called anybody stupid. Straw man argument. Listen, fucktard, if you actually read what I posted, I never said that you called anyone stupid. I said that you’re convinced “Primative = stupid” and that atitude permiates everything that you’ve written in these two thread, at least to me. I’m willing to ask everyone else, though, I may be wrong. What say y’all? Is Bosda’s attitude here “primative = stupid”, of am I reading it wrong? > [@](#): > > BTW–I bet that if my 21st Century ass was plunked down in 1623 England, I’d do OK. That wasn’t the question. Would you survive in a situation where you need the skill set of those primative peoples whom you deride as “not as advanced” as Europeans. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/33 "2004-11-27T17:52:49Z")
> [@](#): > > **1662** - Michael Wigglesworth, in God’s Controversy with New England published by the Massachusetts Historical Society, states that outside the settlements there was nothing but “A waste and howling wilderness, where none inhabited But hellish fiends, and brutish men That Devils worshipped.” [Early Exploration: 1500-1700](http://planning.nps.gov/wilderness/idea1.cfm) > [@](#): > > William Bradford’s assertion that the Plymouth colony of which he was the Governor had been settled in “a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men.” [A Puritan in the Wilderness](http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/suny/1997suny-johnston.html) ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/34 "2004-11-27T18:30:31Z")
I’ll just note in passing that cold-worked copper was common in the Great Lakes region, _probably_ right up until early contact times ( though it shifted from tool-making to ornamentation over time ): [http://www.fox.uwc.edu/depts/tpleger/oldcopper.html](http://www.fox.uwc.edu/depts/tpleger/oldcopper.html) [http://www.ramtops.co.uk/copper.html](http://www.ramtops.co.uk/copper.html) And the various Pueblo-dwelling Indians in the southwest used sandstone building materials as well as adobe right into historical times: [http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~anth4206/206/module\_02a.htm](http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~anth4206/206/module_02a.htm) - Tamerlane ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/35 "2004-11-27T19:35:10Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > I’ll just note in passing that cold-worked copper was common in the Great Lakes region There’s _some_ evidence for [copper smelting too](http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/copper.htm). Rumors of bog iron working persist as well, but I’ve never seen any conclusive evidence for that. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/36 "2004-11-27T19:38:13Z")
> [@](#): > > **Bosda** : My OP was about the conditions that existed when the settlers arrived in what would become the USA. In the OP of _this_ thread, the quote from you was clearly about what existed [FONT=Impact]prior to the arrival of Columbus[/FONT]. These abilities hundreds of years before the Colonies. The buildings didn’t just fall into ruin. They were intentionally sealed with stone and the evidence of their genius remains. > [@](#): > > **Bosda** : Show me the Native American cities of stone, in North America. > [@](#): > > **Zoe** : (Posed link to photo of intricate masonry of Chaco Canyon.) > [@](#): > > \*\*[Bosda]\*\*Not one single example any of you have given qualifies as refuting my posts. Endlessly repeating the same silly rubbish about Chaco does not make you correct! The photographs of pre-Columbian Chaco Canyon – which you had admitted you had forgotten – are not silly rubbish, Bosda. I am not someone who has trouble admitting when I’m wrong. And even when I’m right, I _can_ walk away from an argument. For whatever reason, you are ridiculing the evidence that I use to refute a specific statement that you made about North American Native Americans prior to 1500. You want to ignore the fact that you said “pre-Columbian.” If you want to continue to be dishonest with yourself about it, I can’t bear to watch it. And I don’t understand why you _need_ to believe something else. I know now that I have made my words as clear as I’m going to, so I bow out. I truly wish you well and I look forward to other discussions with you. Pax ---
**Author:** ![Clark\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c77e96/32.png) [@Clark\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clark_K)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2004, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/37 "2004-11-27T20:15:17Z")
I don’t know how this fits into Bosda’s rather convoluted rules for this discussion, but the Cahokia Mounds are worth a mention. [http://medinfo.wustl.edu/~mckinney/cahokia/mystery\_01.html](http://medinfo.wustl.edu/~mckinney/cahokia/mystery_01.html) [http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=65-0252068211-2](http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=65-0252068211-2) Big city in the middle of North America with extensive trade routes and a complex religion. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455/38 "2004-11-28T00:18:51Z")
> [@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor](#): > > To **Weirddave** --fuck you, you lying whoreson. I never called anybody stupid. Straw man argument. Never? _Never?_ > [@Bosda DiChi of Tricor](#): > > So sorry to hear that you’ve lost your frickin mind. I’ll help you look for it. **Marble-sized and puce in color, yes?** I’ll check in the sofa cushions. > [@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor](#): > > Miller, welcome to the fucking Pit, **dumbass.** > > And piss on you absurdist, PC whining. > > The way you & **a certain twit** in the GD thread go on, I’m thoughly sick of your crap. This makes me more sad, than anything. You used to be on my short list of really interesting, cool posters. That list just got shorter. I don’t know what the fuck your problem is, **Bosda** , but I suggest you log off the computer and go deal with it before you alienate everyone on this board who holds you in any regard. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bosda-say-what/276455.md?page=1)