# What if all continents had been in regular communication since ancient times? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 12, 2011, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053 "2011-04-12T03:22:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2011, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/61 "2011-04-17T23:35:19Z")
Well Pinguin. It has been 24 hours since you said that you would provide a quote within hours. I still see nothing. Having some trouble are you? ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/62 "2011-04-18T00:19:31Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > It is controversial! There is no evidence of census at contact. > If a scientists say that only “10%” of people survive to the waves of diseases, the least I expect from it is to prove it. > These studies are as scientific as pyramidology, Ufology or Feng Shui. Why do you care so much about the size of the pre-Columbian population? You’ve already made a dedicated thread about it, and derailed this one. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/63 "2011-04-18T02:14:48Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Imagine that in the Sixth Century B.C., the Greeks win the [Battle of Alalia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_alalia) (Corsica) against the Etruscans and Carthaginians, strengthening their colonizing position in the western Mediterranean – to the point where Greeks are able to get more or less safely through the Pillars of Herakles, and then they can sail up and down the coasts and colonize. Soon Greek colony towns dot the Atlantic coasts of Africa and Spain and Gaul – all in continuous competition with the Carthaginians, breaking out in war periodically – which spurs technological progress. Eventually one nation or the other – doesn’t matter which, the other soon copies it – hits on the essentials of deep-sea sailing technology, and the Age of Exploration is off and running. (And if Rome rises in this timeline, then the Romans will get deep-sea sailing technology too.) BTW, this hypothetical makes it possible for the Classical Greek and Punic civilizations, in something like their familiar forms, to survive the rise and fall of Rome – since they are established in independent coastal colonies all around the globe. They might even resist the pull of Christianity. I had thought of an alternative or additional hypothetical where Greek westward colonization pressure is greater because the Greeks lose the First or the Second Persian War, and there is a diaspora of Greeks fleeing Persian rule. But then we would have to revise the whole history of the Classical and Hellenistic and Roman periods and Christianity and everything; and it’s questionable whether anything like the brilliant apex of Athenian civilization, with its philosophy and art and everything, could have arisen in Persian-occupied Greece, or in a diaspora culture preoccupied with finding new lands and breaking them to the plow. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/64 "2011-04-18T22:44:20Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > Ok, Ok. But I’ll have to find the book in my library. It will take me hours!!! Anyways, I’ll do. Well Pinguin, it has now been 2 days. And you said that you would provide this quote within hours. You are still regularly posting in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=1370217). Well I guess this proves to all that you can not provide the evidence and that you have only pretended to have read the works of Cabeza de Vaca. Quite clearly you have never even seen his works. All you have done is read extracts in some partisan work and swallowed whatever nonsense the author of that work was selling you. ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/65 "2011-04-19T01:05:12Z")
I answered you already in the other thread about Population at contact. I will post one by one my quotations. I will continue until you recognize you are wrong. I hope you read Spanish, because I have the sources. I don’t depend on translators. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/66 "2011-04-19T20:44:21Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > No, I was taught at school that North American natives were farmers. i was tuaght that it was the North American natives who taught the pilgrims how to farm successfully in North America. I was taught that the North American natives were such successful farmers that they were not only able to sustain themselves, they were able to sustain the Pilgrims with their crops of squash and beans and maize throughout the winter. IIRC the Pilgrims were so thankful that their is some minor holiday to celebrate this event. > > That was what I was taught at school. > > And we are still waiting to see this evidence that you promised us. > > And we are still waiting for you to tell us what your point is with all this. It never ceases to amaze me how people convinced that all Indians in North America were hunter-gatherers, when everyone in the US is taught the story of the Pilgrims in Kindergarten. How the Pilgrims were starving until they found a cache of buried maize, which they took. How they found a perfect spot for a settlement, because it was the site of an abandoned Indian village. How the village was abandoned because the entire village except one person (Squanto) had died in an epidemic. How they almost starved until the neighboring Indians taught them how to grow maize. How Squanto helped them out because his entire people were dead, and these new settlers arrived and moved into the site of his old home. How Squanto had been captured as a slave and taken to Europe, only to escape and make it back to America. How the Pilgrims were so grateful that the Indians taught them their methods of agriculture that they held a feast of Thanksgiving to thank them. The story of the Pilgrims is an incredible story because it contains so much of the history of colonization in microcosm. And yet so many people can’t seem to shake the idea that a typical Indian was a buffalo-hunting horse-riding plains Indian from 1880. They know the story of the Pilgrims and the conquest of the Aztecs, but they can’t integrate that information into their ideas about how Indians lived. Of course the reality is that the movie-indian milieu was very short lived, and many of those plains dwellers were new migrants to the plains who had just recently been driven off their ancestral farms and adopted this new way of life by necessity. In 1492, the vast, vast majority of people living in North America were farmers, not hunters. Even if you exclude Mexico. Yes, there are large parts of North America that were unsuitable for farming, like almost all of Canada. And so Canada had very low population density compared to the Mississippi Valley and Eastern Forest. That low population density means very few people lived in Canada, while high populations in farming areas meant lots and lots of people, which means most people were farmers by percentage of population. Note that this doesn’t mean that the vast majority of territory was farming territory, it wasn’t. Just that if you have 9 farmers per square mile in agricultural areas, and 1 hunter per square mile in non-agricultural areas, and the two territories are equal in area, that means 90% of the people in the combined area are farmers. People also have the strange notion that if people hunt, that means they can’t be farmers. Except just about every modern subsistence farmer in the modern world of 2011 will also hunt and fish and gather to supplement their diet. You have a staple crop and you tend that, but at times when the crops don’t need work you head out and collect wild food. Take a look at the classic “Little House” books. Pa grows wheat and tends the horses and cows on their little farms, but as soon as the harvest is in and winter starts, he takes his gun and goes hunting and doesn’t stop until planting time in the spring. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/67 "2011-04-19T21:24:50Z")
The other thing is that what we think of as the Plains Indians weren’t really hunter/gatherers in the traditional sense. They were technologically advanced h/gs, at worst, once they had horses and guns. That technology allowed them to sustain a population density well beyond what leg power and bows and arrows would allow. Not to mention the access to trade goods they had. Usually we think of h/gs with essentially a stone age tool kit. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/68 "2011-04-19T21:53:11Z")
Hunting and gathering does not necessarily mean low population density, primitive and poor in material resources. The natives of the coast of British Columbia, for example, were able to sustain a very high relative population density, level of material affluence and relative civilization by hunting and gathering - admittedly, the riches of the salmon run made this possible. > **[Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Pacific_Northwest_Coast)** > > The Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast are composed of many nations and tribal affiliations, each with distinctive cultural and political identities. They share certain beliefs, traditions and practices, such as the centrality of salmon as a resource and spiritual symbol, and many cultivation and subsistence practices. The term Northwest Coast or North West Coast is used in anthropology to refer to the groups of Indigenous people residing along the coast of what is now called Brit... [http://firstpeoplesofcanada.com/fp\_groups/fp\_nwc3.html](http://firstpeoplesofcanada.com/fp_groups/fp_nwc3.html) ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2011, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/69 "2011-04-20T00:22:25Z")
In all the Americas, fishing was a great source of food. So, populations at the coast were usually larger than in the interior. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2011, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/70 "2011-04-20T14:10:15Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > In all the Americas, fishing was a great source of food. So, populations at the coast were usually larger than in the interior. The pacific northwest was different by orders of magnitude, in that they were able to support quite wealthy chiefdomships, elaborate wooden towns, and reasonably large-scale warfare off of the somewhat unique bounty of the salmon run. Also, a famous tradition of carving and the decorative arts. In fact, they were so wealthy that they invented an entire ceremonial system designed to show status by deliberately destroying or giving away objects of wealth (the “potlatch”). ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2011, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/71 "2011-04-20T14:25:09Z")
And they had a superb art as well. That’s a people I admire, actually. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2011, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/72 "2011-04-20T22:20:09Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > The other thing is that what we think of as the Plains Indians weren’t really hunter/gatherers in the traditional sense. They were technologically advanced h/gs, at worst, once they had horses and guns. That technology allowed them to sustain a population density well beyond what leg power and bows and arrows would allow. Not to mention the access to trade goods they had. Usually we think of h/gs with essentially a stone age tool kit. Well, to be fair about the technology was borrowed, or traded-for anyway. They couldn’t sustain that form of technology on their own. ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2011, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/73 "2011-04-23T02:50:28Z")
Actually, there was some influx of technology from Mexico and perhaps in an indirect way from Florida. Cahokia, for instance, had metalworking, which originated in Mexico. Maize also came from there in some earlier time. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/74 "2011-04-24T18:08:28Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > 1. We know of the existence of even larger fortified city in the US. The largest is estimated at between 2, 000 and 10, 00 people and evidence suggests there was one of these every 40 kilometres along most of the length of the Mississippi. That is not a low population density. And once again, in the East, we have numerous explorer accounts of dense Indian villages and continuous farmland. IN contrast we have no evidence at all of _low_ pre-Columbian population densities over the majority of the US. This corroborates the Lenape legend that their ancestors had had to fight their way to the East Coast. Especially crossing the Mississippi River, where their way was barred by a giant people called Talligewi\* who built stone fortresses. Brownsville, Pennsylvania was one such site, at a strategic crossing on the Monongahela River. The Lenape people called the place Red Stone because the ancient building was made of red sandstone. To people who don’t build in stone, the presence of large stone constructions leads them to posit giants as the builders. Witness the Giants’ Dance (Stonehenge), Ġgantija (Neolithic megalith temples; literally ‘of the giants’) in Malta, and the so-called [Cyclopean](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclopean_masonry) stonework in Mycenaean fortifications. “The term comes from the belief by classical Greeks that only the mythical Cyclopes had the strength to move the enormous boulders that made up the walls of Mycenae and Tiryns. Pliny’s Natural History reported the tradition attributed to Aristotle, that the Cyclopes were the inventors of masonry towers, giving rise to the designation Cyclopean.” Archeologically, the eastward migration of ancient Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples, referenced in the above-mentioned Lenape legends, fits with the Adena culture. These legends first became known to white people as a text called the _Walam Olum_, which purported to be an ancient Lenape document. It has since been proven that the published recension is a forgery by a white guy. However, Lenape people who have read it says it contains authentic Lenape legendary material and language, as though a substrate of original material had been subjected to editorial errors, additions, and omissions.[sup][cite](http://128.192.54.192/bobk/walamc.html)[/sup] > [@a scholar working with a linguist of the Lenape tribe commenting on the textual history of the Walam Olum](#): > > I therefore communicated my doubts to my friend, the distinguished linguist, Mr. Horatio Hale, and asked him to state them to the Rev. Albert Anthony, a well educated native Delaware, equally conversant with his own tongue and with English. Mr. Anthony considered the subject fully, and concluded by expressing the positive opinion that the text as given was a genuine oral composition of a Delaware Indian. In many lines the etymology and syntax are correct, in others there are grammatical defects, which consist chiefly in the omission of terminal inflections. > > The suggestion he offered to explain these defects is extremely natural. The person who wrote down this oral explanation of the signs, or, to speak more accurately, these chants which the signs were intended to keep in memory, was imperfectly acquainted with the native tongue, and did not always catch terminal sounds. The speaker also may have used here and there parts of that clipped language, or “white man’s Indian,” which I have before referred to as serving for the trading tongue between the two races. My conclusion is: Lenape legend has preserved a folk memory of the migrations of ancient Algonquian peoples meeting giants, so-called, who built the series of forts along the Mississippi. The white guy who published his recension of the legends without acknowledging his own rewriting of them created a work similar to Lönnrot’s processing of folk material to make the Kalevala, and Longfellow’s reworking of Ojibwe legends via Schoolcraft. Except that Rafinesque is now discredited because he misrepresented the text he came up with. \*As an ancient legendary people lost to history, the Talligewi have been seized on by any number of unfounded theories of who they were. I don’t believe that anyone really knows who they were, so I’m skeptical of all Talligewi identifications. But where the legends seem to place them corresponds with the line of fortifications you mentioned. The legends aren’t always clear to me as to whether they’re talking about the Mississippi or the Ohio. The Red Stone fort at Brownsville is in the upper Ohio river system. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/75 "2011-04-24T19:06:06Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > OK. Maybe something is missed in translation. I will find some quotes for you by Cabeza de Vaca, who wrote in my mother tongue. 😕 What’s that? Your mother writes on the head of a cow with her tongue? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/76 "2011-04-24T19:36:14Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > This corroborates the Lenape legend that their ancestors had had to fight their way to the East Coast. Especially crossing the Mississippi River, where their way was barred by a giant people called Talligewi\* who built stone fortresses. Brownsville, Pennsylvania was one such site, at a strategic crossing on the Monongahela River. The Lenape people called the place Red Stone because the ancient building was made of red sandstone. > > To people who don’t build in stone, the presence of large stone constructions leads them to posit giants as the builders. Witness the Giants’ Dance (Stonehenge), Ġgantija (Neolithic megalith temples; literally ‘of the giants’) in Malta, and the so-called [Cyclopean](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclopean_masonry) stonework in Mycenaean fortifications. “The term comes from the belief by classical Greeks that only the mythical Cyclopes had the strength to move the enormous boulders that made up the walls of Mycenae and Tiryns. Pliny’s Natural History reported the tradition attributed to Aristotle, that the Cyclopes were the inventors of masonry towers, giving rise to the designation Cyclopean.” Just imagine if the Lenape had encountered Classical-Greek walled cities . . . ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/77 "2011-04-24T20:59:43Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > Cahokia, for instance, had metalworking, which originated in Mexico. Cite? AFAIK, Mississipian metalworking was confined to native copper and had fuck-all to do with Mexican techniques. ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/78 "2011-04-24T22:39:08Z")
Show your evidence. I am interested. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/79 "2011-04-24T23:23:46Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > The diseases Greeks of Socrates’ day carried would have been deadly to Native Americans, but **less** deadly to them than the deseases Spaniards of Columbus’ day carried. > [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Europe was indeed a crossroads of disease, but there’s nothing new in _that_. Plague was an off-and-on problem since Roman times (at least), and its effect on populations over that time was pretty constant. The Black Plague was merely a particularly nasty edition in an old book - but one which the Europeans weren’t adjusted to at that time. It, and previous plagues, would have roughly the same effect on completely new populations. Evolution here has an effect in its ability to penetrate the resistance of a specific population. Barring some amazing coincidence, the diseases of the +15th century would be no more effective against the AmerIndians than thos of the -5th. Ignoring **pinguin** ’s heartfelt but implausible hijack about disease, I agree with **smiling bandit** – and I submit that the reason the later diseases appear more terrible to **BrainGlutton** is the increased _population_ (and increased population _density_) at the point the later epidemics occurred. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053/80 "2011-04-25T01:43:16Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Just imagine if the Lenape had encountered Classical-Greek walled cities . . . No, really. **Please** imagine if the Lenape had encountered Classical-Greek walled cities. That’s the kinda thing this thread is **about,** dammit! :mad: Can we please take all of **pinguin’s** revisionist historical theories as stated, under advisement, and not worthy of further discussion from this point? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-continents-had-been-in-regular-communication-since-ancient-times/578053.md?page=5)