What do you know about the various histories in these often overlooked continents prior to let's say 1450 A.D., roughly the advent of the Age of Exploration?
That's a pretty huge subject pitfighter! You're talking about three vast continents plus many islands - at least half of the earth's landmass I'd guess - with a wide variety of civilisations and cultures. Where would you begin?
As far as the Americas are concerned the eras that you're looking at are generally referred to as the Pre-Columbian Period. There were impressive and sophisticated civilizations established in many parts of the Americas prior to the Europeans arriving. Not the be all end all... but a decent general outline and good starting point would be here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/World_History/Precolumbian_History_of_the_Americas http://www.answers.com/topic/precolumbian-mexico-and-central-america Always impressive to me were the massive stone heads of created by the Olmec peoples... I'd been to see them as a young kid and then many times since. Also if you're interested were the agricultural methods devised by many of the peoples of the Pre-Columbian Americas. Food production is always going to be a key factor in studying the expansion and decline of Pre-Columbian peoples. Many of the traditions of the Pre-Columbian peoples still exist in one form or another today. As an example during the Posadas as a young kid we often drank a Mexican style hot chocolate (either spiced with red chili or with strong black pepper) which is directly descended from Aztec culture - more often than not it is not served sweet.. but rather bitter and spicy... made with water and not milk... and we would get champurrado which is heaven itself. The Spaniards adopted this from Pre-Columbian Aztecs and brought it to the Philippines where the atole was switched out for rice and it became somewhat of a meal instead of a beverage. Many of the food traditions that the Spanish brought to the Philippines survived very well because the Philippines overall is very similar to the Yucatan peninsula in what is today Mexico - where the Philippines were administered from while under Spanish colonization. Much of the diet that I grew up with and still eat today is based on what in the Southwestern United States is known as The Trinity ... corns beans and squash. Which is in every way a Pre-Columbian diet and one that many Native American tribes in the Southwest and many parts of North America subsisted on.
As Jonno said, your talking about a massive amount of land and cultures here. For the most part I dont really have a detailed knowledge of the cultures, but their are a few areas I like such as Central America, Peru and Mali (I presume you are a talking sub saharan Africa, otherwise most of the African cultures on the Mediteranian are interesting). With those areas I have a fair amount of knowledge but beyond that it hasnt really been of interest.
That is very true. But nonetheless these vast continents are often overlooked and honestly there maybe far less info, or info readily available, on these areas collectively than say smaller regions like Europe or China. Just be glad I didn't ask about Australia, the Pacific Islands and Siberia too.
There are so many cultures to talk about in the Americas alone that the question quickly slides into overload for me. But then, I was an archealogist. There are plenty of good books that discuss the histories of many of the cultures of North and South America, which were vastly diverse, in some cases very advanced and very interesting. Your question is so broad as to become meaningless.
As a recovering historian, I'm surprised Wry didn't beat me to this point. "History" is done using mainly written records, archaeology using material artifacts. A few pre-1492 cultures in the the Americas had writing systems, but they were used only for a few specialized purposes. Most native cultures did not have writing at all, and most of the records that did exist were deliberately destroyed by early European conquerors. Therefore, it would be more correct to talk about our knowledge of the pre-1492 past in the W hemisphere as "prehistory." This might sound a little pedantic at first blush, but it's important. We can't know the same kinds of things about, say, the precontact Iroquois or the golden age of the Mayans as we can know about, for example, ancient Rome, let alone medieval Europe. Archaeology can often generate better information than history about broad socioeconomic patterns, art, technology, military methods, and social stratification. It doesn't tell us much about the details of, for example, political history. If there was a Julius Cassar or Wat Tyler or Zoroaster or Emma Goldman of the Mayans, we will never know. We know a lot about Aztec methods of human sacrifice, but most of our "knowledge" of their actual religious beliefs is second hand at best, urban legend at worst.
The ambiguity is my own, Snorri- When I, as a former arch, discuss history I tend to bypass historical studies and aim in at the archeaoligical ones for precisely the reasons you mentioned. They are just more acurate and have fewer prejudices then history, though perhaps you have to be more careful about weeding it out as the prejudices tend to be more hidden.
GREAT POINT! NOW I DEFINATELY KNOW MORE ABOUT ALL 3 CONTINENTS! I know that asking for any scrap of history for the Americas or Africa is a wide and open question. It was intended to be. My reasons for asking the question is because I seem to know a li'l bit more about France than say the Ashanti kingdom. I was trying to initiate some sort of exchange of info. on a variety of peoples who are understudied IMO. So let's skip the semantics of the question on this topic please
It's not semantics, it's a valid point. You really do need to be more specific - like the example you used there of the Ashanti kingdom, for instance.
I don't think you get it, with all due respect. I purposely made the topic broad. That may seem unfocused but truthfully these regions are discussed very little. I would've been satisfied with any discussion about anything relating to the cultures and histories of peoples in the regions. If a particular sub-topic got enough responses I would've asked an administrator to split it. So pardon me but I'm still rather annoyed that this thread is stuck on defining what to talk about. :bang:
Don't get huffy at us because you asked a poor question. The topic is too broad to discuss without producing a doctoral thesis- which frankly I haven't time to do. If you want to do research, fine and dandy- there are plenty of books. Go to your local library and start. Look up Clovis, Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Mississipian culture, Mound builders. Look up Hopi, Zuni, and Navajo. Look up Plains Culture, the cultures of the Northwest- one of the few sedentary hunter gatherer societies that existed, Inuit culture. Then you have the contact periods- several infact. Spainish in Texas, Florida, and California and the southwest. France in Texas and Louisianna and the Canadian northeast. Viking in the northeast. Portuguese off the shores of Nova Scotia. And the English in the northeast and southeast. After that you have the colonial period which has some great historical archeaology going on. And this is just north America, ignoring Mexico and Central America and completely leaving out South America. Now do you have an idea of how broad the topic is? Even archeaologists, historians and anthropologists only pick specific areas to study- I was interested in the Spanish contact period of Texas. I suggest you pick a topic and go do some reading. And why would you go to a website for information like this anyway when there are a wealth of books on the subject by people with far more credentials then I will ever have in the subject?
I think I justified why I started this topic broadly. It was meant to be an open topic. Producing a doctoral thesis would've narrowed the topic subject by the way. I'm not looking for expert research here just some intetersting trivia. I can do the research by myself. Just wanted to see what snippeds of interesting things ppl on this site new about anything. (Again the topic was meant to be broad) If no one wants to discuss African or American cultures and wants to bicker over how I framed the question than fine kill the topic. I'm learning what topics to avoid here. So if you don't like it kill it. I hate to repeat it but these region are overlooked. So the reason I made the topic broad was to start some discussions about these cultures that I don't hear that much about. If you wanna dispute that just look at our culture topics they're Asian countries I've seen a forum for Western fighting but not Zulu fighting. I'm not suggesting we start forums on every culture or region. In fact that's why I started the forum. So if that's not a good enough reason to start a discussion lock this thread and I'll just comment on the discussions ppl favor instead of trying to talk about something I would've thought would've been somewhat refreshing.
Arguing aside. Lemme Just thank Slip for the contribution. It was interesting. Maybe I shoulda started a food thread.
You've repeated it but I don't think you've qualified it yet. Why do you say these regions are overlooked?
While I see your point I think it depends on your historical source too. If you have a historical study based on contemporary accounts it's a minefiled, but what about for example, tax records? They don't come much drier than that! While not exactly straight history books two of my faves spring to mind to illustrate: 'The Daughter of Time' (Josephine Tey) and 'The History of Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape' (Oliver Rackham). Tey's is fiction but with research that would put most history books to shame, and I suspect she only wrote it as fiction as she didn't feel comfortable claiming any historical expertise in a time of academic snobbishness (it was written in 1928, and she was primarily a thriller writer so she gave the story to her detective character to pick through - about Richard III - fascinating and thrilling). It is mostly based on tax records. Rackham's is history, but he rejects most conventional historical accounts and chooses to go for survey data (both contemporary and modern scientific - so I suppose the pollen records aren't all that dissimilar to actually using archaeological evidence) and tax records... again, it's amazing just what can be deduced with no political slant about everyday life and relationships between different groups of people and the land. You forgot Africa! Lazy bugger! Maybe you should! Seriously. I've learned a hell of a lot about Anglo-Saxon culture from reading their recipes. Plus books like 'The Body in the Bog' which gives an account of the forensic analysis of Pete Marsh's stomach contents among other things - giving historians undeniably valuable insight into who this prehistoric Celtic guy may have been. You are what you eat! If you want to research further check out Slip's recommnedations, but I am inclined to agree with Dolphin that it's too huge a subject to go into too much here (unless you're going to be majoring in an aspect of it). Sounds interesting - any chance of a recipe?
