Africa, the Americas and most other places that got colonized? They were inhabited by Stone Age savages right up until they met European explorers.
One of the things I read recently was attributed to something like a sociologist who delved into native American tribal names and 'discovered' that each tribe contacted by one of the newly arrived Europeans was asked, "what is the name of that tribe on the other side of the river," or words to that effect and the answer was always carefully recorded so that people would know the correct and proper name for the next tribe. Every time and with every tribe the 'name' correlated to the word, 'enemy' in the tongue of the tribe that was asked. And that is pretty much how all European contacts with the Stone Age worked out.
I miss Buck. He would have had words to say about that sentence. It was a doozy.
5 comments:
Exile in Portales was one of my favorites. We had a great bunch of readers and commenters... dc, Barco Sin Vela II
In Terry Pratchett's books, the name of the mountain was translated variously as 'Your finger you fool' or 'Who is this fool who does not know what a mountain is'.
RE: Buck. Almost 9 years...
ART
Without Britan colonizing India, India would be just like Afghanistan/ Pakistan.....
I brought up the Stone Age people idea during a discussion with one of my colleagues 30 years ago when he was going on about how the land was "stolen" from the Indigenous Peoples. Then I brought up the little fact of history that when a technologically advanced and/or a more robust civilization met one which was less advanced technologically and/or was weaker--the weaker one tended to disappear. He got all incensed until I pointed out that Britain was once populated by the Picts--until the Angles and Saxons (invaders from Germany) decided to settle there--now native Britons are referred to as Anglo-Saxons not "Pictish" (like "Scottish" or "Irish"). Here's another little fact: tribal names (at least in Canada)-- translate to "the People" in English: Dene=The People; Inuit=The People. Thus, one can make an educated guess that when the first Europeans heard the names of the Cree, Algonquin, Mohawk, etc--they all probably meant "The People"--because the ones outside the tribe weren't "people", which allowed you to do all sorts of nasty things to them.
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