Comments
MGD109 t1_iujxi4o wrote
>sharing their common love for Western values of civility, morality, freedom, and harmony.
This was the 16th century. People were quite honest they were here for land, slaves and gold in those days. It was exactly the same thing they had been doing at home for the last 1000 years.
They didn't try to find moral justifications until the 18th century.
Zolome1977 t1_iuk0zq9 wrote
Sarcasm flew right over your head
MGD109 t1_iuk1di2 wrote
Oh no, I know what there going for.
I'm just saying its an anachronism mockery. The Spanish Conquistadors were pretty open about the fact they were doing this for no higher purpose than they wanted to get rich, quite a lot of them stated off quite poor after all.
Cortez was basically declared a traitor by the Spanish Crown, refused orders to return home, attacked the army that was sent to bring him home in chains, and then bribed the officials with all the gold he'd stolen.
[deleted] t1_iuk2ekj wrote
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igankcheetos t1_iuj3tzm wrote
Probably matchlock musket ball judging by the date.
WirelessBCupSupport t1_iuj7grj wrote
Is that like an Arquebus, a forerunner to the flintlock?
40mm_of_freedom t1_iujd4ys wrote
An arquebus is a type of matchlock.
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LeahBrahms t1_iujgxlf wrote
Mayan population estimate now up to 20 million lived in that area. Wow
Fox_Kurama t1_iuk9d6a wrote
More of them died to European diseases than weapons, in all likelihood too.
[deleted] t1_iujrn6v wrote
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EmbarrassedHelp t1_iuk2n0n wrote
Whenever I hear about ancient Mayans, I can't help but think of their absolutely horrific culture of human sacrifice:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Maya_culture
They liked to horrifically kill children:
> He said children were often thrown alive to their watery graves to please the Mayan rain god Chaac. Some of the children were ritually skinned or dismembered before being offered to the gods, he said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-sacrifice-idUSWRI32680820080123
Edit: Remove Aztec rituals that I confused for Mayan ones.
MGD109 t1_iuk3j2k wrote
Yeah the Mayan's could be utterly brutal. But they also had a wealthy culture that made many strides in their own right.
Really their aren't many civilisations that weren't cruel in someway at this point in history. The one's that weren't, generally get crushed and conquered by the one's that are.
At the very least the Mayan's were utterly loveable compared to what their neighbours the Aztec's got up on that front.
Salty_Drummer2687 t1_iuk97zr wrote
I think skinning children alive automatically disqualifies them from being utterly lovable. I can't think of many worse ways to die than being skinned alive.
MGD109 t1_iukc19e wrote
The Aztec's once sacrificed over 80,000 people in the span of four days, to consecrate their pyramid.
They're methods of doing so ranged from ripping people's hearts out, to impaling them with arrows like a human pincushion deliberately non fatally so they would bleed out, to repeatedly dragging and throwing them onto a pyre.
Yeah they were worse than the Mayan's on that front.
JesusWaffles47 t1_iuka7nb wrote
Aztecs were utterly hated by their neighbors, i remember
DJ_Slex t1_iujhfcf wrote
Wonder what those “Spanish Bullets” did to the people of this city
Puzzleheaded-Ad-2746 t1_iujhty7 wrote
You don’t really have to wonder mate.
DJ_Slex t1_iujhyhu wrote
Oh I know, it’s kinda sad the article didn’t seem to care to mention why those bullets were there.
This is an archeological site of a genocide. I hope they’re respecting it as such
juliohernanz t1_iujkal9 wrote
At least it's clear that Mayas weren't exterminated like other natives further north. There are around five million today.
MGD109 t1_iujq4c0 wrote
Just to be clear is this really genocide? I mean the Spanish were ruthless conquers, but they weren't trying to kill the Mayan's they wanted to conquer and enslave them.
Did they really kill all Mayan's in Guatemala?
Capt_morgan72 t1_iujvz8f wrote
So. Genocide dosent have to be a 100% annihilation of a race, ethnicity, religious, or national group. And it dosent have to only be done by killing.
While they can be and we do have examples of complete and total genocide like the Taíno people of the Caribbean or the Jōmon people of japan.
Another very common form of genocide can come from culturally killing a people. Like what happened in the USA and Canada. And is also happening right now in Ukraine. This is accomplished by kidnapping and indoctrination of a groups young people until they no longer remember or At least no longer practice the culture of their ancestors.
And I’d argue that the Mayan way of life no longer exist. Making this not only genocide. But a successful one.
MGD109 t1_iujwtku wrote
Ah you mean cultural erasure, that sort of genocide. Yeah that's understandable, its certainly true the Spanish destroyed the native culture (or at least most of it, parts were adopted and continued but it was no longer dominant).
I understand genocide doesn't have to be 100% annihilation, but it does generally have to have the intent. Simply conquering and killing a lot of people doesn't meet the criteria of genocide.
>This is accomplished by kidnapping and indoctrination of a groups young people until they no longer remember or At least no longer practice the culture of their ancestors.
That's very true. But did the Spanish ever actually do that? They had forcible conversions certainly, and they had a lot of people who switched to get on with the new boss. But did they ever flat out take people's children to indoctrinate them into being raised to be Spanish?
Not saying they didn't you understand, but I've just never heard that bit of the colonisation.
>And I’d argue that the Mayan way of life no longer exist. Making this not only genocide. But a successful one.
I suppose that depends on how you define the "way of life", I mean on a day to day level the life of most Mayan people didn't change that much they just had to shift religions and had a new bunch who they had to pay taxes to.
Their are still over 9 million Mayan people living through Central America.
[deleted] t1_iuk0uce wrote
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MGD109 t1_iuk1uon wrote
>but I wonder if there were any guidelines the crown had given to Columbus and his men following first contact?
Well in the West Indies were he was made governor Columbus originally planned to sell the native's as slaves after discovering island wasn't as rich in gold as he hoped it would be. However, the monarch's of Spain decided that the natives were now their citizens and forbade it.
He then more or less ignored them, and carried on acting like a tyrant to the natives and the colonists, until he was forcibly dragged back to Spain and stripped of all his titles.
Really it probably wouldn't have mattered what they told him, it took a very long time for information to get to anyone with the authority to outrank him on those voyages, and most of the information sent back came from him.
[deleted] t1_iuk2jc1 wrote
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MGD109 t1_iuk39rw wrote
Ah right with you sorry.
Well at the time, I'm pretty sure the Spanish throne did have several strong trade routes with kingdoms as far as Central Africa and Greece, so yeah I imagine they're were some thoughts given to diplomacy with far off distant cultures.
I think the issue was in part they also already expected the powers to recognise their power, and didn't consider encountering a new world that had absolutely no idea they even existed.
[deleted] t1_iuk3pkc wrote
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MGD109 t1_iuk49kd wrote
>I do know they had to practice a fair deal of diplomacy there because they weren’t able to go into the interior w/o dying of disease.
Oh it goes back before the colonisation. Spain's history has been connected to the African Kingdom's back to Carthage. For a long period the Moors ruled Spain. When the Spanish took it back, they kept a large number of their trade routes running.
> I’m guessing one of the first things they did to the Natives was turn them into Christians.
Well somewhat. A lot of the conquistadors were honestly just in it for the money. A lot of natives did convert to the new religion, some by force, some by choice, some just to curry favour.
They likewise were careful to preserve elements of the priest hierarchy in areas they conquered, so they would convert the populace more easily. And expanded a large number of missionaries.
But those mostly came later, at the start a lot of it was just conquest and plunder.
OpietMushroom t1_iuje1dr wrote
So the ending of the movie "Apocalypto" is suddenly plausible?
[deleted] t1_iujz5g8 wrote
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SenHelpPls t1_iujlyqg wrote
Makes you wonder how much more diversity we might have if we weren’t natural colonisers
moatmaster t1_iuju8b2 wrote
Was never going to be too diverse because of disease.
MGD109 t1_iujq0oq wrote
Eh its debatable. We might be a lot less diverse cause populations wouldn't migrate in such large numbers.
SenHelpPls t1_iujumvi wrote
I don’t mean locally diverse but around the world. Just imagine the amount of people’s wiped out by colonisers. The most known would be the aztecs and the Incas but there are countless other civilisations and cultures crossed from the history books
MGD109 t1_iujway6 wrote
Ah I'm with you. Ah yes their are a lot of civilisations it would be fascinating to know more about. But realistically without any colonisation, a number of them would have collapsed all on their own.
SenHelpPls t1_iuk0fvr wrote
Yeah unfortunately that seems to be the way of life. You can only get so big before you implode
MGD109 t1_iuk0ojv wrote
Yeah exactly. Plus not every area has the same wealth of resources. And often their just wasn't enough for everyone.
And then you take into seasonal shifts, leading to migrations into account, really your only option is invade someone else or starve to death.
larrthemarr t1_iujqcy6 wrote
They were probably celebratory shots as the Spaniards and Mayans celebrated together around bonfire, sharing their common love for Western values of civility, morality, freedom, and harmony.