Dreaming Is Getting Harder

Just an Anthropology grad student doing the thing. Concentration in forensics, but I enjoy the whole anth gamut.

[millennial-review-deactivated20]

[art-thropologist]

“We (or at least I) can be summoned by someone just shouting “Archaeology” or “Anthropology”

— Me

[rotasandribbons]

10 Facts about the Romani Language

November 5th is International Romani Language Day, so here are 10 facts about the Romani language!

1. Roma call their language Romanes, or Romani chib. In the Romani language, “Romanes” can loosely be translated to mean “in a Romani way”, while “Romani chib” means “Romani language”. The word, “chib” comes from the Sanskrit word for tongue. 

2. Romani has over 80 dialects. To date, linguists have documented the existence of over 80 Romani dialects. The diversity of Romani is not at all surprising, considering Romani people have migrated to and settled in numerous countries and even continents. 

3. Romani maintains a fair amount of Indic lexicon.  Romani people originally migrated from the South Asian continent, so our language began, and is still classified as an Indo-Aryan language. Many dialects still retain a great deal of Indic words, many of which are Sanskrit in origin. In fact, simple Romani phrases are mutually intelligible among speakers of Hindi and Punjabi. 

4. There is no official Romani alphabet. Because Romani speakers are widespread geographically, and because the language itself has come in contact with numerous other languages, there is no single alphabet used to write Romani. Romani is written in various Cyrillic alphabets, the Greek alphabet, Gaj’s Latin alphabet, the regular Latin alphabet, Hayots aybuben (Armenian) and even in Devanagari. 

5. Many countries have tried to abolish Romani.  Austria, Hungary, Spain, and various other European nations have, at times, made speaking the Romani language illegal. Under communism, numerous attempts were made to abolish various aspects of Romani culture, which included our language. Even today, many young Roma are strongly discouraged from speaking Romani at home by public institutions, such as schools. This has resulted in the near loss or complete loss of several Romani dialects. 

6. No one knows how many people speak Romani. Lack of data regarding the worldwide number of ethnic Romani people makes it incredibly difficult for linguists to determine just how many people speak Romani. Estimates can vary quite a bit. The most accurate estimate is that roughly two-thirds of all ethnic Roma speak some form of the Romani language. 

7. Not all Romani people can understand each other.  The Romani language is unique in that it has been shaped by, and adopted the grammar and lexicon of various European languages in a relatively short span of time. However, because many Roma settled in south and eastern Europe, their dialects never became influenced by the languages of central and western Europe. Furthermore, numerous Roma have migrated to North and South America, so their dialects have been influenced by English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese in a different way than that of French, Spanish, or English Roma. Because of this, many Western European Roma can understand one another, but cannot understand Eastern European Roma. 

8. Romani contains several “mixed languages”. Para-Romani is the umbrella term that is given to Romani dialects that have adopted the grammar structures of non-Romani languages. For example, Romano-Serbian is a Para-Romani language that primarily uses Romani words, but also uses Serbian grammar. One of the most well-known and best documented Para-Romani languages is Anglo-Romany, which combines Romani lexicon with English grammar. 

9. Romani has two cousins. The Romani language refers to the many dialects spoken by Roma who migrated into Europe, but it is not the only language that belongs to the “Gypsy” diaspora. Lomavren is spoken by the Lom, a people who were initially part of the Romani diaspora, but settled in the Caucasus Mountain region, mostly in Armenia. Domari is the language spoken by the Dom, who left the South Asian continent several hundred years before the Roma. 

10. Romani is gaining steam as a versatile second language. Throughout Europe, schools and universities are starting to teach Romani as a second language, which actively encourages the integration of Europe’s Roma without forcing them to abandon their native tongue. Many Roma are writing and publishing Romani dictionaries, which not only helps non-Roma interested in learning Romani, but also aids ethnic Roma who did not grow up speaking Romani, or who wish to learn a dialect different from their own. While Roma themselves have varying opinions on sharing our language, we are also the ones paving the way for integration strategies that involve preserving Romani.

[everydayanth]

Ohh! 

[studentlifeproblems]

[bringoutyourdeadthings-blog]

So, my husband recently went back to school and so did my friend and boss. I’m hoping they did it for them and that I’m not a trend setter. (Seriously, why would anyone choose school after seeing me lose my goddamn mind on a daily? That would be silly)

So all three of them took an English class. My boss is in her own and the other two are together.

So I hear about assignments and am just like ew, gross. I used to feel like the fact that I got my undergrads online somehow made me less because maybe they weren’t good enough. Used to, until I started learning things about the common core offered at my present school.

Especially the English classes where people don’t learn about outlines or what a lit review is etc. I have seniors in my classes that have never had to write a lot review and I’m just like... then how will you write one for long research papers?

Anyway, the above picture is something that is told to them in both the classes. Personally, there are two things to make sure you do in papers, imo. Don’t write like you’re monotone and you’ll likely find a decent thesis hook for the END of your first paragraph. Nobody expects your first sentence to be a golden polished turd.

The other thing is this: the most important line in your whole paper is not the beginning, it is the end. Your last line of your paper is what readers will remember it by so it should be pretty memorable. A mic drop, if you will.

If the rest of your paper in attenuated (build it like a reverse hour glass), then your last line is the crescendo if that makes sense

[bringoutyourdeadthings-blog]

Today’s horseshit

Some background on why I’m angry:

A week or so ago, one of my professors who is the chair of the department mentioned that they go through training to be able to see, deal with, report etc anxiety and depression in their students. Okay, cool. That’s good.

But I have a student in one of my classes who is an undergrad who is very clearly depressed. He is a senior. He has like three weeks left of this semester and then needs like a single class to be able to graduate. Weeks ago, I called him my son because he is an ex-mormon and much of his  community has disowned him so naturally, I’m like “well, I’m your mom now.” And I have repeatedly talked to him and reached out, came to class on days that I didn’t have to be able to be around if he needed to talk.

Recently, he stopped coming to classes. The first week I was just like, alright. We all need those days and I knew he had gone to visit his parents who live on some kind of farm and one of them is too ill to work it so he went to help. So it makes sense that after going to help and likely being shit on for not doing a mission the whole time he was there, that he would come back and just want to chill. So that was the first week.

We only have classes together on tuesday and thursday so this past tuesday, I saw that he still wasn’t there. So I messaged him asking if he was alright. He replied that it was just hard to do much of anything. I asked if it was because of depression and if there was anything I could do to help. While I did point out that we only have three weeks left, I didn’t want to dwell on it because I didn’t want to come across like “wtf just do the three weeks and chill” because I know that that isn’t very helpful.

What bothers me right now is that WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT TRAINING THAT MY PROFESSORS HAVE?!

There’s been an unnecessary amount of drama in my department lately for grown ass adults who are supposed to be professionals and I swear if it is the reason that they’ve been too distracted to reach out to this kid, I’m going to fucking lose it.

I’m not against helping him and being there. I acknowledge that I’m not a trained person capable of dealing with depression in a clinical setting. However, having been depressed myself, I also know that sometimes having someone there is helpful. But While I’m not against it and I’m actually quite fine doing it, the lack of my professors interjecting and reaching out makes me mad. Like, don’t you even give a shit about your students?

[bringoutyourdeadthings-blog]

This came up recently and I thought it was important

When people talk about anti-vaxxers being harbingers of disease, they are not talking about people who cannot get vaccines because of actual reasons and not fake science.

When people talk about radical vegans like we were on a post here and how they’re colonially Warped blights on society, were not talking about people who have to eat a vegan diet for medical reasons.

The list goes on.

The point is we’re not talking about you. You can be a mainstream anomaly without being part of the the fake science/and morals group. It’s okay. Your issues are valid. And people aren’t counting you in those groups when they shit on them

[wiisagi-maiingan]

Unpopular opinion but even if indigenous communities had 100% access to other food sources, they should still be able to continue with their traditional and sustainable hunting practices.

Indigenous people shouldn’t be expected to abandon their cultures’ traditions just because outsiders have decided that those traditions are “wrong” or that there’s better options.

[richmondflyingsquirrels]

Canada used to charge indigenous families following traditional diets with “child neglect” and adopt out their children to white families across Canada/US/UK or assume custody and force the kids to residential schools. hence the term “sixties scoop.” forcing a change of diet is inherently colonial & a tactic of genocide.

[farm-fag]

so like um. the life of an animal that feels pain and very much does not want to die is worth less than a….. Tradition ? it’s goddamn 2019 and youre saying that even with other more compassionate foods readily available (!!!!!!) groups of people should be able to needlessly kill a being that really, r e a l l y did not need to die. what is and was happening to indigenous families is fucking terrible but carrying on with cruel practices will most definitely not put anything right and just causes more pain. tradition is never a good justification for cruelty and unnecessary violence my dudes.

[wiisagi-maiingan]

Gotta put these tags here because, wow, loving how you put words into my mouth.

“More compassionate foods.” What makes food “compassionate”? Is it the lack of suffering? Because, here’s a spoiler alert for you, there is NO way to produce food that is free of death and suffering. Not a single one. All forms of agriculture involve the deaths of animals, whether it’s in slaughter houses or fields.

Farming is also very well known for exploiting people, particularly poor brown people, underpaying them and putting them into unsafe work conditions so that Susan can have quinoa to go in her “poke bowl.” And that’s not even getting into how all those massive, unnatural fields filled with pesticides are affecting the environment, with many animals losing their natural habitats so that fields can be made and agriculture itself directly causing massive issues like soil erosion and mass insect death. Animals are caught in farming equipment, killed by pesticides, or caught in traps and killed to keep them from eating the crops. The natural habitats of countless creatures, from deer to wolves to the tiniest beetle, are razed to the ground to grow more crops, killing a lot of the animals that live in those areas and displacing the ones that survive.

As far as I’m concerned, the destruction of natural habitats and the permanent alteration of ecosystems is less “compassionate” than indigenous people using unobtrusive methods to catch meat and feed their communities.

And what about transporting that food to indigenous communities in places like the Arctic Circle? Because, let me tell you, that’s not only expensive but it’s also awful for the environment considering how much fuel is needed for those trips and all the energy that goes into keeping the food as fresh and healthy as possible.

Indigenous communities have been surviving off of their hunting and fishing practices for thousands of years, treating local animals respectfully and doing everything possible to ensure that the animals they hunt are in as little pain as possible. And what do they do hunt? Provides for the entire community. A good catch can feed an entire tribe, leather and fur keep the people warm, fat keeps fires going, bones are carved into tools and jewelry and art pieces, etc. Whatever the tribe doesn’t need gets traded for something that they do need. Nothing goes to waste.

Who are you to decide what “needs” to die? Who are you to decide that all indigenous hunting practices are forms of “cruelty and unnecessary violence”? Who are you to decide that the life of random animals is more important than keeping indigenous cultures alive, cultures that colonizers have been spending centuries trying to kill? Who are you to decide that it’s okay for our cultures and traditions to die just to appease your feelings, just to appease the feelings of outsiders who care more about animals than they care about people? Are you indigenous? Are you part of a culture that depends on hunting? Have you ever had to hunt for your family, to put food on the table and clothes on your loved ones’ backs? Have you ever watched as traditions in your culture survived for centuries, maybe even millennia, only to wither away because outsiders decided that they weren’t as important as the life of a fox or rabbit?

Indigenous cultures center around food. Fishing and hunting are some of the most important aspects of our cultures, with so many traditions and beliefs and practices built around them. Taking those hunting and fishing practices away from indigenous people would be like trying to tear down the foundation of a house while leaving the building itself up; it just doesn’t work, and our cultures would end up dying slow, painful deaths and our people would follow them.

[queen-of-dirt]

Radical vegans really need to get it into their head that the conflation of hunting and “cruelty” is not universal and does not originate from some natural truth. Are polar bears cruel for hunting? You are the ones valuing humans as superior to animals when you try to put us ‘above’ natural practices. Imposing your arbitrary morality on indigeonous practices is colonialism and ignores the reciprocal relationship that so many indigenous groups have with their homes.

[bringoutyourdeadthings-blog]

I’d just like to add that many indigenous hunting practices are also regulatory. Conservation is not just taking a couple animals and making them mate, or sanctuaries etc. ecology is a lot more involved than that. By hunting, it helps keep populations down which allows the majority of the animals to thrive without birth rates dropping or food scarcity.

I’ll be the first to admit that animals, in general, tend to be a lot more intelligent than humans when it comes to population control but they also need help through natural predation. Whether you like it or not, humans are predetors to a lot of species. We tend to go overboard in a lot of ways but indigenous hunting isn’t one of them.

[thatsbelievable]

Source: The New York Tattler, July 8, 1909.

[guardianofscrewingup]

1909, wow. I didn’t know the Onion had that long of a publication history. 

[mens-rights-activia]

People always wanna talk about how the obesity epidemic is because “Americans don’t eat well and are lazy” but don’t realize that it’s a symptom of a very very sick system. I mean, here we are in a country where most people spend most of their day at work or in a commute to said work. It greatly cuts down on time to even prepare a proper meal, so eating out is often the solution. And the poorer you are, the less readily available healthy and calorie sufficient foods there are for you to pick from. And with the widespreadness of fast food restaurants and inavailability of other healthier options further limiting your options. Coupled with the fact that unless you live in a city(some cities tbh), you almost literally can’t walk or bike or roll anywhere and have to rely on cars which involuntarily creates a sedentary lifestyle. Coupled with the fact that the free time (during the day cause, we have to put into perspective time of day as well) to exercise or even go for a simple walk is a luxury very few are afforded. Coupled with the inaccess to healthcare for physical and mental treatments, among other factors. But yeah let’s pretend it’s all due to individual choices and not a systematic sickening of people(namely poorer and less educated people because studies show that obesity is more prevalent in poorer and less educated populations). You can’t just prescribe “diet and exercise” while willfully ignoring these contributing factors lmao

And this post isn’t “a list of excuses,” but a very real list of factors that people almost seem to never want to consider in their conversations about this topic lol

[mrsvinchenzo130]

McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King all have salad options. Stop making excuses. Drink water. Nothing is forcing you to drink gobs of sugar everyday. Just switch to water and you’ll lose weight.

I live here. I qualify for food stamps. I don’t live in a city. You’re making nonsense excuses.

[mens-rights-activia]

Me: “this post isn’t a list of excuses”

This absolute goober: “stop making excuses”

Reading comprehension at its finest 👌👌😩😩💦

[bringoutyourdeadthings-blog]

I just want to point out that most of those salad options are more unhealthy than their burgers. Americans on average consume 3x the amount of recommended sodium. And it’s mostly due to the prevalence of fast food coupled with a lack of education on how to even cook food.

Personally, I’ve found that if people can say “just” or “only” in a sentence, it’s most often from a place of privilege. “Just” eat better. Okay, what’s better? Better for who? We’re physiologically variable. The diabetic has to make choices that they can dose for with insulin being a pretty large expenditure for their life. Most of the diabetics I know use expired insulin because of the cost. People without gallbladders have to consider the fat content of their food. As we age we lose the abuility to process milk (not everyone but most) because we no longer produce sufficient lactase for the breakdown of lactose. Nobody talks about it much but rectal and corectal cancers are becoming more prevalent and killing more people each year most likely due to food consumption and the fact that people are being forced to shit their brains out on a daily because they don’t have access to foods rich in fiber.

And water? Yeah totes. You know most native reservations don’t have good clean drinking water? How about flint that is going on like six years of a water crisis that is illegal in every way possible. I live in Idaho. The water here is naturally very hard and is disgusting. I changed my dog to bottles water because I have the ability and her bowl would get deposits around the water line. You can’t just say “just drink water and you’ll lose weight”. Yeah it’ll help unless your water is poisoning you.

And food stamps are great if you live in an area that has things that are good for you. Food deserts are real. Op had a lot of great points and you’re trying to shit on them because you can’t relate to what they’re saying. Good for you but millions of Americans can. I’m glad you qualify for food stamps. Lots of people don’t. There is a growing issue of people being homeless because they can’t afford homes but they can afford everything else for a “normal” life. How do you eat better if you don’t have a stove? Bread at fast food places, even subway, have gobs of sodium and sugar baked right in. We forget that because we can’t taste it.

Look. Perhaps I went off track a bit but my point is that op is right. What’s more is that there is a very clearly defined war on poverty happening in our country and the best way to deal with it is not to deny it. If you can’t relate to what op is talking about, neat but also, is it because you really can’t relate or is it because you’ve been conditioned by our society to think that you deserve what you’re getting? We as humans deserve to have basics available to everyone. Basic good food and drinkable water. And you know what, time too. Time is the most precious currency because you can’t get it back and we live in a system that feels entitled to the majority of ours.

Where’s the excuses if all the “good” and cheap food is masquerading as healthy when it’s all mostly terrible for you? The war on poverty is real and the first step is acknowledging it and not calling all the factors that allow it to happen, excuses.

[medievalthymes]

whoever is running the sparknotes twitter account needs a raise

[maplefiasco]

OMG I want to go back in time and send all of these to english-majoring student me. After I explain twitter. And John Mulaney. And later seasons of Parks & Rec.

[random-anthropology]

Do you have any advice on how to look for jobs, or oppurtunities for anthropologist majors?

Any suggestions followers?

I have a non-anthropology job so I’m afraid that I’m not much help.

[bringoutyourdeadthings-blog]

It really depends on what you want to do. If you want to work in academia, start looking at publishing calls and trying to get adjunct positions to start. 

You could also do public service type stuff like Americorps or the peace corps but it’s a two-year commitment, so keep that in mind. We generally speaking, in class, will lament over how the idea of the anthropologist is regularly romanticized and it is never really what you end up doing.

With that said, again it depends on what your interests are. If you like advertisement or marketing, consider doing business stuff.

If you like helping people, consider looking at NGOs

There’s also a book by Riall Nolan (a couple I think) that looks at doing applied anthropology and tells you more about the non-academic process.

One main highlight from it is that if you’re applying for non-academic work, more often than not it won’t have “anthropology” in the title so you’ll need to find a way and description of your skills that kind of sells you to the interviewer. This is commonly referred to as your elevator talk/speech. It’s quick, to the point, and encompasses your main attributes. 

Hope this helps

[31st]

can i jsut say… isnt it insane that polar bears go underground like imagine just walking along with a shovel and u start digging a hole and a bear is in there

[31st]

THEYRE JUST? THERE…. IN THE SNOW

[angy-sage-deactivated20200315]

I know it‘s supposed to be scary that there is apex predators just potentially sleeping under the surface of the snow like some kind of greek mythology monster but it just makes me laugh bc them living in holes just means polar bears just have little houses and look out of their little windows like:

[bringoutyourdeadthings-blog]

Virus Talk

 Okay, this is going to be a longish post about Measles, Distemper in dogs, Seals being dirty beasts, and RNA- so I’m going to put it below a read more thing.

So, I’ve been doing a lot of research to try and find a thesis that is going to fit my interests since my original plan kind of got fucked up because birbs are unreliable and I need something reliable to write on. So, ANYWAY

I was reading an article that was talking about archaeological dog teeth between dogs and wolves in northern areas. One of the things it talked about was that distemper can lead to linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH). Something else that I was reading about was LEH and tbh, it genuinely pisses me off that we have this blanket of non-specific nutritional defects happening in the womb that causes LEH in humans. Why does it make me so angry, you might wonder? Because I think the concept of having non-specific nutrition is bunk and needs more research. Consider that amelogenesis likely requires a certain combination of nutrition to create enamel... so what is being diverted in utero? And of course, no one can tell me and we just say non-specific nutrition because everyone is different and variable and blah blah blah.

True, they are but also, teeth are made of certain things for everyone, so I’m struggling with the concept of non-specific nutrition.

SO, in this article, it talked about distemper which is an RNA virus that affects plenty of animals. We mostly know it for its effects on dogs but it also affects other animals and one that I’d like to highlight are seals and other pinnipeds.

Similarly, seals have been mentioned for their hand in giving humans tuberculosis in the Americas before colonialism. 

Both of these disease effect the lungs so my thought was along the lines of maybe there is something that is shared between the lungs and teeth nutritionally that needs to be diverted for lung development. However, this doesn’t really make sense because distemper doesn’t happen in utero. But the fever associated with both of these is also often discussed as being a factor in LEH.

So this leads me to my next thought. Measles is also an RNA virus...that affects the lungs. It has also been around since at LEAST the 3rd century if not before.

My problem, currently, is that I can’t find any literature that discusses that seals are the culprits in infecting us with measles too.

For the record, I don’t have a vendetta against seals. I actually think they’re quite cute. 

But all the literature that I have found is pointing to cattle as the harbingers of measles. And I’m not saying they’re not. What I want to point out is that for the longest time we thought that tuberculosis also came from cattle but Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium bovis are not direct mutations of each other and that is one of the factors that made them start looking at other mammals and how they found that seals gave us tuberculosis.

So essentially, I’m looking for input from great minds about this and any information that you might know of that has looked into this. Currently, I haven’t been able to find anything. 

Additionally, if I can find stuff about this, I’m left with even more questions like what is it about the behavioral ecology of seals that make them good incubators for RNA viruses? And is the R0 count the same, more, or less than humans when it comes to these viruses? What about the gestation times? Compared to dogs too? And what other viruses might they be harboring? 

As you can see, I am falling down a rabbit hole that brings bioanthropology and zoology in a swirling mass. Even if you don’t have answers or papers to direct me to, honestly I just wanna talk to people about this stuff lol

[awwcutepets]

Cute pup in a blue sweater

[bringoutyourdeadthings-blog]

Not anth, just cute af

[rhysintherain]

A dog in a seater is totally ANTH! It’s a domestic species that has coevolved with us for the better part of 20,000 years, and then we decided to give it clothes! Lol this is an example of how I can ANTH nerd anything… Also very adorable.

[bringoutyourdeadthings-blog]

Oh I hadn’t thought of that! Odd cuz I regularly make fun of my dog for not being able to talk. I brought that up in seminar the other day and someone blamed inbreeding for the reason and I’m just like yeah, ok that might effect language but not even a decent voice box? Cmon. It seems like it would be evolutionary cost effective imo but alas, I will continue to helicopter my dog whenever she seems “off” instead

[elf-indulgent]

I really like what this physicist, Lamar Glover, has to say in Behind the Curve. 

+ this part from Spiros Michalakis:

[chemicalheart-deactivated202009]

Incredibly good take which is really rare for these topics

[queen-of-dirt]

A lot of people in the notes are saying “yes, except anti-vaxxers because they’re dumb”. But I really think they are the perfect example of what this post is saying. the issue is that most anti-vaxxers aren’t ignoring science, they are either afraid of medical authority figures abusing their power (which has happened in recent history so not that crazy a thought), or (and I think this is a bigger majority than most people think) they are reading the science and making choices you don’t agree with. Vaccines aren’t 100% safe. There are vaccine injuries and deaths, they aren’t just making that up. If you’re a doctor you understand that the benefits far outweigh the risks, but that’s so much harder to see from an individual level.

Anti-vaxxers usually know someone who has had (or believe they had) a rare reaction to vaccines or have had one themselves. That personal anecdote means more to them than statistics because without scientific training that’s just how the human mind works. And then they hear vaccine advocates shouting at them that vaccines are completely safe, but they know that isn’t the whole truth so they feel like something is being hidden from them. Remember that this all started with a published article, withdrawn or not. We need to remember that not everyone is a scientist and we can’t expect them to look at everything like we do. There needs to be better mutual understanding instead of proclaiming everyone who doesn’t agree with us idiots or uneducated.

[bucketofdergs-deactivated202103]

My family, with horror in their eyes: Why do you keep collecting dead things!!?

Me:

[achaioi]

i can’t believe there are people who live in such historically rich places like italy or scotland or greece or paris with old architecture and ruins and museums… the audacity. 

[medievalthymes]

hot take: the only reason people don’t see places like the America’s as a “historically rich place” is because of colonialism erasing the past history and identity of it’s native peoples

[moonlit-maiden]

That, or more likely because the United States of America - as it is today, after colonization - is very young compared to places like Greece and Scotland.

Native American culture is also largely closed to outsiders which sadly makes it harder to learn about their long and rich culture.

[medievalthymes]

i think you’re missing the point here. The America’s (and not just the USA, but canada and south america) has been inhabited by people for thousands of years before colonialism; to say that it is young is again, erasing the native people from their land. there was tons of stuff important to these people before the english and spanish came along and claimed it for their own.

for example, mount rushmore, before they carved a bunch of white guys into the side of it was called the six grandfathers 

and south america has some wonderful old architecture that people seem to forget about such as Machu Picchu

and Central America has the pyramid of the sun in mexico

and in North America there is Cahokia, which i think the blurb below can sum it up better than me

“long before Europeans were aware that the New World even existed, the outskirts of modern day St. Louis were home to a metropolis now known as Cahokia. Built by the ancient Mississippian culture, the 5 square mile site reached its peak sometime around 1100 A.D., when it may have supported a population of 10,000-20,000 people—roughly the same as London. The city included sprawling public plazas and residential neighborhoods, but its most striking feature was its roughly 120 terraced earthen mounds, which often served as tomb complexes or platforms for important buildings. The largest, the so-called “Monks Mound,” still stands some 100 feet tall and was once topped by a temple or palace.”

Now, about the point being made that native american culture is closed off to outsiders, that is true, and rightfully so seeing as we tried to commit genocide against them. but it’s not so much closed off that you cannot learn about it. The closest tribe to my university invited all the students (in which the majority is white) that wanted to go to one of their pow wow’s to learn and be respectful of their culture. they also invited us to do some smudging with them if we wanted to. my university offers many courses on native american cultures that you can take. my town has an expansive canoe museume of the history of the first nations people in this area: “The Canadian Canoe Museum is a unique national heritage centre that explores the canoe’s enduring significance to the peoples of Canada, through an exceptional collection of canoes, kayaks and paddled watercraft (…) The museum’s artifacts range from the great dugouts of the First Nations of the Pacific Northwest to the singular bark canoes of the Beothuk of Newfoundland”. and only about a half an hour away from me is petroglyphs carved in caves from the Algonkian or Iroquian speaking people between 900 and 1100 AD.

to say that the america’s are young is wrong. it is an old land with “historically rich” things all around us, but lots of the time it’s pushed under the rug because colonialism makes us think it is a new nation. if you don’t think you can learn about the america’s history before colonialism, you’re not looking hard enough.  

*Note: I am a white person, so if any native american’s see anything wrong with anything I have said feel free to correct me

[mamapluto]

Mmmyep.

Also, shout out to Chaco Canyon for being one of the coolest (metaphorically lmao) places ever.

[anthropologist-on-the-loose]

Once upon a time I used to think like this too. I wanted to travel the world - Europe, Asia, Africa, anywhere, I didn’t care where, I just wanted to. Except South America. South America was the one place that held no interest for me. I didn’t think it had much in the way of history and culture for me explore.

Then an opportunity literally fell into my lap to spend 3 weeks in Peru. No way in hell was I going to turn it down. But at the time, I thought: of course. I finally get a chance to leave the US, and I only get to go to South America.

Those 3 weeks changed my life. I was exposed to an incredibly rich history and way of life that I didn’t know existed. School and media had taught me that there was little of interest in Latin America before the Europeans arrived, and that afterwards the Natives’ stories had ended. But visiting Peru was part of what put me on the path to questioning the colonialist narratives I’d been told my whole life.