Re: Early Amerind assimilation (Was: Re: Romans in the New World?)
HaSpam (thedavid@clark.net)
7 Aug 1996 01:35:44 GMT
Mary Beth Williams (mbwillia@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: I think that you've just proven my point...that relying on oral or
: written history _without_ correlating physical analysis is highly
: problematic.
Physical analysis meaning what? Cranial dimensions? Measurement
of lip width?
: The point was also whether or not mixed-race children
: were *accepted as white* --
You didn't say "proven scientifically to be as good as Caucasians."
Is that what you meant?
: once again, your anecodotal information sheds a great deal of light on
: just how subjective and random this the evidence can be.
Which is exactly MY point, that unless one can prove "pure" races exist
the relative degrees of this or that stock are so much silly trivia.
[...]
: The problem here is that integration is *assumed* rather than *proven*.
More like "taken for granted given the persistence of evidence" -- i.e.
because we can see "mixed-race" people today, because we can show that
such people existed hundreds of years ago (e.g., Sally Hemmings), and
because we can prove that "race-mixing" among Homo Sapiens Sapiens has
always been possible, there's no reason not to assume it -- and go on.
I'm also saying that social integration allows for miscegenation because
the latter demonstrates the former -- if you wouldn't let your daughter
date one your society isn't integrated. The KKK is correct in this: one
cannot separate "integration" from "race-mixing." (And I'm all for both,
by the way.)
As for your essentially socio-economic analysis of pottery styles and
the techniques used to market them, I don't see your point -- unless
you meant to say "See? Racist white people have always been stupid!",
which I'd accept as tautological -- and go on.
Why would we need to draw scientific conclusions about this subject?
Whose agenda would we be serving by doing so, and to what end?
David
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