Towards an exploration of the mind of a conquered continent. Sacred plants and Amerindian epistemology
[quote]The conquest of the Americas by the empires of Europe resulted in the nearly total loss of the cultural, technical and intellectual achievements of one third of the population of the world of that time. The Amerindian crops adopted by the European conquerors spread around the world: corn, potatoes, manioc, tomatoes, pepper, calabash, certain beans, as well as stimulants such as cacao, coca and tobacco. Yet the advanced technical capabilities of many Amerindian societies in the fields of astronomy, engineering, medicinal plants, ceramics, weaving, basketry, and – as is becoming increasingly evident -- the sophisticated and efficient use of the land, did not have any significant impact on the home countries of the conquerors.
Apart from the academic work of relatively small círcles of historians, ethnologists, anthropologists and the obscure accounts of travelers, there was no European acknowledgment of a single philosophical idea from the people of the Americas prior to the recently awakened interest in Amerindian shamanism.[1] There was no technical or philosophical/theological exchange between the peoples of the two continents. Europeans viewed the Amerindian population as objects of conversion, assimilation, subjugation or annihilation.
The sacred books of the Maya were burned in 1562. The quipus of the Andes -- a work of the Devil according to sixteenth century friars – were destroyed by a decree in 1583[2]. The sacred groves, temples and places of worship of the Amerindians were desecrated. Revered works of art were melted down for the price of their gold. The repository of Amerindian traditions, the bearers of wisdom who “remembered” and knew “how to speak”, were hunted and killed. Their knowledge was treated as the work of Satan, stíll today a powérful archetypical figure in both the Christian and Islamic worlds.
It was the obliteration of the wonderings about the nature of reality of a whole continent with the transplantation into the Americas of an Indo-European syndrome that, according to Gimbutas (1989), had already destroyed the spíritual manifestations of European Neolithic cultures, the “Old Europe”, largely associated with the natural environment. At the time of the arrival of the European conquerors, the “Old World” for a long time had been engulfed in ideological religious wars in which deviation from pronounced dogmas could be punished with death.[3]
All of this went hand in hand with deforestation, a development that in the West goes back to Greco-Roman times, if not even further back in time to the fear of forests: it can be traced to the Mesopotamian myth of Gilgámesh, the first hero in world literature, who embarked on a quest to kill Humbaba, the demon of the forest, who líved in the mountainside cedar groves harvested to the last by the ancient Sumerians (Harrison 1992).[4]
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[quote]The conquest of the Americas by the empires of Europe resulted in the nearly total loss of the cultural, technical and intellectual achievements of one third of the population of the world of that time. The Amerindian crops adopted by the European conquerors spread around the world: corn, potatoes, manioc, tomatoes, pepper, calabash, certain beans, as well as stimulants such as cacao, coca and tobacco. Yet the advanced technical capabilities of many Amerindian societies in the fields of astronomy, engineering, medicinal plants, ceramics, weaving, basketry, and – as is becoming increasingly evident -- the sophisticated and efficient use of the land, did not have any significant impact on the home countries of the conquerors.
Apart from the academic work of relatively small círcles of historians, ethnologists, anthropologists and the obscure accounts of travelers, there was no European acknowledgment of a single philosophical idea from the people of the Americas prior to the recently awakened interest in Amerindian shamanism.[1] There was no technical or philosophical/theological exchange between the peoples of the two continents. Europeans viewed the Amerindian population as objects of conversion, assimilation, subjugation or annihilation.
The sacred books of the Maya were burned in 1562. The quipus of the Andes -- a work of the Devil according to sixteenth century friars – were destroyed by a decree in 1583[2]. The sacred groves, temples and places of worship of the Amerindians were desecrated. Revered works of art were melted down for the price of their gold. The repository of Amerindian traditions, the bearers of wisdom who “remembered” and knew “how to speak”, were hunted and killed. Their knowledge was treated as the work of Satan, stíll today a powérful archetypical figure in both the Christian and Islamic worlds.
It was the obliteration of the wonderings about the nature of reality of a whole continent with the transplantation into the Americas of an Indo-European syndrome that, according to Gimbutas (1989), had already destroyed the spíritual manifestations of European Neolithic cultures, the “Old Europe”, largely associated with the natural environment. At the time of the arrival of the European conquerors, the “Old World” for a long time had been engulfed in ideological religious wars in which deviation from pronounced dogmas could be punished with death.[3]
All of this went hand in hand with deforestation, a development that in the West goes back to Greco-Roman times, if not even further back in time to the fear of forests: it can be traced to the Mesopotamian myth of Gilgámesh, the first hero in world literature, who embarked on a quest to kill Humbaba, the demon of the forest, who líved in the mountainside cedar groves harvested to the last by the ancient Sumerians (Harrison 1992).[4]
Read more @ http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/LunaLE2.php
