When the first European settlers arrived in North America, the natives that they found here were in the Stone Age.

They were crafting tools out of stone (think arrowheads) and had not yet discovered the wheel. (Have you ever seen an ancient Native American hand cart?) They had also not yet discovered how to make items out of metal, a skill that had been developed in Europe and Asia several thousand years earlier.

I’m reading Michael Medved’s The 10 Big Lies About America, and the first lie he tackles is the popular notion that this nation was founded on genocide.

In this section, he quotes a professor from Yale:

“[...] Think about those stories you see in the news about some headhunter in Borneo who’s surviving in the jungle in a loincloth and suddenly he sees a plane overhead. He’s never even seen a knife or a shoe or a wheel, for that matter, and all of the sudden he’s looking at a plane. The next thing you know, his tribe is discovered and here come the doctors, the missionaries, the anthropologists. Well, the tribes can’t just disappear into the jungle. They’ve made contact. So whatever happens next, their old life is finished. If they fight the modern world, they lose quickly, or else they try to accommodate to it and end up swallowed by more advanced and powerful culture.

[...] The outcome can go only one of two ways—either sad or horrifying.”

To put it in a geekier perspective, imagine you’re playing CIV. You are exploring the ocean and come across a new continent. All you find there are a couple of size 1 or 2 cities and some wandering barbarians, but a lot of good spaces for cities and some resources you don’t have yet. (Hey cool! Furs! +1 Happiness in all cities!)

Their tech tree seems to consist only of hunting, mysticism, fishing, archery, and pottery. You’re researching railroad, or maybe replacable parts.

You’ve got musketmen. They have warriors.

How many milliseconds does it take before you’ve got a boat load of musketmen on the way to take over that continent?

And after you’ve sacked all of the cities and are producing settlers to fulfil your manifest destiny, do you set aside any of your new land for soverign nations for the prior inhabitants? Uh, no.

The book obviously makes its points better than I could, otherwise I would have written it and Medved would be coming up with CIV analogies. I’ve only finished the one chapter. We’ll see if more posts are warranted as I continue my reading.