I don’t think it’s related to melting pot thing - new world history is just not that rich compared to european/asian ones due to its recency and (for the most part) lack of conflict
Isn't that sort of related? People in the mixing pot want to find some rich historical legacy to connect to so they can feel distinct from the rest of the pot.
Personally, I've always found it a bit silly -- the folks I most admire in my ancestry are the ones who looked around and said "Yeah current events are shaping up to be part of some nation's rich history, time to get the hell out of dodge." Rich history is largely made of poor people being shoved into the meat grinder of 'glorious' national struggles.
There was a tremendous amount of conflict in the new world, just mostly not between countries (the conquest of the Americas had a death toll of 70-100m people).
Sure but those are relatively few events (though large in magnitude) compared to stuff that was going on in europe/asia. And americas are fucking huge compared to europe and coastal east asia. Turns out when lota people are sandwiched in tight geography, competing for resources for thousands of years a lot of stuff happens!
Counterpoint: New World history is/was just as rich and valuable; it was just systematically erased by one of the largest genocides in history spanning from pole to pole.
Yikes, you always twist someone’s words like that in a discourse? All I said the history is not as rich which makes sense given there was like 10x fewer people here on a huge territory. But also North American tribes didnt even have much written down unlike the South American civilizations
You literally said that by the metric of population, their history was not as rich. I don't see how that's twisting your words at all.
My point is that Native Americans do have just as rich and interesting a history as European countries. It was just largely deliberately erased by European settlers.
It wasn't an attempted zing, I was curious.
So then, the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Americas also would rank as "some of the most deadly acts of mass killing in human history."
> So then, the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Americas also would rank as "some of the most deadly acts of mass killing in human history."
I agree. That kind of strengthens my point - I wouldn’t want to associate my heritage with that sort of thing (unless you’re in Mongolia where GK is still considered a god-like figure by many)
Personally, I've always found it a bit silly -- the folks I most admire in my ancestry are the ones who looked around and said "Yeah current events are shaping up to be part of some nation's rich history, time to get the hell out of dodge." Rich history is largely made of poor people being shoved into the meat grinder of 'glorious' national struggles.