[lurk2]

There was a lot of insistence that the indigenous method was better, but no actual evidence that it was, nor even arguments as to why it would be (besides some vague allusions to it being “more flexible”).

A lot of these noble savage narratives emerge from Latin American studies (history, archaeology, literature, etc.), particularly among Mexican and American-educated academics. There is truth to the idea that the complexity of indigenous systems is unappreciated by the general public, but there’s always this underlying fetishization of a pseudo-magical indigenous “way of knowing” contrasted with the (historically far-better performing) European scientific method. Indigenous cultures are redeemed from European military conquests by insisting that the European way of knowing is myopic and selfish (being focused on profit over sustainability, the individual over the community, etc.) in contrast to the indigenous way of knowing, which is holistic and communitarian.

The author does have publications related to these irrigation systems, though, so maybe she has a valid point to make and the article just didn’t land for me.

[Spooky23]

If you study this stuff in the americas it’s depressing as the Spanish in particular slaughtered people and culture so completely and unimpeded for so long. The evil and barbarism of this colonial episode is difficult to fathom. The 20th century horror show of slaughter ran in relatively short episodes… this imperial era ran for hundreds of years.

Because you’re left with archeological evidence, whose interpretation is always very conservative, and limited oral tradition, it’s easy to veer into legend, because honestly that’s that who have to work with.

[tomrod]

The Spanish, the Portuguese, and most importantly, diseases that killed massive proportions of the population.

[AlotOfReading]

The disease aspects are inseparable from colonialism. Here's a quote from a recent survey on the matter [0] that describes the current understanding much better than I would:

    The contours of Indigenous depopulation were shaped not only by disease but also by complex colonial factors including violence, forced labor, exorbitant taxation, malnutrition, and dislocation. Archaeology has shown that Native populations were not destined to be decimated but were made vulnerable through the policies, choices, and behaviors of colonists.

[0] https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/97804292...

[Spooky23]

Diseases imo are empathized because they contribute to the body count and have an “act of god” nature to them. It’s an easier story than to describe a type of industrial genocide.

Read about the Mit'a system that was perverted by the colonial government to essentially improve the return on assets of the colony versus slaves or other means of cheap labor. It broke down the society of the native population completely and made it impossible for them to respond or react to disasters.

[ashoeafoot]

but then why romanticise what was destroyed ? Why not go at the world with a realistic view, which is that the "new world" was exactly the same as the old with dominant landempires holding colonies and tributories, aristocrats holding slaves, that where the landbound spaniards to their neighbors. Just because they have been genocided into a blank slate and you rightfully despise the acts of the genociders, does not mean you get to paint a utopia on the disfigured corpse. The hideaways of chaco canyon speak of slavers expeditions.

[Spooky23]

I didn’t. Why do you feel compelled to engage in “both sides” fallacy?

The Spanish Empire killed about 55M people or 90% of the indigenous population in a hundred years. That’s a scale of slaughter and suffering unprecedented even by the murderous ways of modern society, greater than even the Roman slaughter in Gaul.

Why is it so difficult for you to imagine that perhaps some of those 50 million people perhaps knew something? We’ll never know for sure, as everyone was killed and most aspects of their societies were destroyed.

[HideousKojima]

As bad as the Spaniards were, the Aztec's neighbors despised the Aztecs and their brutality so much that they willingly and gladly allied with the first viable challenger to their rule.

[pxmpxm]

I imagine this is just a symptom of infallible argument/humanities departments rewarding group think narratives (colonialism = definionally ultimate evil) with grant money. Doesn't take long for academics to understand the game.

Same thing with climate change, i've come across a pile of random definitely-not-climate-science papers (macre econ development divergence in hipanola, property rights in subsaharan africa, unrelated culutral anthropoly etc) that allude to climate change as the key driver for the phenomenon observed. Clearly NSF and NIH wanted a very certain set of content published.

[lurk2]

> Same thing with climate change, i've come across a pile of random definitely-not-climate-science papers

The author describes herself in these terms:

> While I’m an archaeologist, I consider my research to be directed at the modern-day climate crisis. I investigate how resilient farming systems emerge and adapt to climate change and natural disasters. My fieldwork takes place on the north coast of Peru, where I study ancient irrigation in arid farming zones.

She doesn’t have any other social media profile so I don’t want to be overly cynical about her motives. Anyway, I think the climate angle is potentially huge in a lot of these fields.

There has been a trend in academia in the last few decades to focus on holistic analysis. This has led to a lot of academics trying to tie their research to disparate issues for both grant money and social status, but I also suspect that a lot of it is born of a genuine to come up with a grand unified theory of all the world’s problems. You see it with figures like Aldous Huxley around the mid-20th century (Huxley’s conclusion in his final novel, Island, is that “Nothing short of everything will do,”). The new wave that seems to have started in the 2010s has taken on a considerably more political bent (“Everything is political,” “Climate change is a product of white supremacy,” intersectional feminism, etc.).

These theories aren’t necessarily “wrong,” but the scholarship they produce is so bad that they are hard to take seriously.

[elif]

Can you point to an engineering feat in modern times which is still functional after hundreds of years of neglect?

Even if academia is swinging to a "too respectful" position (which I would dispute), the lack of respect in your position is certain.

[Spooky23]

Modern is tough because it isn’t hundreds of years ago.

Around me, The High Bridge between Bronx and Manhattan was built pre Civil War and abandoned for decades and still standing (and now is use again). The Hell Gate Bridge was built by the NY Central Railroad and will probably outlast the US.

Lots of 19th century infrastructure will be around for centuries, if you look at the the path of the Erie and Lackawanna railroad routes, many bridges and other infrastructure will be standing hundreds of years from now. Lots of interstate infrastructure will function for hundreds of years in rural areas with low traffic, well beyond their engineered lifespan.

Stone is the most durable material and structures are overbuilt. Steel is much cheaper but requires maintenance.

[typewithrhythm]

It seems like that's an impossibility, since you would need to find something in the current era that has been abandoned, rather than decommissioned...

There are a few examples that might fit, some earthworks, (tunnels, breakwaters, dams) and navigation markers come to mind (costal, but we also put retro reflectors on the moon).

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, I was thinking about Vauban's fortifications, but if any of those had been abandoned, it's specifically because they would have been mostly useless after WW1 (= non-functional).

Hmm, any Vauban-like fortifications in Ukraine that would have suddenly found a new use since 2014 ?

[luckylion]

> Can you point to an engineering feat in modern times which is still functional after hundreds of years of neglect?

Why would anyone build something only to neglect it? If one of the requirements was "it shall work for 500 years and never be maintained", then I'm sure you could get plenty of things designed and built for that requirement. It's just that it's a lot more expensive and not particularly useful, so nobody bothers.

[Jensson]

> the lack of respect in your position is certain.

Pointing out there are other possibilities isn't a lack of respect. If you believe A or B could have happened, you see someone say B happened, it is fair to say that A might have happened as well, that doesn't mean you believe B couldn't have happened.

[lurk2]

> Can you point to an engineering feat in modern times which is still functional after hundreds of years of neglect?

Off the top of my head:

1. Various aqueduct systems constructed by the Roman Empire are still in use today.

2. Persian qalats.

3. The Grand Canal in China.

4. Roman Roads

5. Hawaiian aquaculture systems

6. Aboriginal Australian fish traps

Monumental architecture (e.g. the Pyramids) would make the list substantially longer.

> Even if academia is swinging to a "too respectful" position

The issue isn’t that they are attributing accomplishments to these civilizations, but instead that they are attributing these accomplishments to a way of knowing that is purportedly superior to that of the Europeans, which is just farcical when you consider that every modern technology has either been invented or scaled based on European models of thinking (e.g. the scientific method, mass production, free market capitalism, etc.)

Like I said, this is mostly just a product of Mexican and American humanities departments being populated by people with an axe to grind; there aren’t any STEM graduates in South America concerned with the mystical knowledge that their ancestors are purported to have possessed.

[AStonesThrow]

I am not sure of their operational status today, but in Medieval Western Europe, it was Carmelite communities who built aqueducts; even as they struggled to reform themselves during the Counterreformation, religious communities were undertaking large-scale engineering projects, because they controlled enough labor workforce, as well as technology and supply chains, to make that happen.

I would be unsurprised if the Carmelite Orders likewise invested significant maintenance in the old Roman construction, and learned from it as well.

[AnimalMuppet]

> in modern times

> hundreds of years of neglect

Hundreds of years, whether of neglect or not, means that it wasn't "in modern times". And, in modern times, hundreds of years of neglect is hard to come by. Either it's maintained, or it's torn down, because we haven't had civilization-ending catastrophies in modern times. So I would not expect to be able to show you many examples, because the pool of candidates is so small.

[scythe]

You might look no further than Spain. There are dams built by the Romans which are still operating.

Of course nothing that's literally from the modern period is centuries old, but that's a tautology!

[handwarmers]

perhaps "modern times" are modern because they adapt to the times, innovate, and replace what is old with what is new in pursuit of improvement.

[dopidopHN]

I see your point and I agree. Grabber “the dawn of everything” comes to mind on that “noble savage” phenomenon

That being said : there is something to be said about the Spanish cargo culting those canals in that specific plain… and failing to maintain it.

While we know it was fertile for generation before.

The article hint at private ownership being a factor? I could see that.

But 100% agree : I spend the article asking “ok, what is the culture then”

But it looks like it happen: irrigation work Spanish take over irrigation it stop working

I suspect sabotage was a bit factor, too.

[suavesito]

I think that most people that are "scientific" are unable (because of our education) to _try_ to think about the validity of this way of _understanding_.

I like to think that societies in Latin America (and, importantly, all around the world) survived thousands of years not because of luck, but because the cultures (language, traditions) they developed had ingrained the "scientific knowledge" necessary to survive in the conditions that lived in. An important part of it was that they did not see only as rulers and owners of the world, but only as one part of it. That is one of the basis of what people call magical thinking, but it is sound once you stop disqualifying it just because the word "magical" is in it.

And, I mean, literally, only those who could adapt and understand their world to survive, survived. The knowledge maybe was not as fast evolving as the scientific methods allows to be, but it is, ultimately, the same method. Try, fail, and repeat. Those who were successful survived.

The knowledge ingrained in the culture, traditions and understanding accompanying it was, and _is_, a fundamental part of the solutions that allowed them not to only survive, but to thrive in their environments.

The first comment in this post says that you do not need the culture to carry out the solutions. That may be true, but it does miss that our culture is the strongest (after "basic necessities") incentives we have to choose some things over others. Or understanding of the world is our culture, and our understanding of the world is what makes us take some actions instead of others. You might be able to mimic technical solutions, but to fully understand them, you need the culture that developed them, as it is _literally_ the understanding of the world that allowed the solutions to exist.

[notarobot123]

The claim actually made was that culture, not just technology, is what made these irrigation systems successful. It's an interesting insight.

Perhaps we can learn lessons from ancient cultures about how we might be able to efficiently manage our resources and achieve more with what is available. Is that so far fetched an idea?

[lurk2]

I understand what you’re saying. I’m not sure that the distinction is all that important, however. Culture is just a form of technology.

> Perhaps we can learn lessons from ancient cultures about how we might be able to efficiently manage our resources and achieve more with what is available. Is that so far fetched an idea?

I don’t mean to imply that European models get everything right, but I think it would be far-fetched to bet against these models; historically, they’ve worked, and they’ve worked far better than any other model. The author does have a paper she linked to (which I missed on my first reading), so she might have a more compelling case to make than I originally assumed.

[suavesito]

I would say it reversed. Technology is _just one_ form of culture.

[BlueTemplar]

Episteme vs metis ?

https://samzdat.com/2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/

(The free market does sound closer to metis... but is also EXTREMELY focused on the short term, see : negative externalities. )

[syspec]

Very well stated.

It's really weird to come across such articles, because they always add this mystic to these cultures that actually ends up coming across as the generic "in touch with nature" noble savage archetype

[mstipetic]

I mean, weren’t they? My kids can name more superheroes and Pokémon than animals and plants. My neighbors don’t notice when it doesn’t rain in March and April (when there should be 22 rainy days) and get annoyed when it does because it ruins the nice weather.

[luckylion]

Why would your neighbors worry about rain, unless they are farmers or otherwise directly impacted?

We've generally abandoned "being in touch with nature" for focusing on specific niches, and it's so incredibly more efficient that you can have large groups of people who focus on systems based on purely made up things, like sports.

If they both needed the probability of rain three days from now, who do you think would fare better, the ancients with their ancient wisdom, or your neighbors with modern sensors and meteorological models?

[jorgen123]

You may be thinking about a short term need only. Longer term (annual and more) if you are in a state that is susceptible to drought and wildfires, you would worry about the lack of rain during a period when it is supposed to rain. The rain fills aquifers and increases soil moisture content which carry you through the dry season.

[luckylion]

In general, yes. But most advanced societies delegate these topics because it's very inefficient if you and everyone else studies wild fires, rain patterns, deer impact on soil compression and what not -- it'll be much more efficient if a few study it deeply and then present the results and concrete actions.

Division of labor goes for division of scientific labor, too.

Granted, there seems to be an increasing trust issue in taking those results as true, but that's a separate issue.

[mstipetic]

Oooh yes let’s be efficient. Only thing that’s important. No curiosity, sense of awe or belonging to something greater. Let’s do away with art unless it’s funded by Netflix and has a direct effect on subscription numbers. We could and should have both.

[luckylion]

> We could and should have both.

Sure, but one is much more important than the other. You can commit 50% of your resources as a society towards art and religion and the other half to science and production, and your standard of living will be much lower than if you committed 10% towards art and religion.

[mstipetic]

Define standard of living

[reycharles]

I would say they would worry if they were even remotely in touch with nature.

[typewithrhythm]

The disconnect between observation and understanding is the whole point; without western ideas like trends, records, and measurement, you can have no better understanding than, "sometimes wet, sometimes not".

The only part in tune with nature is that in bad periods the population dies back.

[Jensson]

The Spanish colonists would have no problems with those things though, they just were out of their element there but people were in touch with nature almost everywhere until very recently.

[bobmcnamara]

It fits today's narrative better.