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Archaeologists have unearthed evidence that native Americans were raising turkeys for centuries before the European colonists even arrived in the Americas.
"Our research tells us that turkeys had been domesticated by 400-500 AD," explained Gary Feinman, an archaeologist at The Field Museum in Chicago, in a press release.
Dr. Feinman and colleagues found unhatched turkey eggs alongside the bones of both juvenile and adult birds at a 1,500-year-old archaeological site in Oaxaca, Mexico. "The fact that we see a full clutch of unhatched turkey eggs, along with other juvenile and adult turkey bones nearby, tells us that these birds were domesticated," Feinman said.
We know Native American cultures like the Mississippians practiced intensive agriculture. It looks like they also practiced animal husbandry. It's a much different picture from the hunter-gatherers of the modern, popular imagination.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday December 01 2016, @01:44AM
We took or "bought" their land, killed most of them, enslaved or parked the rest into reserves, but that's okay because they were just rednecks aimlessly roaming the land, and didn't even believe in our god.
Who's writing the history books, again?
(Score: 1) by Weasley on Thursday December 01 2016, @05:38AM
What history book in the last 50 years paints Europeans as benevolent in this regard?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday December 01 2016, @05:26PM
History books? Who reads history books, when there's Hollywood to tell you everything you ever need to know about our nomadic-but-so-wise victims?
The TV/movie indian identity is either modern, alcoholic and poor (but wise or casino-related somehow), or a teepee-dweller bravely worried about the whites or other nomadic indian tribes while preparing a bison hunt. The white have been bad for a while, but the ancient Indian is still uncivilized (but so wise) or uneasy in the modern world.
I can't recall watching a single instance of US indian (not Aztec or Inca) portrayed as living in, or interacting with, a native city. Any suggestions?