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Re: You Want Evidence of Contact? Here It Is.....

gkeyes6988@aol.com wrote:


>gkeyes6988@aol.com wrote:
>>It is a kind of Victorian fantasy that a handful of shipwrecked men from
>a
>>"high culture" will somehow prove themselves superior and influential
>>among backward natives.  What the natives in question tend to see are
>>losers who can't speak a useful language and who have to be taken care of
>>because they don't know anything about what it takes to make a living in
>>their new circumstance.

>.In at least one case a shipwrecked spaniard did rise in Maya society to
>.an intermediate command position.  I'm talking about Gonzalo de Guerrero,
>.of course, who became a "war captain" for the ruler of Chetumal according
>.to the spanish accounts.

>.Around 1519 he and several other spaniards were swept off a spanish
>vessel
>.off the east coast of Yucatan and found themselves among the Maya.  All
>were
>.enslaved.  Guerrero was later "traded" to the Lord of Chetumal where he 
>.married one of the ruler's daughters and started a family. When Cortes
>.appeared at Cozumel and heard of Guerrero from the Maya, he offered to
>.rescue him.  Guerrero is supposed to have replied that no, he didn't want
>to
>.return to spanish society; that he had a family and was tatooed and would
>be
>.ashamed.  Cortes went on and left him..

>.According to Andres de Cereceda, treasurer of the spanish colony in
>Honduras,
>.in 1536 Pedro de Alvarado was marching in Honduras to rescure the
>spaniards
>.at Naco, where the native population of Lenca were giving them a hard
>time.
>.In the Ulua valley, a native lord rose up against Alvarado, and the Lord
>.of Chetumal sent Guerrero and 50 canoes of men to help fight against
>.Alvarado, who won.

>.rus

>Cool!  Still, I think you'll find this is a minority occurence.  And it is
>still a case of Guerrero adapting himself to Mayan ways rather than Mayans
>re-patterning their culture in accord with his exotic knowledge.  Guerrero
>simply did a better job of adapting than most castaways.

>To put this in context of the original discussion -- what would have
>happened to a Shang or Polynesian castaway?  Whether the Ortiz or Guerrero
>scenario, you still get pretty much zero long term impact to the cultures
>in question.

>--Greg Keyes

        The "Diffusionist" label is used by authoritarian dogmatists in the
Archeology establishment to suppress inquiry into the truth. Frankly,
diffusion is NOT the only possibility to explain common artifacts etc,
and this disarms the charges of racism implicit in attacks on
Diffusion.

        Obviously , a previous culture that was obliterated could explain odd
distributions of artifacts and crops. In fact the whole diffusion
issue may be just a smokescreen to cut off debate about very early
advanced Global culture...
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