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Just the Boyz: Emails, Gaming, and Columbus - Ep 45
396 Plays5 years ago
We are now uploading video versions of the podcast to our YouTube channel thanks to Zencastr's new video podcast component. You can find the video version of this episode by going to our YouTube Channel "A Life in Ruins"
In this episode, the guys gather around their mics and webcams to talk about a recent email they received at the beginning of the new year and the impact it had on them. In the second segment, they actually begin to talk about archaeology through a conversation about the PC game Dawn of Man. This leads the guys down a path to talking about how cultural evolution is portrayed in popular gaming and a hypothetical discussion regarding what would the Americas have looked like if Europeans hadn't arrived in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Contact
- Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
- Website: www.alifeinruins.com
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Transcript
Introduction and New Format Discussion
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to episode 45 of A Life and Ruins podcast. Re-investigate the careers of those living in life and ruins. I'm your host, Carlton Gover, and I'm joined by my co-hosts Connor Johnin and David Ian Howe. This is just the boys' segments that we're going to be doing once a month in our first attempt at doing a video segment of the podcast. So how are we doing this afternoon, fellas? You know, doing all right. How you doing?
00:00:39
Speaker
I'm doing fantastic over here in West Colorado. I got to wear my orange hat because otherwise I will get shot because that's it's hunting season out here.
Humor and Sponsorships
00:00:49
Speaker
And even though I'm in the middle of my own house, I have to be aware of this right now. So just wear your orange or your pink or whatever it is.
00:00:57
Speaker
Just do it. Your fluorescence. You got to wear the fluorescence when you walk outside. Yeah. Yeah. So someone's going to think David has no costume because he has no imagination. He doesn't have a tick tock. That's pretty popular or anything like that. So he's just got spots. He's got spots. We tell us about your sponsors.
00:01:22
Speaker
because that's a brand I like. But this place called Coldest Water, which is just hydro flask with a coldest sticker slapped on top of it. But they sent it to me and it says, Davidy and how on TikTok and how on TikTok. So, you know, that's kind of cool. And I, you know, I could just make some Smithtown water out of it. So.
Candid Podcast Critiques and Responses
00:01:40
Speaker
So Carlton, what, what crusade are you a part of and or looking forward to that we're distracting you from at this point?
00:01:47
Speaker
So we were originally going to do, uh, David was going to screen share and he was going to play Donna man as, as we all talked about Hunter gathering archeology, the neolithic and why it sucks and why we enjoy the paleolithic the most hashtag. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how we do this on the podcast.
00:02:10
Speaker
But then we decided not to go with that, and I didn't have a plan B, so here I am dressed up like a knight of Camelot. And, uh, got nothing else. Well, you look good. You look good. You guys aren't wearing your masks, like what's wrong with you? I got the house to myself, finally. I live in West Colorado, and masks are a myth. I live in Georgia. My dog has COVID, so I gotta, you know, I gotta mask up.
00:02:35
Speaker
Apparently, there's like ranchers out in Oklahoma taken with cattle dewormer because they think that's more better for getting rid of COVID than the vaccine. At least they acknowledge it, you know, like it's a. All right, you know, this is itchy and it sucks, so, you know, I'm I'm burning up in this. I mean, I got I got worms somewhere, but, you know, kind of look out, there's a hunter behind you. So what are we going to talk about today, guys? What's
00:03:04
Speaker
So I think we should not that I direct this podcast or anything like that. These guys just telling me all the time. It's just what it is. And we gotta stop the Gerson. So I said, I said some words, but I think it's interesting to talk about how about that email. Oh, that email. Yeah. So we got, we got an email. It was a critical, it might say hyper critical.
00:03:34
Speaker
for what we do and what we are. So we're- That's why we're wearing the costumes. Yeah, no. We'll just be clear. We're obnoxious. We'll get a little wild.
00:03:48
Speaker
And I tell crappy jokes. It's just, it's just what it is. We got a very pointed email that I hope David Ian Howe will read in one of the best voices that he has. And I'm gonna take off this yellow. And if I get shot, it's because I took off the yellow.
00:04:09
Speaker
Did we determine if this person is from overseas or like from here? What accent do we use? So, I'm pretty sure they live in Texas. All right. Pretty sure. So we don't, you know, disclaimer here. We get this email on January 2nd. This is how we started 2021. He doesn't give us his name.
00:04:29
Speaker
But I got a little heated and started backtracking his email address and backtracked him to Texas and found his name that way. But he's never confirmed it. Disclaimer, we would never do that if you email us. We would never track you down and figure out where you are. I'm a lawyer. That's how it goes. I'll tell these guys how to deal with it further. So what did the email say?
00:04:54
Speaker
I'm going to read it in the most posh, snooty accent ever, because that's how we wanted the sound. The subject line is just, why listen? Why? With a question mark. Then it goes into with a link to the episode. This episode is only rare snippets of serious archeology with an E, not A-E. E.
00:05:13
Speaker
Interrupting, which otherwise sounds like a sleepover for 14 year old girls, just 14 year old, sorry, and all the silliness that goes along with it. I listen via the National Science Foundation's Science Zone Radio. With that in mind, you might want to consider maintaining at least some appearance of professionalism around serious archeology. As well, I have made my thoughts known to NFS Science Zone Radio. What a schmuck dude, that guy, wake up.
00:05:41
Speaker
that.
00:05:53
Speaker
modulating Brooklyn, New York, Boston accent. And then Connor's wearing some hat thing. We do some thing. I go off on a bipolar tie road in some episode, tirade, tie road. And then I smoke rocks. This guy.
00:06:13
Speaker
found just the one episode. We didn't even know we were on Science Zone Radio. And it was the episode where we were talking with our producers about having a good time and like, not even, we specifically said this episode is not about like, you know, the Trojan War. We said it's about how the podcast gets produced. We're interviewing them and we're having a good time with people that we know. And it's a conversation.
00:06:36
Speaker
Yeah. And it's the second episode from that. So if you go back and look on our catalog, we have the first episode with Chris Webster, which is just wild. It's just what it is. But I realize that's a glimpse into our podcast, but we are professionals. I'm not.
00:06:59
Speaker
Yeah, no, I disagree. So we are professionals. Yeah, we bought the professionalism to get to this point to basically say that we know something about archaeology. So like,
00:07:17
Speaker
Come on. You remember the argument we got in with that one person on Instagram years ago who was yelling at us about, uh, cause David, what did David say? Something about like, you know, those, those are some fringe ideas. Yeah. And she started yelling at us. Like, well, we don't have degrees. Like this is what we do. And she was just like, it's just sad. You spent all that money and you don't know anything. It's like, okay. To us. It was a long time ago.
00:07:44
Speaker
Yeah, we talked about it with Damien I think oh Remember that oh was that when I said I had there's some weird theories out there. Yeah, they're not weird theories if they're mine, and I was like They're a little weird They're still weird cuz they're not backed up by any facts But that's fine Show me the data
00:08:07
Speaker
Oh, OK. So so we we figured out we got to feel about that. Yeah. So he drew Joe Biden. Looking beautiful over there, but we also wanted a Bernie Sanders. What do you. I get confused. It's the Democratic Party. It is what it is. It's what it is.
00:08:33
Speaker
So, so we, we get this email, we, uh, we try to parse through it and we try to figure it out. Like, where do we go from here? Basically this guy just like told us that our lives don't exist.
00:08:50
Speaker
And just to clarify, he didn't even send us the link to the specific episode. He sent us the link to the entire feed. So we had no idea what he was talking about. And so I sent him this really long email back. Long is an understatement. Carlton sent him a tome that was like, well, here's actually what we do. And our podcast is a bum, bum, bum, bum.
00:09:13
Speaker
Can we call him Martin Luther at this point? Even though he's wearing the Crusades thing, I think he was Martin Luther at this point. I gave him recommendations based on he's like, I want science. Like, well, you should go to these episodes. You probably listen to one of our Ruin Live segments. We're sorry you felt this way.
Game Analysis: 'Dawn of Man'
00:09:33
Speaker
And I sent him this whole thing in my Happy New Year. Steve, we wish you and your relations good health and a safe year.
00:09:40
Speaker
And he responds back, the top episode completely ignores everything I said to him in the recommendations. He just answers the one question. I'm like, I'm not sure what episode you're listening to. Not even the episode title.
00:09:59
Speaker
So here's my assessment of it. And I was, oh, the end of it, he was like, I still see a life in ruins is in the National Science Foundation's blog, Aggregated Science Zone Radio. I may hear it or I may not. It depends on their rotation. Unsubscribe me from your email list and please maintain a level of professionalism worthy of archeology. It's discipline and serious archeologists everywhere. It's discipline and serious. That's not even a right sentence.
00:10:24
Speaker
He's not a serious archaeologist anywhere. So you spell an archaeology wrong. Yeah. So here's the thing, though. My my whole thing is if someone is willing to go out of their way to email a podcast like you have to go to their website, scroll all the way down to the bottom, find where it says contact us, go through that whole thing just to say you didn't like this one podcast. You got another thing coming because that's something like when you have time for that.
00:10:52
Speaker
crazy. Anyway, I'm cool with criticism. Like people call me out on the ethno like every day now. Pretty bad. Uh, but like, yeah. And we try to, we try to respond as like, as a podcast to like criticism. Cause we're like, we are basically 14 year old girls. Yeah. Like giggle and things like that. And we, but we, but we also, doesn't have to just be girls.
00:11:16
Speaker
We're trying to communicate archeology to the public, and we're gonna have some dad jokes, and we're gonna have some antics, and it's just what it is. That's what it is, bro. David's not gonna take his Klonopin, and David's gonna go on a fucking tirade sometimes. It's just gonna happen. It's just what it is. As a podcast, we are fundamentally not gonna change what we do, because it's so, it's fantastic.
00:11:44
Speaker
Connor Biden coming out dude! Fundamentally. Fundamentally. Fundamentally. So going forward, I heard we're gonna have some little snippets of this thing. So we're gonna make some sound bites going forward.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, expect more. So expect a life in ruins only soundboard. Because that's that's how we know you hit the top. Yeah. So if you've been following us for a while, there's probably some stuff you've picked up on that are like cultures and little things like our own cultures that we've made and like our own things like everyone knows who Caleb Welch is at this point. Do you know who you are?
00:12:25
Speaker
if you don't go follow him. Yeah. Well, you can give him some book recommendations. David Biden's out. That boy is thirsty for literature. Like he, he loves it. He's a thirsty kid. He's a thirsty kid for, for books, for literature. I can't take this seriously dressed up at a Halloween conference.
00:12:50
Speaker
I'll take it off for the second segment. So here's the thing though, we got our own little mythos going on. Like we got, we didn't know about Dean. You guys hear about Dean that one time, you know, Caleb Welch, every time we say Wyoming, we're gonna have to like bleep it out at this point. Just little things like that. So we'll add those to the soundboard. Jane Goodall, right, Jane Goodall. So we're gonna have to do like some check sounds. Yeah, on the going joke.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah. Anytime Carlton hits the jewel, we're going to have to bleep that out too. It's a fuse now. I moved away from the jewel. I've changed brands. My loyalty has shifted. Is that the Pepsi of jewels? You know, the bigger pods that are cheaper and the last longer. Oh, it's Pepsi. It's straight up Pepsi. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, the new one, if we, because we're not supposed to be cursing. So anytime we curse or do something stupid, that's like, you know, considered to be a sleepover with 13 year olds or 14 year olds or whatever.
00:13:40
Speaker
I guess he gave us 14 year olds. He gave us teenagers, at least. You might notice that this episode is the first time we've done a video episode. Besides that one time that Connor and Carlton did the mad dog challenge. We did that one with Donnie, though.
00:13:53
Speaker
We did do a, uh, yeah, we did a live one with Donny. Um, so Connor doesn't appear and it didn't like to go home. Yeah. So that's, uh, this is our first one. We'll pop this on our Instagram. We'll pop this on our YouTube. And if you're probably probably watching us on our Instagram, let us know what you think. If you want us to do more of this, we'll do that. Um, at the end of this, it's, uh,
00:14:16
Speaker
Frig. Seth. What? That was, that was a Scandinavian resident. I appreciate that. No, that was. No, Frig. Seth. I'm trying to follow bro, but I'm not following. I'm lost. I'm lost in the woods. No, no. Give, give the guy. What's his name? Tell him to fuck off.
00:14:30
Speaker
Oh, oh, the verb to frig. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. Frig. Oh, that guy for telling us that we're 14 year old girls. So yeah, I mean, I'm cool with them giving us some criticism. We need to get knocked down a play here and there. But like the fact that he mailed. Yeah. You got to end it, though. You just can't say that guy because he's a piece of shit.
00:14:55
Speaker
I know, I'm just saying, like, freak that guy. The best part, though, is, like, unsubscribe you from your email list. Like, bro, you emailed us. There's no email list. Like, you emailed us. Bro. Classic federal archaeologist. Get him out of here.
00:15:11
Speaker
That's going to end this segment of our first video podcast, episode 45, 45, also the president's number that just left. So see you in the next segment. Welcome back to episode 45 of Life in Earth podcast. I'm here with David Biden and Carlton Trump.
00:15:29
Speaker
Over here. What the man? Why do I got to be trouble? You already got me. We're not supposed to be cussing. It's right off the bat. Compare me to Trump. I got more hair than Trump. Can't you see this? This ain't fake. This isn't horse hair. We got going on. This is a real man. Why are you still in character as a New York person? I don't know, man. I don't know because I live in Boulder. Be Boulder.
00:15:51
Speaker
So, on this episode, we want to talk about- I take care of my hair with natural organic soaps. There it is. I really love the sea salt foam. It's really good and hydrates my hair. I highly recommend it. Lush, for those that are curious. I live in Georgia and I'm suspicious of Stacey Abrams. I'm just going to say that both of you guys are balding at this point and I have no balding.
00:16:16
Speaker
my part. So you guys are, you guys got long hair because he, you guys are balding. It's just, it's just slowly marching back. Like, uh, you know, like, uh, Napoleon from Russia.
00:16:37
Speaker
episode 45, we're talking about, we want to transition to talking about Donna man, which is like, honestly, one of our favorite games that we played together. It's this super interesting buildup between where you're like, okay, I, I, you know, I wake up as a hunter gatherer in pre Neolithic times. Yeah. Yeah. Pre Neolithic.
00:17:03
Speaker
times and How do you like kind of evolve from there? So what are your opinions on the game in general because we played it together like? Give me the scoop
00:17:17
Speaker
It's like a, it's a real time strategy game. I guess we should say that. And like you said, my speeding airline, like you start in the Sony, like the paleolithic, then you advanced to the Mesolithic and then the neolithic. And then you go into the bronze eight or copper age, bronze age, iron age, and like the, you, you have to get knowledge points throughout the game to advance through those ages. And it's, it's really cool, but it's like live.
00:17:41
Speaker
real time and it's stressful because you have to constantly be foraging, to constantly be farming, you have to constantly be at the whim of your environment, hunting the rhinos and stuff. And let the megafauna die. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And they do like a seasonal thing where it's like winter, summer, spring, fall, whatever the other thing is. But like they try to make you like provision for that and make you be aware of how it goes.
00:18:09
Speaker
Yeah. I hate this game so much. I'm really disappointed by Donna man. Like in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. Like from like an archeologist, like from a gameplay perspective, it's like, all right. Honest. I'd rather play banished than play Donna man. What's the one thing that it's, it's something similar start. It's, it's similar gameplay mechanics to start with a small group of people and you have to rebuild a town type of deal.
00:18:36
Speaker
But what Donna man lacks from like an anthropological perspective, right? It's that, uh, you know, when you, I've, what I've tried to do recently, every time I play Donna man, I'm trying to see what the maximum population size I can get stay in the Neolithic. So I don't advance. And my entire purpose is trying to figure out how do I optimize this game? Poor words, human behavioral ecology, optimal foraging theory. And I try to play it.
00:19:02
Speaker
like that, but you're not allowed to move, like you don't have semi-permanent towns. Like wherever you set up is where you set up. So you can't wander across the landscape, which isn't how Neolithic hunter and gatherers would have done it. So that's what I just kind of find kind of disappointing that they don't have any hottle hottle. Yeah, you can't, you can't like do seasonal rounds. So it's like, well,
00:19:26
Speaker
Well, it's like, well, Carlton, you can just tell your people to go hunt something. It's like, yeah, but if I send like 12 of my people to go hunt a megafauna on the opposite side of the map, like cave lions come and just take my children off. Yeah. Haines will come through your camp and tear some stuff up. It's what it is. Yeah.
00:19:45
Speaker
Yeah, bears will come through you can't you go but you gotta like you gotta fight that you got to hunt stuff and then you can't what what's neat though is like when you let Carlton's talk about what the behavioral ecology like you got to hunt stuff and you have to plan it right you can't run across the map because then you have to drag it all the way back and you got to account for water and like people your people can be hungry they need like shelter and
00:20:08
Speaker
Also, winter could occur while they're out there while you're hunting, so you gotta get back before winter. But then when you hunt them, you get the skins, and then you get their bones and their meat. Then you gotta bring that back, and then you gotta make drying racks for, like, the meat.
00:20:22
Speaker
And you also have to then collect wood to make the drying racks. Then you gotta skin or tan the hides. And then to tan them, you need to get tannins from the trees and you gotta get the kids out there collecting the tannins or like, you know, the non hunters. And then, yeah, it's a lot. And then you have to make dried skins, which then you use to build your shelters. And like, it's a lot of stuff. In the beginning of the game, you only start with like eight people and it's like, go. And then you have to get the sticks for fire. You gotta get stone, you gotta get earth flint.
00:20:49
Speaker
stone and then you got to get meat and you got to get wood and you got to get what's the other fish and you got to just go and it's it's tough but that's like that's real yeah yeah i mean it's but it's also adhering to like this this idea and anthropology that you have to like there's stages of evolution that you go through basically where you're like you're hunter gatherers
00:21:13
Speaker
And then you're from there and, and whatnot, but it's, but what we've studied in anthropology, it's way more complicated than that. Like you can, you can also regress in certain areas, at least in America at parts of it, like that, like, Oh, I'm doing agriculture here.
00:21:33
Speaker
oh, this is not working at all. So let's back down and do something like that. So it's very a stage thing. You're working up to almost modern society at that point.
00:21:44
Speaker
And yeah, you're right, because it does kind of do like that stewardish thing where it's like, you progress through eras in like an evolutionary way, which isn't necessarily right. But it does, in a way, like the copper and the iron and the bronze and the tin, or like, yeah, the copper and the tin and the iron is all there from the beginning of the game. You have to figure out how to use it later on.
00:22:09
Speaker
And like you can unlock that through like knowledge points or the trader can bring that in and be like, hey, here's the secret of iron working, which is like in the old world.
00:22:19
Speaker
Like it was way easier to spread stuff around and that's why everyone in the old world was like way further into the iron age than people in the Americas because they just didn't have like such, they had trade networks. It's just like Jared Diamond stuff, but like it's easier to learn how to do stuff when you can spread ideas a lot faster and it like goes around. But like, I guess my point is there's agriculture in the old world by like 10,000
00:22:45
Speaker
PC and like it's trading around everywhere.
Cultural Perspectives in Historical Games
00:22:49
Speaker
But in the Americas, people are still hunting and gathering until like, you know, the Spanish get there in some places. So it's a very Eurocentric game. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's the thing is it doesn't take into account what's going on. There's multi races in the game, I think.
00:23:07
Speaker
now. Yeah. I haven't, I, like I said, since the past couple updates, I still haven't gone past paleolithic cause I'm still trying to figure out how many people I can keep. And it's, it seems to hover around like 35 and I can't break that. So it even, even even the game itself. Oh, in the paleolithic. Yeah. So it doesn't even allow me to get past that, even though I might have like
00:23:27
Speaker
optimized it to that point. And it's like, I can't do anything else, which is kind of a bummer because it gets, I'm able, I've gotten to a point in that game where it's like, okay, I have, I have a camp, but I have enough extra people that I can do long range hunting parties without like destroying the camp itself from predators. But I'm still
00:23:50
Speaker
But I think that's cool. It's talking about they put a population max on that stuff. Otherwise you go to the next stage and everything like that. I think it's interesting to use it as Carlton's talking about where you have so many camps and so many people. At one point, do you start domesticating things and going on to the next stage? What's the reality of that?
00:24:18
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I think it's like with the limit Carlton's talking about, it's coded like based off of like calculations with the carrying capacity of the environment too, which is, is neat. Uh, like the game obviously knows how much stuff is programmed into the landscape, but like humans don't know that immediately. They do once they go look for it, but yeah, it's neat how like much thought went into the game. I wonder how many archeologists they had. It's a small team. My understanding is like Europe.
00:24:45
Speaker
There is a cheese making update now. Yeah, you can make cheese. You can get Jenna. I like a nice Brie myself. I'm a Brie. Oh, get out of here. Oh, they, they earlier, there were two dog domestication updates. So you can get dogs and then you can get a dog training and then the dogs can help you like hunt now and like also fight off hyenas and wolves, which is, I have seen that and I liked that a lot that they do that. I don't know. Like David was saying with,
00:25:12
Speaker
You know, the way that they project things and the way that things are taught, that evolution is a ladder to success. And we, even in anthropology, as Dave was talking about, Julian Stewart banned tribes, cheapdom states. It works, but we don't totally. I'm going to get, I'm going to give an asterisk there. I don't think it was Stewart who talked about that before. It's Morgan. It's Tyler, right? Oh, Tyler. That's it. Tyler and Morgan who are talking about like how you're involved. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you like,
00:25:42
Speaker
service. Right. Yeah. So like you take those steps into being, you know, hunter gatherers, which is savages and stuff like that. But it like, like Carlton saying, it's way more complicated than that.
00:25:55
Speaker
And then yeah, there's no like, you don't advance or like D whatever that word was to Hunter that you used earlier, digress. Like it's not, you just don't get that. Like you see cycles in human culture. You have, that's, that's what kind of you get. And like, even though in the Americas you don't get like iron working,
00:26:17
Speaker
The stone tool technology in the Americas far surpasses anything in the old world. If it's not broke, don't fix it. Why do they need these other things? A lot of technological advancement comes from, usually,
00:26:34
Speaker
military means, right? So it's like, if you have, that's why in the Americas with those great earth mounds, it's like, well, why don't they use stone? It's like, well, when you live in a floodplain, you got a lot of earth, you can move around. Why do you need to go the extra mile to bring stone in when you can make something just as high and much quicker? Well, yeah. And then you have copper in the great Northwest.
00:26:58
Speaker
that like evolves, but it also doesn't spread because they don't have materials for that stuff. But you assume as like a person who's looking at like different steps in how humans adopt things, you assume that they all have copper at this point and things like that, but it's adapting to the environment. But I actually like how Donna Mann doesn't like
00:27:27
Speaker
I don't know. It it it tells you what's available in the environment. Yeah. It's apt to pass that. You know, you're not always going to city states and then you're going to Civ five and then David's kicking our butts. You know, when we go to Civ five and he's in Rome. No, bro, I forgot. I forgot to get rid of that embargo on you for the 12th time. No, it's just an accident.
00:27:52
Speaker
If anyone has played Civilization V, it's a wonderful, probably one of the best video games ever made. And you like, you pick a world civilization like Egypt or Britain or the Americas, and then you like basically just build a civilization and then conquer other ones or like through culture or science or domination. And I am not bad at it.
00:28:11
Speaker
That still goes in with that whole idea of that march of progression, right? Yeah. You know, that's, that's kind of the same thing. It's still fun. The Sid Myers games still one of my favorite that and age of empires does the same thing, right? So they're in a lot of these like RTS is real time strategy games or even turn based strategy games. Like there, there's this March of progression. It's hard for, I mean, I love RTS is as like David and Connor. No, I'll play real time strategies all day.
00:28:42
Speaker
His name just popped up. He's playing, he's playing road total war two right now. It was on episode something at this point.
00:28:54
Speaker
so that I had crabs. But like in general, it's like fun to like progress through those ages. Like how many games have like the Neolithic, Paleolithic and their games in general? Yeah. But it's like, what does that communicate to nonanthropologists, right? Cause like we know what these forms of evolution from all the readings we've had to do and who talked about them and how we realize their strengths and weaknesses. But like you talk to an undergraduate who's not an anthro major and you ask them like, well,
00:29:22
Speaker
What are the differences? And then a lot of times, like I've seen students say, well, you know, like North American Indians seem to be pretty, pretty goddamn dumb that they couldn't figure out to make copper pretty inferior. And it's like, I don't.
00:29:35
Speaker
That's not right. Like, you know, like that's just not, that's not what that is. It's someone said that on my TikTok and I was like, you say something like that again, I have to block you. And then he just didn't respond. But like, yeah. Or he said like the native Americans didn't have or would be nowhere without like the European. And like, I think he just said it to be a troll. And I was just like, yeah, not going to fly here, bro.
00:29:58
Speaker
Yeah, evolution isn't linear. That's just... I had someone ask me about that the other day. A couple of weeks ago, I did a talk for the University of Regensburg in Regensburg, Germany as part of their colloquium series. And the German archaeologists, they don't know much about North American archaeology, so they invited me to talk about what I do
00:30:20
Speaker
And I had a student, she asked, and it wasn't disrespectful.
Technological Exchange and Social Developments
00:30:23
Speaker
She's like, if Europeans hadn't showed up, how do you think North American Indians would have evolved? And I was like, I can't give you a factually based answer. That's so abstract. And I kind of got into Jared Diamond things a little bit. I was like,
00:30:38
Speaker
the things that Europe that got to Europeans to where they were in the 17th century, you know, wouldn't have happened without gunpowder from China or all these other inventions that happen across the globe in Africa, Europe and Asia that are able to spread to one another. You know, you have those fusion adoptions and all that event going on. No, I think that's I think that's a question because there's there's that idea that, you know, Native American tribes in America
00:31:07
Speaker
you know, weren't that advanced or, you know, are just like backwards people. But if you gave them the same time to kind of figure out things, like I, they would, there would be a dominate dominating kind of presence here. Like, yeah. Then like European farmers were like a European Mesolithic people in like 6,000 feet, like Utsi was literally goat herding.
00:31:35
Speaker
not doing, like, probably widespread agriculture until, like, Neolithic farmers from the Middle East came and brought those technologies to them. So, like, it's not like Utsi came up with it on his own one day and he was like, I have now advanced to the industrial era. It's like, no, he, someone brought that to him. And I explained this to someone on TikTok the other day, too. It's like,
00:31:56
Speaker
If you think about, is evolution linear or not? No. Yeah, it looks like animals should progress to an area where they're intelligent, because that's how we perceive the world, right? And apes and humans look like they're going towards what we are. But we don't fly. I would see an eagle or a Hayabusa as one of the top evolved creatures on the planet, because it can fly so well and dip down.
00:32:22
Speaker
and can see so far, but we're nowhere near that. So like, are we going towards that direction? Absolutely not. It's like, it's a different sect of evolution than like, do we have pouches from our soup? No, it's like a whole different thing. So like, it doesn't all go in one direction. It just like the whole world shares the same technology, really. And that's why it all looks like that.
00:32:43
Speaker
Yeah, evolution's a process that we used to describe change. It's not a force, right? Animals don't say, you know what? I want to get these leaves at the top. So I'm going to grow a long neck and get some patches on there. Let me get these top leaves. I'm going to get these top leaves. What is it? Who's the guy? Guys, we've got to stop cursing. Who's the guy who believed that?
00:33:07
Speaker
Oh, uh, the, the French, Lamar Lamar, Lamar, that stuff that, that, that like the, the drafts grow their necks longer. So they do that stuff, but we don't do it. Remember, Lamar wasn't remarkable.
00:33:23
Speaker
We'll be right back. We'll segment three of episode 45 of our first video podcast. Welcome back to episode 45 of life ruins podcast. It's also our first video episode. We are going to talk now about what it would be like if European contact didn't happen when it did, I guess was the thing. And if the Americas kind of progressed on their own to a point where they were at a
00:33:48
Speaker
an Iron Age, you know, modern era type situation when they both met. Like, if they were at the same level as the, like, I guess the European powers, I was like, was that what it was, Connor? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, it'd be interesting to see, like, if the Americas had 2,000 more years, like, if it was 1794 where this, you know, encounter happened, because I think
00:34:18
Speaker
you know, in general, not assuming that they progress or anything like that. But like, I think they would have been, they would have dealt with it better. Like, is Columbus, is Columbus as a person? Like, he basically nailed it. Like, otherwise, America's would have been their own civs by themselves. Well, I mean, like,
00:34:46
Speaker
I think timing is important when Columbus showed up and then other non-Scandinavian European powers came over. One thing to consider is that Europeans, for hundreds of years, have always been around a cultural other.
00:35:05
Speaker
that have different values to them and they know how to interact with that. And that's important, right? So if you think about the Spanish with the Moors, conflicting cultures and ideologies, they're used to that. Many indigenous populations in North and South America didn't have that. So the first time Spanish came over from a wildly different background with a wildly different set of beliefs, they were not culturally equipped to understand that. They just figured those people thought like them, which we see what happens with like Montezuma and conquistadors, because they thought the Spanish would follow the same cultural protocols.
00:35:35
Speaker
And they didn't. And that was one of the part of their downfalls, right? Is that this awareness of that other people think differently than your set of beliefs, you know, this, this. They almost worship them as gods when they encountered them. Yeah. There was something going on with that. But like, you know, the Spanish almost lost a couple of times because they almost got totally wiped out. But then the Aztecs started trying to take captives rather than annihilate them. You know, so there's tactical errors. And like, could you imagine like when the Spanish started going into like the plains and the southeast?
00:36:04
Speaker
in the 14, 15, and 1600s, particularly the 17th and 16th centuries, the North America is going through a period of cultural recovery. The chiefdom civilizations like Cahokia and others had collapsed. These groups are re-going through a new period of ethnogenesis and re-identifying who they are. Could you imagine if Europeans showed up at the height of Cahokia or the height of some of these other mountain cultures who had huge militaries and territories that span from
00:36:34
Speaker
Louisiana to the Great Lakes. So it's just a fortuitous period. So it might not even necessarily be like, well, they didn't have horses. They didn't have iron. But if those, you know, ratty Spanish conquistadors, right? Like the first people that came to the Americas from Europe were not good people. Like Cortez went to prison back in Spain after what he did. Like he was, what he did, it wasn't, they didn't glorify him. Like that man went to trial. Cause they're like,
00:37:01
Speaker
You're supposed to be a good Catholic boy. And what you did was not very Catholic. You know, he. Columbus? No. Cortez. Oh, yeah. Cortez got put right on notice, too. Like they didn't. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, there's like there's these cultural differences that people don't think are necessarily aware of. Like the Vikings tried to come here several times and they couldn't do it like at all. They got some of those Viking settlements in Canada are there's a lot of violence. Yeah. And it's it's sad. And even like early English
00:37:31
Speaker
settlers here had a really hard time, even so much that we can't even find them in the archaeology record, you know? Right, but it's also we got to consider the fact that those people came over, they're businessmen. They came over to like, especially in Jamestown and the Vikings, like Viking was a, it's not a race, it's a trade. Viking is a trade. You don't have Viking ancestry. You're, stop. What is this? Yeah.
00:37:59
Speaker
It's, um, people from Viking culture and, and like, like European business culture came over here and Jamestown was like people that wanted to form a colony that were business people wanting to make profit, looking for gold and creating industry.
Early Settlers and Native American Interactions
00:38:15
Speaker
But they didn't know how to farm. And like some of them did like they weren't they had you had to have money to come over here. And then they also like when stuff went south and they didn't have, you know, it didn't go the way they wanted to. And the natives had to help, you know, give them corn and stuff to help them survive the winter. They didn't know how to farm the area. They didn't. There wasn't like abundant wheat fields for them to just like use. So that's why they started to eat each other and boil their belts and stuff to like eat like it didn't work.
00:38:42
Speaker
Same with the Vikings like they came here and like there's not huge like fisheries and there's not huge like cow pastures to like eat There's bison but not way up there. So they just like made some hobbit holes and no and left like it's not gonna like
00:38:58
Speaker
Yeah. And then they don't have a GPS to get right back. I mean, they're good navigators. And on top of that, right, you look at the early treaties and it's all European settlers like begging for help and peace with the local tribes because they cannot survive without them. But then once the colonies become more established and they want, as David said, like to expand their business to get access to different resources, it's not like they just showed up at their doorstep, asked them to leave. They would ally with a different tribe who didn't like the tribe they were already at peace with.
00:39:26
Speaker
and every instance of American history of Americans or other Europeans in the Americas to expand, they're using other Indians to help them. So the entire colonial history of North and South America is not like Europeans, like John Smithing on their own,
00:39:46
Speaker
They're using other Indians, from the Civil War, Revolutionary War, French and Indian War, to even the Indian Wars and the Plains. The U.S. cavalry was not doing very well at all against Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe warriors. I said Colonel Custer.
00:40:06
Speaker
And so they're like, well, who who's good at killing those people? They're like, I know. Why don't we recruit 600 Pawnee's and put them in blue uniforms? And then that and that's how the Indian Wars were one is like, oh, really? I didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. That's where I get my last name from is a cavalry scout. But it's like it's interesting. Like if you think like if they were given like two thousand more years to, you know, interact and whatnot. But there I feel like there would be a dominant population where there wouldn't be
00:40:36
Speaker
an influence from Europeans where they could play off that stuff.
00:40:39
Speaker
And playing off what Carlton said, and to answer that question too, like the Aztecs were like, not like, it's hard to compare the Maya being the Greeks and the Aztecs, the Romans of the world, like, right? The Iroquois are also called the Romans of the new world, but I wouldn't necessarily call them, but think of in that realm, the Aztecs pissed everyone off, like everyone that spoke novel in their area and like the Mesoamerican tribes pissed them off.
00:41:06
Speaker
And that's why when Cortez got there and Marinche helped.
00:41:13
Speaker
like, you know, as a translator, get all the other tribes to help unite against the Aztecs to help fight them. As you said, Carlton, getting the other indigenous tribes. The Tlosh Collins, the Tlosh Collins, which are right next door to Teotihuacan. Yeah, like this state. They're like new guys on the block that want to get rid of court Montezuma, too. Like so even the the Spanish had help from the indigenous. And like David said, the Aztec, they'd only been around for like 70 years. Like they're pretty new and they're very expansionist. But like people did not
00:41:43
Speaker
respect that. So when Cortes showed up and was making moves, there was more civil strife within the Aztec Empire rather than outside influence, but that outside influence capitalized.
00:41:59
Speaker
Is very similar to what goes on overseas in Europe and Asia, just like every other civilization. So to answer Connor's question, I think, yeah, like whether the Aztecs, maybe they would have fallen like the Maya did expanding too much, but they weren't like cutting down jungles and stuff. They were straight up terraforming like.
00:42:18
Speaker
kind of like the Europeans did. And when Cortez got there, I don't think it was Cortez, but it was one of the conquistadors in that mission said, like, they pissed themselves when they saw Tenochtitlán because they said it was like bigger than Constantinople and like something they'd never seen before. And we're like, whoa. And they built a city in the middle of a lake. And the Chinampas are cool. Like if people don't know, in order to like make that area profitable, they built these like
00:42:48
Speaker
They made their own canal systems. They built large wooden rectangles filled in just like scraped lake mud, which is high in nutrients, put it in there and grew on top of it. Then they also created little ecosystems for fish. Their method of farming was nothing like we've seen anywhere else.
00:43:06
Speaker
And they had like division of labor with like, they had poets and they had writers and they had like literal obsidian Smiths and they had like, like markets where you could buy like stuff from all over and zookeepers and like, it was a huge city that was quite literally a Neolithic city. But I feel like if you, if you, if you give them like 500 more plus years,
00:43:30
Speaker
Yeah, they would they would have conquered that stuff and they would have been on like a united front to say, you know, when Bizarro or Cortez came that like this is this is BS, you know, like they're there and could have fought him off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And possibly figuring out like another advanced or like more.
00:43:49
Speaker
Complex technology.
Speculative Development of Native American Societies
00:43:51
Speaker
I love that. I think that's super interesting to think about how folks could have, you know, if you gave them 200, 500 plus years. Yeah, but like- They were getting there. Even if you look at like the political aspect between Europe and North and South America, like the European monarchies were so solidified that, you know, everyone was related to each other, right?
00:44:13
Speaker
that you, no matter what country you went to, you had a monarch, they were ordained by God. Like you were set in that belief system, but in the Americas, you could still walk with your feet. You could vote with your feet, sorry. Of course you could walk with your feet. We do that all the time, but you could vote with your feet. Meaning like, if you didn't like how someone was running things, you could just walk away. Like there wasn't that ingrained socio-political. Could you go in those Mesoamerican places where you had to have things and stuff? Maybe not Meso.
00:44:41
Speaker
But in North America, 100%, you could literally leave from the mountain builder culture in the south and go north and that would be fine. It's cool to see that because North America is like this beautiful untapped kind of experiment in human
00:45:03
Speaker
socio-political technology. That's, that's what it is. I mean, like, so we've been as well, like terraforming, like all that stuff to just farm some potatoes. They were about to have their own McDonald's over there at some point. Like have a French fries all up in this and have like what those giant, what is it? The terrorist farms and they had a lot. That's the other thing. And Jared Diamond points us out, which I think is a valid thing, but he's not the only one who points it out. They don't have the beast of burden that we do over,
00:45:32
Speaker
They had dogs, they had llamas, and then turkeys, and guinea pigs, but you can't have a guinea pig tell a cart. And llamas aren't good at it either, and they're good for wool, and they can carry a bag, like a satchel. Yeah, it's like more than 25 pounds. They're just like, nah fam, that's a little too heavy for me. So without that, they couldn't really do all that stuff that you can have like a...
00:45:53
Speaker
like an ox or a horse pull, but like with a little more time and what the Inca were doing up there before Francisco Fazario came there and like took them out and he like strangled Atawalpa because he wouldn't give them gold. And he was like, because I think they had gold, but they ran out of gold. Yeah. And then he's like, oh, no more because you're going to die. And like they also had like steel plates to protect them from that stuff. So it was like, it was like, oh, my God, the Spanish or the Inca?
00:46:23
Speaker
Spanish. So they have like steel plates to like protect themselves from. But not all of them, even like with Cortez, the only one wearing actual armor was Cortez. Like all the other conquistadors did not show up with armor. Like CRM in the Southeast and like Davaca and DeSoto, they weren't wearing plate mail through the South. They took that stuff off at the beach.
00:46:44
Speaker
read about that as an archaeologist read up on DeSoto and all those folks up there because it's it's absolutely wild to see like your actual interactions you know like they're like Spanish people like delving into like the actual
00:47:00
Speaker
Well, it's like even the whole lost city of gold thing is just hilarious. Like as David said, you know, those Native American was one of some people that commented, you know, saying how stupid natives are. It's like a group of Spanish just rolled in looking for a city of gold and you don't know what the hell you're talking about. And like, oh, you're talking about the next town over. They have all the gold. So they sent the Spanish on a wild goose chase to go look for non-existent gold. And every town and village is just like passing the buck to the next one.
00:47:29
Speaker
And it was DeSoto? DeSoto would like feed them to dogs like his big mastiffs and then like then I think he got to like Nebraska or Arkansas somewhere out there and then he finally got there and he was like
00:47:41
Speaker
out. He like went back because he's like nothing there. And even like Villacer who came out from the colony out of Santa Fe, you know, he brought a couple hundred conquistadors and a bunch of Pueblo auxiliaries out to the plains to go make the plains part of the Spanish Empire.
00:47:59
Speaker
And they run into a bunch of Pawnees and Wichita's who kill everybody. And then Spanish like, yeah, we're not going out there again and kept the Spanish in the Southwest. And there's instances all across North America where there's a lot of failures on Europeans, you know, but there's these moments in time that are usually come down to treaties being broken, not open conflict between groups. You know, like you have you have some of those. Well, it's interesting to me to like think about how the folks who are in, you know, just south of me
00:48:30
Speaker
looking at all the ruins down South Main Cortez. What is the band there? The Comanches? There's Southern Utes down there. You got your Pueblos, your Navajos. They're basically like the north expression of the Pueblo folks. But they literally regressed into a point where they're like, okay, we can't do this farming thing. So we'll do this like movement plus horticulture thing because we have to figure this out because it's not working.
00:48:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's not necessarily regressing, right? It's adapting to the environment. They left the grind for that van life. Yeah. That's what the Lakotas did. They were farmers up in the Great Lakes. And once they got horses, they were like,
00:49:16
Speaker
YOLO. Yeah, like we're out, like peace. Yeet. And they just left and went to go be nomadic bison hunters because they were like, once you have the horses, you could do that. Is there physical anthropological evidence of their teeth and like health getting better after that? Like from like being like a superstarch-ridden diet and then going back to like a protein-rich diet? We'd have to ask Eric. Or Emily. I'd ask Emily, she would know.
00:49:45
Speaker
Yeah, then we can throw that right at Stephen. Yeah. Yeah. No, but like it's it's interesting to think I think coming to finish this episode is that the cultures in North America
00:50:01
Speaker
could have dealt like if Columbus came up here 2000 years later in 1754. Like I don't, I don't think Columbus settles here. Yeah. I don't know. We just did based on 16th and seven by 16th century, right? Where all this stuff it's yeah. If you gave even the North American civilizations and you know, above the Mexican basin, like just 200 years or 100 years for them to
00:50:27
Speaker
after the fall of those Mississippian states where they're reforming their identities, it would have been interesting to see how they would have, what they would have done. Because you already started to see the vestiges of the Iroquois becoming more powerful. The Cherokee are getting, are forming and these other groups are starting to coalesce. And yeah, if you would have given them like a hundred more years, the cultural landscape would have been much different. So it was just a fortuitous time that the Europeans arrived when they did. Cause they were in a, it was like, that was the best time to do it. Yeah. And on that note, we're going to end episode 45.
00:50:57
Speaker
Yeah, this has been episode 45 of Life and Run's podcast, No Guest Day, just bro talk, talking about how we respond to emails and discussions about gaming and archeology and then got into a wild goose chase, a wild turkey chase about European. Please give us a review on iTunes and Spotify. We need more reviews. We need you guys to tell us what you feel and then please send us emails.
00:51:23
Speaker
They can be horrific in emails like the one we got earlier. Just give them to us. Yeah, we want it. We want to hear what you guys think and what we can be doing better or who you'd like to hear. We're not humiliate those folks on live air. This one, we've been percolating on this one for a while because it was wild. So all right, with that, we are out.
00:51:55
Speaker
Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life in ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail.com. And remember, make sure to bring your archaeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. This is from my father, Dean John. So I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon. I'll let you know. I hate you. Wait.
00:52:23
Speaker
It's he ordered a chicken on which one's going to come first. Yeah. It's a coin box. Only option. All right. Thank you, Carter. All right.
00:52:49
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.